The purpose of a writing class is to develop a meaningful thesis, direct or implied, that will generate a compelling essay. Most importantly, a meaningful thesis will have a strong emotional connection between you and the material. In fact, if you don’t have a “fire in your belly” to write the paper, your essay will be nothing more than a limp document, a perfunctory exercise in futility. A successful thesis will also be intellectually challenging and afford a complexity worthy of college-level writing. Thirdly, the successful thesis will be demonstrable, which means it can be supported by examples and illustrations in a recognizable organizational design.
Other Website: http://herculodge.typepad.com/
This is the last extra credit for 1A. It is due on April 29th, 2015 and must be submitted to turnitin.com.
The Assignment:
Using two credible sources, develop a thesis for a 3-page typed essay in MLA format that addresses the connection between the building of a utopia and evil as you see this connection in Ursula Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."
“From Degrading to De-grading” by Alfie Kohn 238-250
One. Kohn asserts that good teachers de-emphasize grades and that bad teachers, who even lack a conscience, emphasize grades. How compelling is his argument?
Some would accuse him of an over simplification and an either/or fallacy. “Either you drink my Kool-Aid and stop using grades, or you are proving to be a horrible, immoral teacher."
This extreme position, many would say, is an oversimplification and a form of bullying, evidence of a false prophet.
Furthermore, the “three effects of grading” that Kohn refers to could be disputed.
For example, we read, “Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself.” What’s the baseline of interest that Kohn assumes will deteriorate if we push grades on students? Is there a baseline? If there is, he doesn't define it in any way.
He also claims that students will shy away from challenging tasks and suffer the reduction of “quality” thinking.
Again, Kohn is throwing an either/or fallacy in our face: Either hold students accountable with grades and suck the creativity out of their learning or cut out grades altogether and inject creativity into their learning. Why can’t there be a balance of both?
Two. What Are Some Possible Refutations of Kohn? (A Defense of Grading)
1. Competition from grading prepares students for real world.
2. Not all students try and perform equally. Those who are superior, as a result of their hard work, should enjoy seeing their hard work rewarded with higher grades.
3. It’s human nature to be motivated by the carrot and the stick. Kohn is living in a candy-coated dream world that ignores the realities of human nature.
4. Grades are not perfect, but they are an important motivational tool.
5. Grades are not perfect, but they do help show the “cream rising to the top,” an important process in any meritocracy. A meritocracy is a society that rewards the people based on merits.
6. It turns out that Kohn also is against homework. Thus, it appears he subscribes to the Cult of Academic Relaxation, a form of “creative laxity,” which I oppose.
7. Kohn's argument contradicts empirical evidence: In my 30 years of teaching, A students tend to be responsible; C and D students tend to be less responsible.
Three. What does Kohn mean when he says grades "spoil relationships with students"?
He uses an anecdote of a teacher whose instruction has been reduced to fanatical grading and that is served as evidence that grading is this monster that takes over teaching. In other words, he uses an extreme example to argue against grading. That's a logical fallacy.
Then there's the argument that a teacher should be less of a grader and more of a friend. Is this a good idea?
What if the student doesn't want to comply with his "friend's" educational goals?
The student might say to the teacher, "Sorry, friend, I don't feel like writing my Works Cited page."
Four. What is the Maternal Fallacy and how does this fallacy apply to Kohn?
The Maternal Fallacy is the emphasis on nurture and protection at the exclusion of discipline and control, qualities associated with the Patriarch or father figure. "Education should be a place of nurture and unconditional acceptance," says this line of thinking. "We don't want to traumatize the students by judging them harshly and hurting their self-esteem."
But in fact coddling students like this makes them weak and helpless in the real world. Creating dysfunctional citizens with no skills for the real world is hardly serving them.
In an affluent society in which the young generation have a foundation of basics in math and writing, some of Kohn's maternal outlets for creative freedom are valid. However, in the absence of these basic skills, grading and basics in education are sometimes necessary.
Five. Would you be more motivated if you did not receive grades? Explain.
Answers may vary.
For me personally, if I had an interest in the class, I might not need to be motivated so much by grades as much as I would be seeking approval from the instructor. But if the class were a requirement outside my sphere of interest, I might not do anything.
Six. Is it fair to compare grading to a polluted city or is this rhetorical demagoguery? Explain.
