Essay 3 for 1,400 words typed options and 3 sources: Due October 20

One. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that “Against School” and “Preparing Minds for Markets” persuasively evidence that American education is more about protecting private business interests, maintaining class bias, and asserting mass control than it is about promoting real empowerment such as critical thinking, independence, and freedom.

Two. Develop an analytical thesis that compares the themes of learned helplessness and the vicious downward spiral of poverty as they are evident in “The Consequences: Undoing Sanity” and “How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty.” Is this downward spiral convincing or an “excuse for the poverty that poor people choose”? Explain.

Three. Support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion from “Degrading to De-grading” that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon.

Four. Support, refute, or complicate the inferred lesson from bell hooks’ essay, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” that upward mobility requires a betrayal of one’s economic class and even family.

Five. In the context of “Unspeakable Conversations,” defend, refute, or complicate Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.”

Six. In the context of “Our Baby, Her Womb,” support, defend, or complicate the argument that surrogate motherhood is a moral abomination.

Seven. In the context of Kristina Rizga’s “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong,” support, refute, or complicate the assertion that standardized testing is a money-making canard sodden with incompetence, moral bankruptcy, and the very accountability it claims to exact upon teachers and students.

Eight. In the context of John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School,” support, refute, or complicate the argument that that American education is more about protecting private business interests, maintaining class bias, and asserting mass control than it is about promoting real empowerment such as critical thinking, independence, and freedom.

Nine. Compare the themes in "Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class" by Bell Hooks to H.G. Wells' short story "The Country of the Blind."

“Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” by Bell Hooks (287)

Related Essay: "The Cost of Balancing Academia and Racism"

One. What did Hook’s mother teacher about desire in the mother’s attempt to quell the appetite for unaffordable things?

Hooks felt belittled and learned to distrust her desires and bury them. The implicit message is that since she is of the lower classes she has to know her place and have no sense of entitlement. She must remain modest. She must be happy in life with life's bare minimum. She must be apologetic about her existence.

To have desires for anything above one's station in life is considered impolite.

We can only imagine what this would do to her psyche.

That would drive me crazy to want something and to develop this reflex to immediately say I don’t actually want it.

Hooks’ save-money mentality followed her into college where money had to be first considered above all else.

To be religious, from her family's point of view, is to be happy with one's lot, is to be modest, and to shun the idolatry of materialism.

Hooks' parents are making a faulty equivalence of materialistic idolatry and making a better life for oneself through higher education.

Anything that branches out of the tribe's rigid ways is looked upon as a threat to the moral order. Going to college is a threat to a lot of families who don't want to disrupt tradition and routine. Tribalistic conformity becomes the key to happiness. This theme is illustrated in a masterpiece short story "The Country of the Blind" by H.G. Wells.

During Hooks’ first year in college, she realizes a lot of her mother’s fears are rooted in class shame, the disgrace of not measuring up in the presence of “real classy people.” Sadly, we live in a society where the lower classes suffer an inferiority complex because they don't "measure up" to the higher classes.

Two. What happens to Bell Hooks in college?

She is isolated by the white girls who look at her in horror and disdain for being black and for being not rich. “Not only are you black; you’re not rich. Stay away from us, you pariah.” She becomes La Otra.

Like her childhood, Hooks was learning to be apologetic about her existence. "Sorry I don't fit in, rich girls. I'll try to stay out of the way."

Her existence becomes one of self-abnegation or self-erasure: “If I want things and if I feel overcome by loneliness, then too bad. I have to suffer. My existence is not worth these considerations. My needs mean nothing compared to these rich white girls.”

Bell Hooks sees the world as binary: The haves and the have-nots. Those who live in glorious gardens with grass and trees and those who live in the scorched weeds.

Bell Hooks connects with one white girl who like Hooks is financially challenged. She is a Czechoslovakian immigrant with modest means. The two of them together become Las Otras.

In 1978 when I was training at the gym, a 300-pound power lifter scrutinized me with piercing eyes and told me "there are only two kinds of people in the world, homeowners and renters." And then he spit behind his back before bench pressing 500 pounds like it was a feather.

