AVCS Attendance

Obviously, Apple Valley Christian does not have impressive attendance numbers. In an area that is growing at a fairly good rate, and an area that has a fairly wealthy populace, attendance at a private school that offers contrast to the public system should be more popular. Some things could be changed to create, or some things added, to encourage new enrollment.

First of all, it is important to note the major issue in the current low attendance. I don’t think it has so much to do so much with current management as it does with past actions of the school. When AVC decided to turn away many students, and deny re-enrollment to others, it committed a very obvious worst error of the century. Increased attendance is – and this is why we are writing the paper – a good thing. If you want to keep classes small, you don’t turn people away; you increase tuition to hire more teachers. If so many people wanted to be at AVC, they were willing to pay more money.

That said, if I was part of the current management, I would change some things. The best thing to do is to increase output to the community. Speaking through churches, newspaper and radio ads, and even holding conferences to introduce the material at the school would be important. Any way to inform people about the product at the school, which is probably unique from most private schools, is a good idea.

The idea that equipping and funding the elementary school more than middle school and high school will produce better long term attendance is really one of the worst and most flawed management decisions to come out of this school. Unless the school wants to become an exclusively elementary school, it cannot take this approach. People are going to judge a school like AVCS by its high school’s quality, and a lot more people will come to the school in their high school years than the school thinks. A balanced approach should be taken, but equipping and funding the lower levels of schooling and lowering the levels of attention for the higher levels within the school will make AVCS into an elementary – only school in the future, which wouldn’t last long on its own anyways.

Apart from that, the school just needs to wait and hope that its past poor management decisions don’t stick with it forever. Bankruptcy and the disbanding of most of the structure of the school is possible, however, so steps should be taken to increase enrolment. The main approach now, though, should be a patient but aggressive one.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is an interesting approach to completing a paper. It is taught in most every class since you begin writing essays, and is the standard for any “complete” paper. Teachers think it is a brilliant idea to use the ideas of another person to form your paper…as long as you credit the author in the accepted format. But the idea behind paraphrasing is flawed in a major way, at least for some people.

Students are taught to paraphrase because teachers believe that the authors of the books and articles are going to be more intelligent and better gifted at forming ideas on a subject. And the teachers are right, for the vast, vast majority of students. There are, however, people who are more intelligent and more naturally – gifted thinkers then these authors. These people would not need to paraphrase the ideas of the authors, of course, because their ideas are going to be more novel in most cases.

Now, citing information you did not previously know to support your argument is an entirely different thing, and is not in the context of the question. The question asks whether you would take the ideas and opinions of an author and use them as your own, not whether you would cite facts to support your ideas. Someone who is more intelligent then an author might not be more informed on a subject.

The question is great, because it is very relevant in any institute of learning, especially the ones we are about to join for the next four years. I just think that some people would not even need to paraphrase, even if they had very little time. If they were novel enough, and gifted enough, they could formulate their own genius ideas.

I didn’t focus on would it be okay or not to steal ideas, because everyone knows it wouldn’t. I wanted to introduce the idea that paraphrasing isn’t even an issue in that situation for a very gifted person. Why steal ideas when you can formulate ones that are so much better? No one who owns a Ferrari steals a Hyundai.