"Wearing diamonds is equal to killing slave children in Africa," it could be argued, has more of a basis in reality than Kohn's statement above.
More Criticism Against Kohn
We read the following by Daniel Willingham whose link is provided below:
In his book, Punished by Rewards, Kohn claims “Praise, at least as commonly practiced, is a way of using and perpetuating children’s dependence on us. It gets them to conform to our wishes irrespective of what those wishes are.” (p. 104.) Kohn also argues that praise and rewards for good behavior are destructive to motivation. The truth is actually somewhat more complicated. Rewards can reduce motivation, but only when motivation was somewhat high to start with. If the student is unmotivated to perform some task, rewarding him will not hurt his motivation. Praise can be controlling and exact a psychological cost, but its effect on the recipient depends on how it’s construed: does the child think you are offering sincere appreciation for a job well done, or sending the message that future behavior had better be in line with expectations? There is important psychological work showing that the role of praise and reward is complex. Carol Dweck is a leader in this field and her book, Mindset, provides a good overview.
Regarding self-control, Willingham writes:
In a recent piece in the Phi Delta Kappan, Kohn argues that self-discipline has been over-sold, and indeed, that it has a dark side—too much self-control may be associated with anxiety, compulsiveness, and dampened emotional responses. He notes that some researchers put few or no qualifications on their enthusiasm for self-control, essentially arguing that more is always better. But Kohn proceeds from a definition of “self-control” that differs from that used by these researchers (Roy Baumeister,Angela Duckworth, Walter Mischel, and Marty Seligman), and indeed, by virtually all of the important researchers in the field. They define self-control as the ability to marshal your cognitive and emotional resources to help you attain goals that you consider important. Kohn defines self-control as using willpower to accomplish things that are generally regarded as desirable. Thus by Kohn’s definition, a child shows self-discipline when she determinedly (and miserably) slogs towards a goal that she does not value, but that her parents (or others) deem important. Researchers use the former definition when they claim that they find no disadvantages to self-control, and that they observe positive associations with achievement, social adjustment, mental health. Kohn’s point—that authoritarian control leads to negative outcomes—is not very startling and is shared more or less universally by researchers.
Pointing out Kohn's logical fallacies, Willingham point out:
Kohn falls prey to logical fallacies on occasion. In the same Kappan piece on self-discipline, Kohn writes “Learning, after all, depends not on what students do so much as on how they regard and construe what they do. To assume otherwise is to revert to a crude behaviorism long since repudiated by serious scholars.” (p. 170). This is a false dilemma. Kohn offers me the choice of agreeing with his version of a constructivist learning theory or agreeing with a behaviorist theory. Actually, those are not my only choices of learning theories. (I have yet to find a Kohn piece in which behaviorism—a theory whose heyday was fifty years ago, and is now ignored by most learning theorists—did not take a beating.)
Kohn’s work often makes use of misleading vividness, or perhaps better, a variant of that fallacy. His articles are characterized by a long, vehement attack on the target and a brief, subdued qualification of the attack. The pale qualification, though important to an accurate characterization of the literature, is likely forgotten by the reader. For example, the Kappan piece is an attack on three fronts (psychological, philosophical, and political) on the usefulness of self-discipline. Kohn also notes “While I readily admit that persevering at worthwhile tasks is good—and that some students seem to lack this capacity—. . . .” This qualification indicates that an important topic ought to be “when is self-control useful, and when is it destructive?” But the message of the article is unqualified: self-discipline is bad.
Write a personal essay in which you either support or refute Kohn’s argument about grading, using anecdotes from your experience as a student. Do you view grading in a negative or positive light? Why or why not? Make sure to structure your argument by addressing Kohn’s multiple points directly.
Break Down the Prompt into Its Parts
Convert the questions in the assignment into sentences.
Follow instructions
I agree (disagree) with Kohn because . . .
Summarize Kohn's Arguments
“Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself” (238).
“Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenge tasks” (239).
“Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking” (239).
“Grades aren’t valid, reliable, or objective” (240).
“Grades encourage cheating” (241).
“Grades spoil teachers’ relationships with students” (241).
Sample Responses
Student Who Disagrees with Kohn
My experience as a student contradicts everything Kohn tries to say. I’ve walked into classes with absolutely no interest in the subject, but because I had a gun to my head, that is the pressure of grades pointing at my temple, I forced myself to get acquainted with the material. Contrary to Kohn, my being forced to know the material made me respect and like the subject matter far more than a situation in which I knew I would not be graded. Without the pressure of grades, I would remain ignorant of the subject, and that ignorance would perpetuate my lack of interest in the material.
