Analyse/Review/Comment Writing - Exemplar 1

You'll be working on this in your lessons this week (if you're in Years 9-11), but I thought it would help if I posted it on the BLOG too. This is an exemplar response to an ARC question.

Exam Question: It has been suggested that having 169 TV channels and building motorways through the countryside is ‘progress’. Analyse this view of progress, commenting on why things are developing in this way and what reasons people might have to disagree.

PLAN
Intro: Evolution
• Dr. Robert Oppenheimer
• Medicine
• Computers
• Entertainment
• Industrialisation
Conclusion: Back to basics

Ever since Neanderthal man first rubbed dry sticks to make fire or figured out that wheels work better when round, mankind has sought progress. It’s just another form of evolution: Darwin should be proud. However, the greater our advances, the more controversial they can become; to the extent that many might question whether they are ‘progress’ at all. When progress ameliorates life, that is one thing; but when it simply improves lifestyle, that is something else entirely.

Interestingly, Dr Robert Oppenheimer must have understood this debate all too well. In the 1930s, he was the chief scientist in charge of the development of the USA’s nuclear technology. Only a few years later, the American government harnessed this very same technology to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life campaigning against nuclear proliferation so much that the American government started to restrict his personal freedom. What would he have said if asked if any ‘progress’ had really been achieved?

Nonetheless, it is important for us to acknowledge the complexity of the issue, and few could argue that some progress is unequivocally good. In medicine, for example, advances in technology have led to the eradication of diseases which, as little as fifty years ago, claimed victims every day. Even AIDS, until recently thought invincible, may now have a cure or vaccination in sight.

Similarly, computer technology has totally transformed the way in which we live our lives today, and many of us rely on our trusty PC to organise everything from our finances to our daily routines. I defy anyone to argue that my iPod is not a good thing – six hours driving to the Lake District over the summer would have been toddler hell without the entire Horrid Henry back catalogue playing over the car stereo. And where would we be in schools, without computers to improve both teaching and learning?

However, it is not difficult to flip the coin of progress to the other, less shiny side. For example, how many channels do we really need on our TV sets? I have free access to dozens of channels now, and there is still, invariably, very little worth watching. Instead, television’s hold over our lives is becoming more and more intense, and, to the benefit of whom? In the words of Bruce Springsteen, there are “57 channels and nothing on”.

It is also hard to dispute that the increasing industrialisation of society is placing our planet in grave danger. A new motorway might cut the journey time from A to B in two; but it cuts the countryside in two too. Cheap plane travel might send thousands more people into the sky; but that sky is choking as a result. When progress is at the expense of the planet we inhabit, some would say that it is not progress at all. After all, what is the point of improving life on earth, if there will be no earth to host it?

When you think about it, it is easy to sympathise with those who favour a more ‘no-nonsense’, ‘back to basics’ approach to life. If you were to remove all technology from your life, would you really be worse off? I would miss my iPod, but I managed before I first bought it; and there are few ailments I fight off through a trip to Boots that a decent shaman couldn’t cure with a few crushed leaves and a nice hot poultice. And as for roads and interminable television, they may well spruce up my lifestyle – but my life could probably do perfectly well without them.