Essay 2 - Critique of Arguments - The Cases for the Post-Graduation Gap Year

Dillon Waugh

Hayes

English 100 – 9:10

2/18/13

Word Count: 1,315

Critique of Argument Essay

Among students and their families are two trends: one of pressuring the student to claw their way through their education, out of high school and with any luck straight to university, in hopes of proving all the faster in securing a career and the independence that it theoretically affords; and one of taking a “gap year” between mandatory and higher education, to deliberate on the way to an ideal future and to explore the possibilities of simply living. In America, one of the only Western first-world countries in which gap-year students are still considered uncommon, the benefits of the latter are increasingly contemplated and presented over the former. David Burstein of the Huffington Post and Emily Harwell of the Tampa Bay Times each describe what students have accomplished in a free year after high school – travel, creation of artwork and exploration of business opportunities, ambitious charity work – with planning of their next steps beginning before the year starts. English journalist Suzanne Moore responds to criticism of gap years in Britain by pressing the practical experience and self-acquaintance afforded by a year out of the structure of school, regardless of any effect it may have on a student’s value as such.

I can find quite a number more reasons to see the appeal of taking a gap year over reasons to be skeptical of it, myself, and each of the three journalists’ columns written on the matter went beyond touching at least a few of them.  However, none of their three writings alone serves as a strong defense for the gap year, each instead with a clear, cut-off focus on a particular reason for the journalist’s support. Of the three, Burstein presents the most balanced justification for his claim, enough to satisfy most any passing skeptic – including those of each respective group that Harwell and Moore seem most prepared to pacify.

Curiously, Burstein is the only of the three who cites arguably the most common reason given for his support of the free post-high school year: it gives students time to think properly about their future, and it is without that time and risking “pursuing the wrong thing throughout your college years”, Burstein thinks, that “it's not surprising that so many people have mid-life crises and 360-degree career changes later in life”. The student and family of that student who claim that they need a year to think – about their major, their career path, and so on – before heading on into university are, therefore, onto something. Some fret that a year out of school before finding a solid career is a year wasted. How many years might one waste, on the other hand, investing in education to fit into an ill-fitted, uncomfortable, and unsustainable personal livelihood? But while it is a year out of school, Burstein also intriguingly assures critics that a gap year ought to be approached not as a year out of education but, as he believes it to be, “essentially an academic year where you, the student, are in charge of your curriculum . . . a different kind of education, one that is more individually focused, and experiential” [Burstein], tailored to the student’s needs as they themselves know them and practiced in the field.

This isn’t to sell the standout points of Harwell and Moore’s arguments short in comparison to each of the two respective others. Harwell’s column presents interviews with three students who had found reward in their gap years, with what they accomplished and insight into what made their gap years so successful: “’Corey Kimer approached planning his gap year as a college search, by considering cost, his goals and the opportunities available” [Harwell], for example. Moore’s piece, meanwhile, is the only one to head-on face, seize, and undermine the concerns of skeptics. She points to (in her opinion) dubious studies conducted in Britain scrutinizing eventual income, pre-gap year school attendance, and even drug use among gap year students and crushes them under her heel as proof of an obsessive belief that “The meaning of life is money. All else is moral failure. What is love, learning, and lazing worth?” With an all-out frankness, she insists that whatever a person may or may not accomplish or have the means to prepare for a year out of school, a year of living outside of school’s pressures and structure, “where risks have been taken, where things have not worked out” [Moore], and yet “where books have been read for pleasure, where feelings have been felt, not graded, where we have ventured out of any comfort zone” [Moore], is its own reward, providing its own enrichment.

However, on one side of the coin, Moore and Harwell’s focuses weaken their cases in the places in which they do not strengthen them. As Moore opens her column with a scoff at gap year skeptics’ so-called studies and drives on into the same reason for her belief in the practice’s worth, her argument, however impassioned, can read as one long refutation; Harwell, in the meantime, relies almost exclusively on the student interviews and testimonials, cutting them up and placing them ungarnished on a platter, without commentary, further snippets of info, or even much of a voice.

On the other side of it, if with not so much directness and focus, Burstein manages a bit of each of their techniques. Although he speaks of it with a more educationally-oriented slant than Moore, Burstein agrees that one of the benefits of a gap year is an early taste of life experience - such a period allows recent high school graduates who’ve known only how to live as students their entire mature lives to have a year’s trial living in the “real world” instead of having to adjust to it all at once after a few more years of schooling. And like Harwell, Burstein shares examples that he knows of gap year successes: one student wrote a novel, another took part in building a school in Kenya, another created a film – and the third of those three was the accomplishment of Burstein’s own gap year, giving him something more that Harwell doesn’t in presenting her anecdotal evidence and a touch of the personal charge that Moore does.

What is most glaringly missing from Burstein’s argument, apart from special depth, is any point at which he picks out and attempts to negate any particular potential arguments of naysayers. But he does acknowledge them implicitly, and, as one can imagine, assume that they believe that the alternative to a gap year is proceeding with focusing on education. He then offers them a compromise of sorts: he does not discourage students from keeping school someplace on their minds. They can start applying for university before they’ve received their high school diplomas if they like – but they can spend some of a free year pondering definitely which school’s acceptance letter is the one that truly means most to them, or collecting a few more.

Burstein’s case lacks depth in its reasons. Moore and Harwell, alternatively, lack particular scope. Moore sings the value of life experience and Harwell shares with us the satisfaction of students whose meticulous plans for their year between high school and college counted fantastically. Burstein was a student satisfied with what he’d done with that year, and can vouch for the experience it can provide. What elevates his argument from there, just that extra bit, is suggesting that the trick for anyone, planning to take a gap year or wondering whether it’s truly worth it, is to consider and approach it not as a break, at all, but as an ambitious opportunity to learn much more practically and independently – a harmony of perspective that may benefit the odd underachieving student simply longing for a lazy year and prove something to consider for the adult figure worried that their honor-roller may become such a youth with a year on their own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Burstein, David D. “Consider a Gap Year.”  Apr. 2011: The Huffington Post. Web.

Harwell, Emily. “Gap Year Offers Wealth of Experience; Students find that taking a year off before college to work, travel or volunteer brings a fresh perspective.”  Sept. 2012: The Tampa Bay Times. Web.

Moore, Suzanne. “In Defence of the Gap Year: It’s a sign of the times that any time out of an educational institution is portrayed with a whiff of defiance.”  Dec. 2012: The Guardian. Web.