Kohn’s second assertion is that grading will discourage me from embracing challenging tasks. He’s assuming that without grades, I’d be more inclined to take intellectual and creative risks. He is wrong. When I was a college student, I was lazy and was not predisposed to taking on any kind of challenge. The path of least resistance was my work ethic. Grades or not, I was an incurably lazy human being. If anything, I needed grades to prompt me off my butt and to do some actual homework.
Kohn’s third assertion is that grading will compromise my critical thinking skills. Again, I don’t think Kohn knows what he’s talking about. When I was in college, I had no critical thinking skills to lose. Grades were hardly the reason I was so ignorant. My youthful naiveté, my laziness, and my being sheltered in the suburbs had far more to do with my lack of critical thinking skills than any teacher’s grading system.
Kohn’s fourth argument is that grading is not a reliable system because the teachers can be biased, unfair, and use unreliable grading measures. I’ll admit these are possible scenarios, but in my years at high school and college, it seems that over 95% of the time, students did indeed get the grades they deserved. If there is a five percent error, that is hardly sufficient reason for dumping grades.
Kohn goes on to say that grades encourage cheating and spoil students’ relationship with teachers. Of course, a grading system is going compel students to cheat. They want to be up to par with the A students whose A performance has earned them top honors. Any system with a top and a bottom is going to have cheaters. To deny that reality is to try to create a world that does not exist. And that world is the one provided by Alfie Kohn.
Regarding the final point about our relationship with teachers, Kohn is assuming there is this great relationship that is forged without grades and that grades spoils the deal. Again, he is in error. We are not friends with the teachers. They are hired to do what they do because of their presumed expertise and authority in the subject. They are our guides and mentors, and their grading system is their way of showing us how well we are at reaching the benchmarks that are part of each class. Kohn’s assertion that these benchmarks measured by a grading system is a degradation of the student-teacher relationship has no bearing in reality and again shows that he is trying to impose an artificial world on the real one. For all these reasons, I have dismissed Kohn convincingly. Can we move on to a new topic, please? (avoid hubris in the conclusion)
Student Defense of Alfie Kohn
Alfie Kohn is trying to save education from being a terrible place of fear, elitism, and students being helpless pawns before their maniacal teachers who use grades to bully, control, and traumatize their students.
First off, everyone knows that grades are unfair. Teachers don’t really care how well you write. All they care about is that you agree with them, so you spend your time kissing up to them, trying to make your essays reflect what your instructors say in the class.
Secondly, Kohn is right that grades reduce interest. How can you focus on the subject with any interest when you’re always worried about achieving a 4.0 so that you can get into a good university? Interest is irrelevant. It’s all about the grades. And seeing some students get As while others get Cs is traumatizing for the lower students who feel stigmatized and shamed, often wearing these negative emotions for the rest of their lives. How dare we let teachers have so much power over our self-esteem. We should cut their grading power out from under them just as Alfie Kohn says we should.
Third, Kohn is so correct to point out that grading makes us students avoid challenging approaches to the subject matter. We always seek the easiest path to The Land of A. Why take risks by doing something more challenging than we have to?
Finally, what kind of relationship can I have with my teachers when I fear their power over me? Their grade determines my place in the world. One wrong move and my life as a successful banker could be diminished to a milk truck driver. It’s impossible to develop strong relationships with figures that wield so much power. Therefore, I commend Alfie Kohn for telling us to stop the insanity, cut out grades, and bring real education back to the classrooms.
Refutation of the Above Response
While I concede that there are too many teachers who want their students to regurgitate their ideas rather than think critically for themselves, the rest of the student’s defense of Alfie Kohn is a mishmash of egregious fallacies, clichés, and sloppy thinking, all of which serves to highlight Kohn’s dangerous arguments for ending grading systems as we know them.
Perhaps the biggest danger is this idea that we are hurting students’ self-esteem and subjecting them to lifelong traumas by judging them with clear benchmarks to see if they are fulfilling course requirements. The sentiment of preserving self-esteem has everything to do with the fantasy of staying home in the safety of Mother’s House and nothing to do with the reality of competing in the real world. The fantasy of preserving the Big Baby for eternity is typically an upper class one. Narcissistic, well-to-do parents who can’t accept the foibles of their “perfect” Junior want teachers who can only mutter obsequious flattery, and if their grading system in any way is less than flattering, then clearly grading, as Kohn argues, is the enemy of all: self-esteem, creativity, student interest, the buddy-buddy relationship with student and teacher.
