They suck. Honestly, I know I sound like a broken record on this, but I can't stand them AT ALL.
Really? What is the point of them? To rehash obvious points but with a diverse vocabulary so that your teacher is fooled into believing you're actually talking about something important?
Surely there are far better ways of testing my writing quality and ability to form a coherent sentence.
You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you.
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger,
You'll learn things you never knew, you never knew.
Writing an essay supposedly shows that you comprehend the subject you're writing about. You wouldn't be able to write 5000 pages on something you didn't understand, goes the reasoning.
The fact that millions of retards receive passing grades for their essays every year, when they have in fact only memorised facts and arguments rather than truly understanding the subjects at hand, disproves this notion.
But you have to give examination boards a reason to feel important, I suppose.
DAMMIT MATT! I'm an engineer, not an English major! :P
It does indeed show that you understand a subject if you're capable of rambling on about it for so long. But why write 2-3 pages when you can accomplish the same task in one efficient paragraph, or even a sentence?
You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you.
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger,
You'll learn things you never knew, you never knew.
I LOVE essays.
If properly done they are a great way to find out what knowledge someone has on a subject. The best ones are when a professor gives you a single page to talk about a subject. I find those extremely hard to do depending on the subject.
DAMMIT MATT! I'm an engineer, not an English major! :P
It does indeed show that you understand a subject if you're capable of rambling on about it for so long. But why write 2-3 pages when you can accomplish the same task in one efficient paragraph, or even a sentence?
From what I remember, most of my courses involved learning and memorising particular arguments and analyses about the subjects that could be covered by an exam. I actually 'learned' far more outside of classrooms than I ever did in them. Granted, I didn't go to university, so I can't comment on what it's like there, but from what I've seen of the people I know who have degrees, it can't be much different.
Knowing about something isn't the same as understanding it. I know people, and have worked with people, who can talk interminably - for hours and hours - about some particular point without ever producing a prediction or a suggested course of action, or even saying anything particularly relevant that as much as relates their soliloquy to the task at hand. And I know people who can talk for five minutes and then go do the thing.
Understanding seems more like the connection between results achieved for effort put. Something produced by intelligence; the efficient use of your information to achieve a particular end through the application of appropriate heuristics and analytical tools. It's a process that you ideally turn back on itself and continue to optimise.
It also has something to do with the way brains work. I know people who can hear a cello piece, and their brain automatically translates it into sheetmusik. My own brain will never have this ability, and will never think in term of written words at all.
That said, I have extreme difficulty in translating my thoughts into written words, and even more so in putting the words into a format someone other than myself can understand.
When I think of something, it is more akin to a film clip. So the best method of presentation to me would be a speech, narrating a PowerPoint, or a video. That is how my mind works to begin with, so it only makes sense to me for those to be the methods of delivery, and the methods of learning.
I wasn't under the impression that essays were meant to be teaching tools as much as they were supposed to be assessment tools. Maybe there are some people who find them useful in formulating their thoughts, but I know when I wrote them I found I was becoming a less precise thinker.
See, just did it there: Lots of words where a few would more precisely have expressed an idea.
And again.
Many words where few would do.
Breadth over depth - motivations to avoid saying anything that can be tested....
Oh and the atrocious need to put everything in prose that actually conflicts with clarity of expression.
I've never heard anyone do even a passing defence of essays as a tool for teaching good thinking skills. The habits that are required to write a good essay, by grading criteria, aren't the skills that are required to think efficiently.
Essays are only useful for people whose brain work in terms of words to begin with. The people who already write EVERYTHING, take note, what have you, they are exceptionally good at writing essays. If your brain works like that, great. By all means, write all you want.
For those of us who do not, or cannot think in terms of words on a page, essays are virtually useless.
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Essays? 
.gif "Roll Eyes (Sarcastic) at that stupid method of spelling color")
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