<p>Hello, fellow English students! (btw, that should include all of you guys.)</p>
<p>So for my school project, I wrote a 5-paragraph essay on Franklin, after reading his Autobiography. </p>
<p>I don't usually get a good grade in writing and certainly don't consider myself a good writer, as I'm rather verbose and divergent, but I tried my best on this one and it would be helpful if you have any advice&opinion&etc.</p>
<p>A little bit of background: I focused on Franklin and his relationship with learning. I don't know about you guys, but as I read his Autobiography I felt that I hadn't seen or heard of anyone that devoted to learning. For me he is a great inspiration.</p>
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<p>Born to Learn: Franklin’s Lifelong Pursuit of Learning
Benjamin Franklin today is best known for his public-spiritedness and moral rectitude. Franklin devoted most of his life to serving the public and his thirteen virtues have never ceased to inspire generations of people. However, what truly made him successful was his burning desire to learn, and to learn for its own right. Most people, then and now, have regarded learning as an artificial process, painful yet necessary means to succeed in life. For Franklin, however, learning was as natural as it was enjoyable, and what he gained from it was much more than mere knowledge. Whether he realized, Franklin’s lifelong pursuit of learning would make him one of the greatest men who have ever lived.
Franklin was born into a family of a humble, ordinary background. His father, Joshia Franklin, was nothing more than a middle-class merchant with a moderate income, and Young Franklin at age twelve had to work under his brother James, a printer, instead of going to school (American Literature Anthology, 121). However, the fact that he couldn’t attend school didn’t prevent him from studying for pleasure, and his desire to learn translated into actual engagement with books such as Locke’s On Human Understanding. Remembering his juvenile obsession with learning, Franklin writes in his Autobiography that “From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books” (124). His early intense engagement with books demonstrates that Franklin not only took learning seriously, but also knew how to pursue what was good for him with great determination and self-discipline. By becoming fond of reading, Franklin learned to appreciate the pleasure that comes from tediously and patiently flipping through the pages of a book and letting the wisdom, or knowledge, sink in through his mind. Practical knowledge and necessary information gained thus also provided him with great advantages when he became a printer.
As there are often different ways to do one thing, Franklin also realized that there were various ways to expand his mind. Therefore, believing that conversing with people was another great way to learn, Young Franklin befriended John Collins, another bookish kid in his town (124). They debated on everything including religion, philosophy, and women’s rights to education, and attempted to improve each other’s mind by conversing with each other. His relationship with Collins shows that learning was always at the center of Franklin’s heart, even in matters of choosing a proper friend. Franklin was always a book worm, but he more than anyone knew that meeting new people and striking interesting conversations with them was as valuable and educational as reading books by himself.
Interestingly, Franklin also knew that learning was a two-sided sword which, when used wrong, could undermine its true objective. Becoming more and more knowledgeable and intelligent, Franklin found vanity and pretension in himself and attempted to get rid of them. For example, in order to enhance his debating skills, Franklin once employed the Socratic Method, a way of asking clever questions to confuse the opponent. However, it didn’t take him long until he abandoned the scheme, when he realized that he was “retaining only the habit of expressing [himself] in terms of modest diffidence” (126). For Franklin, baffling people with an artful conversing skill was not a measure of true learning, but rather a way of showing oneself off. Another instance in which he learned not to flaunt off his intellect is when he published a philosophical pamphlet, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, in response to another philosophical work that he helped publish as a printer. Sensing that he stepped out of boundary, both personally and intellectually, he stated, “My printing this pamphlet was another erratum” (141). As seen in this incident, one of the things that made Franklin truly exceptional was his ability to learn from others, as well as from himself, and apply what he learned or knew for his self-improvement.
In the end, Benjamin Franklin remained a lifelong student whose passion for learning defied even the passage of time. Throughout his life, he conversed with poets, philosophers, writers, scientists, politicians, and even some kings. Books were his intellectual companions and everlasting friends from which he learned to be industrious, patient, and meticulous all at the same time. In the beginning of his Autobiography, Franklin confesses to the reader that when he was young and in school, he was not a very good student. He says he even “failed in arithmetic” (122). However, what to most people would mean a perpetual disinterest in the subject was, to Franklin, a reason for trying even harder next time. Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise the reader when Franklin notes that “asham’d that I had twice failed in learning when at school, I took Cocker’s book of Arithmetick, and went through the whole by myself with great ease” (126). Years after his failure in math class, Franklin never forgot that he failed, but instead used the unpleasant occasion to truly master the subject. That was his philosophy of learning, his philosophy of life.</p>