Of course, this fantasy bears no resemblance to the real world. Imagine a jiu-jitsu instructor who elevates his students’ self-esteem by giving everyone a black belt. The tournament comes along and that instructor’s students have to spar with real black belts. I think we all know what the outcome will be.
Kohn is the instructor who’d love to give everyone a black belt, which of course is a fantasy, and a dangerous one at that.
Second Writing Prompt
Kohn writes about the need to move a school “from a grade orientation to a learning orientation” (pp. 239, 243). What do you think he means? How, according to Kohn, does grading make it harder to focus on learning? Write an essay in which you discuss the characteristics of these two orientations. Do you think it’s possible to have an educational system that emphasizes both?
Break Down the Assignment into Your Own Words
We're asked in the prompt to explain, perhaps in one sentence, what Kohn means when he says we must move from a grade to a learning orientation. Clearly, a grading orientation for Kohn excludes learning. We have to explain why Kohn believes this and then explain whether or not we agree with him.
Student Refutation of Kohn
Kohn has created a false opposition, between grading and learning, to propel is phony argument that grades are a plague ruining schools and minds. What Kohn and his ilk are afraid of is this big scary thing called judgment. Grades are a form of judgment, and judgments for Kohn are a very scary thing because they take a child’s fragile self-esteem, Kohn’s view, and dismantle it.
I’ve got some scary news for Kohn. Judgment is here to stay. Judgment is everywhere. Judgment is how we survive. Judgment is how we flourish. And judgment is how we measure our educational success. When we choose toothpaste or a cold cereal or a web browser, or a laptop, or a smartphone, or a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, we exercise judgment. When a university picks students from a pool of community college students, the university exercises judgment.
Kohn’s argument is so removed from reality that it seems he must live inside a bubble in which he talks only to himself or his Kool-Aid drinking believers. Grades aren’t going anywhere. Grades are a normal part of the judgment process. And Kohn’s fantasy of taking judgment out of the education process is so lunatic that he is nothing more than a provocateur and a demagogue whose flea-sized arguments will be crushed in the elephantine marketplace of real ideas.
"Blue-Collar Brilliance" by Mike Rose
One. Rose's mother learns to craft her skills as a server at a restaurant. Is this brilliance or adaptation? Is there a difference? Explain.
Some might argue that the skills the mother develops are adaptive, but why be adaptive to a dead-end job? To acclimate to a dead-end evidences something less than brilliance, some might argue.
Two. What other types of intelligence is Rose exploring beyond the kind associated with a formal education?
Emotional intelligence: Being able to read people, to measure how close or far one needs to go with another.
Street smarts: Being able to read a fluid situation and react in ways that brings one advantage. We also call this being smart off the cuff.
On the opposite extreme, a person could be an idiot savant, someone with extradorinary skills in one specialty while lagging in social skills.
Rose questions a culture with mind-body dualism as we venerate intelligence in white-collar jobs but dismiss the idea of intelligence in blue-collar jobs.
In some cases what we associate with brute force is not brute force at all but requires mental dexterity. For example, a top security manager told me a security guard has to be over 90% psychologist.
Three. What is the main purpose or objective of Rose's essay?
He argues we shouldn't stereotype people if they are blue-collar workers because this dismissing their intellectual skills results in our becoming blind to the complex education that many blue-collar jobs require.
As he writes:
"If we believe everyday work to be mindless, then that will affect the work we create in the future. When we devalue the full range of everyday cognition, we offer limited educational opportunities and fail to make fresh and meaningful instructional connections among disparate kinds of skill and knowledge. If we think that whole categories of people--identified by class or occupation--are not that bright, then we reinforce social separations and cripple our ability to talk across cultural divides."
Four. Why do so many people have the stereotype of the "dumb blue-collar worker"?
I have a theory. Blue-collar people are not dumb. However, their work makes them tired, so that when they're off work they're so exhausted all they have the energy for is to "wind down," drink, and consume entertainment. I worked in construction in my late teens and early twenties, and when I got home I was too tired to watch TV. All I wanted to do was eat and go to bed. Doing construction, a job I hated, motivated me to stay in college.
