The Dumbing of America Inspired a Student Essay

The Dumbing of America Inspired a Student EssayHave you ever heard of the sample Student Essay Contest Elie Wiesel? If you haven't, you should.I've written a book on the same topic, which was also inspired by Elie Wiesel's story, The Night of the Gauntlet. In that story, Wiesel sets up the sort of contest we have here on the Internet. There are lots of great resources for this sort of thing, and you can read about how I did it in my book, The Dumbing of America.Anyway, Wiesel wrote about going into a Nazi concentration camp to collect human remains. He found a dead child, whom he took back to his camp. In the story, he picked up a pencil and, since he was afraid he might be killed, he wrote on the ground with the pencil and then wrote another sentence.After that story, Wiesel became famous, and many students decided to write about the atrocities of their own countries. One student, Nancy Barr (then an undergraduate at the University of Chicago), decided to write a short essay about h er own country, and she found a pencil that she had used on the battlefield and wrote a short piece about it. She went on to win a Nobel Prize for Literature, and she has said many times that she was inspired by the pencil story. Then she wrote another short story about her country.So, in The Night of the Gauntlet, Wiesel inspired one student, and he wrote a short essay about his country and won a Nobel Prize. The story also inspired another student to write about her country, and she was inspired to write a short essay about her country, too.It is possible that Wiesel really did write the pencilstory, although I doubt it. But if he did, the effects of his story have been incredibly powerful.And it is also possible that he did not write the pencil story. But again, I doubt it.Either way, Wiesel's story is very powerful. And if you have ever wanted to read a powerful story that you could find in a college textbook, you could do worse than to check out The Dumbing of America. It's an amazing book, and if you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend that you go read it!