When I was in graduate school I discovered a short essay titled “The Poor Scholar’s Soliloquy”. As I read the essay, I thought this could be describing an agricultural student. The essay caused me to do some thinking about the teaching-learning process. Was the problem described in the essay the fault of the student or was it the teachers and the curriculum? If you have never read this essay, you need to. If you have read it before, it is worth reading again.
This essay was written by Stephen Corey and first appeared in Childhood Education in 1944 (Vol. 20, Issue 5). The reason Dr. Corey wrote it was because his son was struggling with a homework assignment. Dr. Corey, who was a school administrator, could not make sense of the assignment and saw no value in it. So he wrote this essay from the viewpoint of a 7th grader.