Five. Do all non-college jobs have a stigma?
No. I notice a lot of people can work in sales, finance, and real estate without a college degree and enjoy a certain esteem in society. Also, there are entrepreneurs and inventors.
Writing Prompt from Page 286
This essay asks you to think about the relationship between blue- and white-collar work. Write an essay in which you compare the particular rules, scripts, roles, and norms that teach us how to think about each of these two categories. How is each type of work typically defined? What tasks, skills, or abilities are we told each conventionally involves? And, perhaps most important, how are we taught to value these types of work differently? In your view, are these value distinctions fair? Accurate? How or how not?
Explanation Part in Your Intro
Write an essay in which you compare the particular rules, scripts, roles, and norms that teach us how to think about each of these two categories. How is each type of work typically defined? What tasks, skills, or abilities are we told each conventionally involves? And, perhaps most important, how are we taught to value these types of work differently?
Argument Part in Your Thesis
In your view, are these value distinctions fair? Accurate? How or how not?
In-Class Exercise: Write the first paragraph, which contains your thesis, as a sample response to the above prompt.
“Everything You’ve Heard about Failing Schools Is Wrong” by Kristina Rizga (252)
One. How is Maria denigrated at school?
Classmates call her derogatory names and stigmatize her because of her lack of English skills.
A lack of English speaking and writing makes her an outsider, La Otra. She's not a member of the tribe. The tribalists won't accept her because her lack of English skills suggest she's not a member of the privileged club.
Her math teacher addresses Maria and the other students as dummies. This creates a stigma or a permanent dark cloud over the person.
We could argue it is criminal for a math teacher to stigmatize Maria and others because lowered expectations have harmful (deleterious) effects on students.
Patronization
In the administrative office a middle-aged woman who thinks she’s being sympathetic tells Maria that she shouldn’t worry about struggling in high school since “Latinas usually don’t finish high school. . . . They go to work or raise kids.”
We have lowered expectations and racism ushering a girl into the lower classes.
Two. What is the source of Maria’s academic frustration?
She begins to do well in high school; however, her state exams for going to college are too low. These are standardized tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.
NCLB was based on good intentions: to raise expectations for all students, especially disadvantaged ones.
Each state spends over a billion dollars on standardized testing, which comes to about $65 a student. This is a huge money grab for companies who want to be part of the test.
NCLB was supposed to be the savior, offering concrete metrics to measure student performance in the face of wishy-washy bureaucrats, and it was championed in a movie Waiting for Superman. Many have dismissed this film as propaganda for charter schools as we read in The Washington Post.
Three. What is Rizga’s thesis?
Rizga’s thesis or purpose is to criticize NCLB by showing the many ways it has changed instruction for the worse.
Students might know bullet points for NCLB but be ignorant of everything else; in other words, NCLB is too narrow in its instruction objectives.
The overemphasis on test performance has resulted in cheating.
There is class bias in the standardized tests so that the tests are more understood by middle and upper classes than lower classes.
There is a tendency to make the standardized test the be all and end all of education. We’ve turned it into a panacea or a cure-all when in fact its godfather Robert Glaser warns that it’s incomplete and imperfect (260).
In a school where English is the second language, NCLB scores will be lower and this will give an inaccurate metric of the school’s quality.
According to Rizga, the primary factor responsible for designating a school as "failing" is our current reliance upon standardized tests. Write an essay in which you evaluate the validity or usefulness of using standardized tests to rank the performance of schools. Do such tests offer a fair, accurate, or helpful measure of a school's performance or not? How? If you were charged with revamping the system for evaluating school performance, what kind of standardized test (if any) would you utilize? Why?
Sample Thesis:
We need to get rid of standardized tests and replace them with a variety of assignments that measure Student Learning Outcomes because ______________, ___________, _____________, and ____________________.
While I concede that standardized testing has made some educational improvements in terms of bridging the gap between performing and non-performing schools, the current practice of standardized testing must be eliminated because _____________, _____________, ______________, and __________________.
Although standardized tests are imperfect and still need fine-tuning, they are a necessary tool for improving public school education evidenced by _____________, _____________, ____________, and _______________.
Between you and (I, me), the fat cats have all the cheese while the rest of us fight for the crumbs.
