Tapping the hive mind

[icepixie]

Anyone have a favorite short story about education? I'm redoing some of the reading for my persuasive arguments unit, and the theme is education. I'd like to include some fiction, but at the moment all I can think of that treats education and/or school are novels, and we just don't have time for one. I would particularly like things that could lead into a discussion of what constitutes "an education."

(Google is being uncharicteristically unhelpful on this matter, alas.)

Comments

[nickless.livejournal.com]

I poked around the first few bits of the Fenyman rec, and it kinda reminded me of Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture". Don't know if that quite works either... Can't really think of anything that falls under "short story" - all I can come up with are journal articles (which may be persuasive, but aren't short stories) and memoirs (which could kind of be short stories, but aren't really persuasive).

If the latter works, Bill Bryson has an essay on his school days in Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. There's another interesting one in Fat Girls & Lawn Chairs, by Cheryl Peck, called "my ten most interesting things." It's basically about how she was accused of plagiarising a poem in 4th grade, ie the power a teacher has over a student.

Sorry, that's all I got!

[icepixie]

Memoirs could work. The unit and associated paper assignment are on persuasive writing, but it's a long unit, and I'm interested in exploring the topic from several angles. Their paper has to be about some kind of issue in "education," which could range from teaching evolution in schools to student parking at the university, and I want to give them lots of avenues from which to approach picking a topic.

The Bryson and Peck sound good. I'll check them out. Thanks!