Students are perfectly free to express their thoughts. I was when I took the Baccalauréat in 2000, and I did fairly well (though it was the scientific Baccalaur

Students are perfectly free to express their thoughts. I was when I took the Baccalauréat in 2000, and I did fairly well (though it was the scientific Baccalauréat, where expectations in philosophy are not very high to begin with). That said it doesn't mean that you shouldn't memorize anything at all, otherwise you are soon going to run short on ideas. Think about it as building software on top of existing libraries rather than rewriting all from scratch. Take "Is truth preferable to peace?" for instance. Maybe it could bring you into a utilitarianism vs consequentialism debate (that's where I would go anyway, but I guess there are other interesting approaches). But if you've never studied these, well, good luck reinventing the wheel...