Subject-pronoun agreement
A person who doesn't plan ahead finds they cannot go to the big party.
Consistent point of view
When one ponders the state of education, we can't help wonder why you are lagging in critical thinking skills and one has to ask if there need to be improvements in this regard. Therefore, a person taking a critical thinking class should be prepared when they are asked to identify logical fallacies and other elements of critical thinking.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates of food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hole of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Therefore, Malcolm X was not, contrary to what his critics said, violent or irrational. Rather, he is worthy of our admiration because he was uncompromising in his struggle to champion human rights, he was able to see the corruption of The Nation of Islam, he had the courage to denounce Elijah Muhammad, and he had the honesty to renounce his previous racist views based on skin color.
While Malcolm's critics point out Malcolm's extreme rhetoric, we cannot blame for Malcolm's extreme state of mind when we consider his extreme circumstances and the urgency of his message. In fact, what appears to be "extreme" in the life of Malcolm X was in fact an appropriate response to the racist country he found himself in. His transformation in prison, his civil rights mission to hold white America accountable for their sins, his exposing the corrupt Elijah Muhammad, and his passion for purging black Americans of their self-hatred do not define Malcolm X as "extreme" as much as they define him as virtuous evidenced by _________________, _____________, ___________________, and ________________________.
Although Malcolm X encouraged violence to champion African American rights which made him a diminished figure in the eyes of many, we must look at the totality of his mission. In fact, Malcolm X was a self-taught historian who encouraged literacy, he was a warrior against the evils of white supremacy, he was a champion for black pride, and he was a man willing to die for his courageous commitment to his convictions.
Although Malcolm X made some worthy contributions in the civil rights struggle, he was a failure as a leader because he spent too much time being devoted to the criminal Elijah Muhammad, he failed to make alliances with mainstream black leaders like Martin Luther King, and he was guilty of making racist, anti-Semitic, and misogynistic commentary.
Burrow concedes (or admits) that Malcolm was at one time a racist, but that over time, especially after he returned from Mecca, an epiphany made Malcolm renounce his racist views.
Office Hours M and W: 2:45-3:45; T and TH: 12:30-1, 3:30-4:15
Course Catalog Description for English 1A:
This course is designed to strengthen the students’ ability to read with understanding and discernment, to discuss assigned readings intelligently, and to write clearly. Emphasis will be on writing essays in which each paragraph relates to a controlling idea, has an introduction and a conclusion, and contains primary and secondary support. College-level reading material will be assigned to provide the stimulus for class discussion and writing assignments, including a required research paper.
Course Objectives:
1. Recognize and revise sentence-level grammar and usage errors.
2. Read and apply critical-thinking skills to numerous published articles and to college-level, book-length works for the purpose of writing and discussion.
3. Apply appropriate strategies in the writing process including prewriting, composing, revising, and editing techniques.
4. Compose multi-paragraph, thesis-driven essays with logical and appropriate supporting ideas, and with unity and coherence.
5. Demonstrate ability to locate and utilize a variety of academic databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scholarly websites.
6. Utilize MLA guidelines to format essays, cite sources in the texts of essays, and compile Works Cited lists.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course, students will:
1. Complete a research-based essay that has been written out of class and undergone revision. It should demonstrate the student’s ability to thoughtfully support a single thesis using analysis and synthesis.
2. Integrate multiple sources, including a book-length work and a variety of academic databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scholarly websites. Citations must be in MLA format and include a Works Cited page.
3. Demonstrate logical paragraph composition and sentence structure. The essay should have correct grammar, spelling, and word use.
Students with Disabilities:
It is the policy of the El Camino Community College District to encourage full inclusion of people with disabilities in all programs and services. Students with disabilities who believe they may need accommodations in this class should contact the campus Special Resource Center (310) 660-3295, as soon as possible. This will ensure that students are able to fully participate.
Academic Honesty and Plagiarism:
El Camino College places a high value on the integrity of its student scholars. When an instructor determines that there is evidence of dishonesty in any academic work (including, but not limited to cheating, plagiarism, or theft of exam materials), disciplinary action appropriate to the misconduct as defined in BP 5500 may be taken. A failing grade on an assignment in which academic dishonesty has occurred and suspension from class are among the disciplinary actions for academic dishonesty (AP 5520). Students with any questions about the Academic Honesty or discipline policies are encouraged to speak with their instructor in advance.
Attendance Policy: Students are expected to attend their classes regularly. Students who miss the first class meeting or who are not in regular attendance during the add period for the class may be dropped by the instructor. Students whose absences from a class exceed 10% of the scheduled class meeting times may be dropped by the instructor. However, students are responsible for dropping a class within the deadlines published in the class schedule. Students who stop attending but do not drop may receive a failing grade.
Student Resources:
Reading Success Center (East Library Basement E-36) Software and tutors are available for vocabulary development & reading comprehension.
Library Media Technology Center - LMTC (East Library Basement) Computers are available for free use. Bring your student ID # & flash drive. There’s a charge for printing.
Writing Center (H122) Computers are available for free use. Free tutoring is available for writing assignments, grammar, and vocabulary. Bring your student ID & flash drive to save work. Printing is NOT available.
Learning Resource Center - LRC (West Wing of the Library, 2nd floor) The LRC Tutorial Program offers free drop-in tutoring. For the tutoring schedule, go to www.elcamino.edu/library/lrc/tutoring .The LRC also offers individualized computer adaptive programs to help build your reading comprehension skills.
Student Health Center (Next to the Pool) The Health Center offers free medical and psychological services as well as free workshops on topics like “test anxiety.” Low cost medical testing is also available.
Special Resource Center – SRC (Southwest Wing of Student Services Building)
The SRC provides free disability services, including interpreters, testing accommodations, counseling, and adaptive computer technology.
Grading: (725 total)
Four In-Class Essays, 500 words, 75 points, 300 points total
Two typed essays 1,500 words each, 100, 200 total points
Tentative outline (approx. 3 pages) and 5-source annotated bibliography (approx. 3 pages) for Final Research Paper, approx. 1,500 words, 75 points
Final 1,500-word research paper 150 points
Attendance based on absences (no more than 2) tardies (no more than 2), participation, reading preparedness, staying off smartphones, not doing homework from other classes: Violation of attendance and class participation can result in the loss of 50-100 points.
Extra credit assignment for 70 maximum points.
Grand Point Total: 725
8,000-word total for writing assignments and in-class essays
Essays cannot be rewritten for a higher grade. However, you can earn extra credit, up to 50 points.
Late papers reduced a full grade. No late papers accepted a week past due date.
You Must Use turnitin to submit essay and bring hard copy on due date
Each essay must be submitted to www.turnitin.com where it will be checked for illegal copying/plagiarism. I cannot give credit for an essay that is not submitted to this site by the deadline.
The process is very simple; if you need help, detailed instructions are available at http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/student-quickstart-guide
You will need two pieces of information to use the site:
Class ID and Enrollment Password, which I will give you first week of class
Classroom Decorum: No smart phones can be used in class. If you’re on your smart phone and I catch you, you get a warning the first time. Second time, you must leave the class and lose 25 points. Third time, you must leave the class and lose 50 points. The above also applies to talking and doing homework from other classes.
Books You Need to Buy for This Class, Writing Assignments and Grading
Book One: Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff Book Two: Acting Out Culture, third edition, James S. Miller
Book Three: Rules for Writers, Seventh Edition, by Diana Hacker
Writing Assignment Options for 1,500-Word Typed Essay 1:
Choose One for Typed 1,500-word Essay 1 (100 points)
For all options for Typed Essay 1, your essay must have a minimum of three legitimate sources for your Works Cited page and you must use MLA format.
To read a collection of Wolff's work that spans the years is to realize that he is obsessed with the act of lying. Asked in an interview why so many of his characters lie, Wolff replied, "The world is not enough, maybe? … To lie is to say the thing that is not, so there's obviously an unhappiness with what is, a discontent." A recent outbreak of faked memoirs has set off a storm of outraged pontification about why people pass off false histories as their own, so it's satisfying to read about liars who lie for interesting reasons rather than the usual despicable ones. Wolff is, in fact, a genius at locating the truths revealed by lies—the ancient and holy tongues, you might say, the otherwise inexpressible inner realities that lies give voice to.
In a 5-page paper (1,500 words), typed and double-spaced, develop a thesis that analyzes the characters' need to lie in Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins. Address at least 4 stories in your essay. For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Option 2
In one of his darker moods, our instructor McMahon said this about the human race:
"We are a lost and sorry lot, hopelessly imprisoned by self-deception: false narratives we rely on to define our identities; tantalizing chimeras that assuage the boredom of our banal existence, and willed ignorance that prevents us from seeing the grotesqueries roiling just underneath the facade that we present to the world and to ourselves. As a result, we are crazed and deformed creatures forever lost in a world of solipsism."
In a 5-page essay (1,500 words), analyze McMahon's remarks in the context of no fewer than 4 stories from Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Option 3
Develop a cause and effect thesis that compares the theme of self-deception in Tobias Wolff’s stories and the 2013 David O. Russell film American Hustle. For your Works Cited page, you may want to consult various film reviews of the Russell’s film. Your essay should be 1,500 words.
Option 4
One camp of readers argue that Wolff's fiction is redemptive in that its characters are delivered from their delusions through life-changing epiphanies that propel them back into the world of reality and personal accountability. Another camp of readers say the epiphanies come too little too late and only serve to speak to the characters' lives, which can be defined by endless cycles of futility and as such Wolff's stories are not redemptive but nihilistic.
What camp are you in? Develop an argumentative thesis that defends your position in a 5-page essay (1,500 words). For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Typed 1,500-word Essay 2 (100 points) From Chapters 3 and 5 from Acting Out Culture
Addressing at least one assigned essay from Chapter 3, develop an argumentative thesis about “how we eat.” Or addressing at least one essay from Chapter 5, develop an argumentative thesis about “how we work.” Be sure to have a counterargument section at the end of your essay.
Final 1,500-Word Typed Essay 3 (150 points and another 750 points for the tentative outline and annotated bibliography)
Support, defend, or complicate the assertion that social media and the Internet are degrading our intellect, attention span, relationships, and empathic powers in a 1,500-word essay with a counterargument section. Be sure to address at least one essay from Chapter 6.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Reading and Writing Schedule Spring 2015
January 19 Holiday
January 21 Syllabus, requirements, grading, plagiarism, turnitin.com, Final Paper
January 26 From Our Story Begins: “The Rich Brother”; "The Other Miller"; crafting a thesis, prewriting
January 28 “Desert Breakdown,” “The Liar,” “The Deposition”; writing introductions, prewriting and thesis
February 2 “Say Yes,” “Mortals”; prewriting, thesis, Toulmin model; signal phrases
February 4 “Firelight,” “Deep Kiss”; paraphrase, summary, quotations, critical reading
February 9 In-class exam (open-book; bring blue book) 75 points
February 11 Typed 5-Page (1,500-words) Essay One is due for 100 points; Chapter 4 of Acting Out Culture 238-250; 280-287; fragments
February 16 Holiday
February 18 Chapter 4 301-314; 316-327; comma splices and run-ons
February 23 Chapter 4 252-279; pronoun errors
February 25 Chapter 4 287-301; phrases and clauses
March 2 In-class Exam 2 for 75 points (open-book; bring blue book)
March 4 Chapter 3 172-175; 178-180; essential and nonessential clauses
March 9 Chapter 3 181-187; 188-202; parallelism
March 11 Chapter 3 203-207; 210-222; dangling modifiers
March 23 Chapter 5 342-367; subordination and coordination
March 25 Chapter 5 368-387; mixed sentence structure
March 30 Chapter 5 394-414; comma rules
April 1 Typed 4-Page (1,500 words) Essay 2 Due for 100 points; Chapter 1 31-49; 52-55
April 6 Chapter 1 62-76
April 8 Chapter 2 90-93; 96-112
April 13 Chapter 2 134-149; 113-116; see online essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
April 15 In-Class Exam 3 for 75 points (open-book, bring blue book)
April 20 Chapter 6 444-452; discuss Alone Together Ted Talk
April 22 Chapter 6 453-461 (go over outline and annotated bibliography)
April 27 Chapter 6 464-483
April 29 Chapter 6 484-503; writing introduction, counterargument, and conclusion
May 4 Two-page tentative outline and two-page annotated bibliography due for 75 points consult. Students with last names that start with A-M will have the conference. All students must attend the class and work on their thesis and essay.
May 6 Two-page tentative outline and two-page annotated bibliography due for 75 points consult. Students with last names that start with N-Z will have the conference. All students must attend the class and work on their thesis and essay.
May 11 In-class Exam 4 for 75 points (open-book and bring blue book)
May 13 Final 6-Page (1,500 words) Typed Essay for 150 Points Is Due