Unlike Hooks, though, the Czech girl has contempt and envy for the rich white girls. She desires their riches and resents them for having what she lacks.

In contrast, Hooks’ religious upbringing taught her to be leery of excess, of pride, of loving riches for their own sake.

Three. What finally sets off Hooks’ rage toward the rich white girls?

When they perform their ritual of trashing someone’s room and it ends up being Hooks’ room, Hooks is enraged that these rich narcissists cannot consider that someone with modest finances cannot easily replace all the items that were ruined during the trashing.

The rich girls’ lack of empathy and their failure of imagination stirs Hooks’ deep loathing for them.

Adding to her contempt is Hooks’ refusal to want to be white like them and to aspire to behave like a vain privileged white girl.

Her contempt for these immature white girls compels Hooks to go to a real college, Stanford, which will test her parents’ class anxieties. Her parents will hide behind religion and say that Stanford, which is in California, is sinful.

Four. What does the essay teach us about education?

To succeed in education, we have to break the bonds with our class identity and this can be excruciating if our class identity is tied up with our parental identity.

Time and time again, we read of college students who don’t succeed until they break from their parents’ and communities’ class influences and this break is often seen as a betrayal and it results in guilt. But it is necessary.

Five. What cynical worldview does Hooks observe at Stanford?

Her white roommate, a poor girl from Orange County, believes in the religion of privilege: “Cheating was worth it. She believed the world the privileged had created was all unfair—all one big cheat; to get ahead, one had to play the game. To her, I was truly an innocent, a lamb being led to the slaughter.”

Hooks isn't prepared to play the game because playing the game means selling one's soul to the devil.

For Hooks' roommate however the only devil to worry about is being poor.

Six. What does Hooks conclude about the manner in which students must adapt to college?

Hooks writes: "Slowly, I began to understand fully that there was no place in academe for folks from working-class backgrounds who did not wish to leave the past behind. That was the price of the ticket. Poor students would be welcome at the best institutions of higher learning only if they were willing to surrender memory, to forget the past and claim the assimilated present as the only worthwhile and meaningful reality."

In other words to assimilate into the privileged, educated class, we have to embrace their language, attitude, demeanor, characteristics, body language; in other words, we have to die to our former self, disavow our past, and become a new person born in a world of privilege.

This new privilege becomes evident in the way we speak, write, and affect our body language. We develop a certain superciliousness and hauteur (uppity, proud, self-regarding expression that says, "I'm all that").

Hooks is tormented by the above fact not only because it's true, with all of its questionable moral implications, but because Hooks went through the process herself even as she questioned it. She became an "upper class intellectual."

At best when we transform from working class to privileged educated class, she writes, someone like her will suffer contradictions, having a remnant of her past identity and a new identity based on privilege.

Support, refute, or complicate the inferred lesson from bell hooks’ essay, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” that upward mobility requires a betrayal of one’s economic class and even family.

Sample Thesis

Bell Hooks convincingly shows in her personal narrative that climbing the education ladder entails a sort of betrayal of one's working class roots evidenced by _________________, _________________, ______________, and __________________.

Sample Support of Hooks

What some might call a "betrayal" in Bell Hooks' narrative is no betrayal at all. Rather, Bell Hooks takes on the arduous journey toward reasonable self-preservation and self-interest evidenced by her responsibility to be true to her intellect, her responsibility to nurture a career that matches well with her strengths, and her responsibility to steer away from those who are content with small-town tribalistic stagnation so that she can spread her wings and fly.

Sample Essay Response That Agrees with Bell Hooks

College should be a place that champions the humanitarian spirit, embracing the struggle of those who suffer under the weight of the elites, the privileged class. However, as Bell Hooks convincingly argues, college perpetuates class and sometimes racial elitism, tacitly scorning the working-class while adulating the privileged elites evidenced by the professor’s indoctrination of the students to act and be privileged, the pressures to disown one’s working-class family and community, and the rich students’ contempt for the poorer students.

Sample Essay Response That Disagrees with Bell Hooks

While I sympathize with Bell Hooks and would defend her against anyone, teacher, student, or otherwise, who would discriminate against her on the basis of her race or economic class, I find that her condemnation of the elitism she identifies at college to be misguided. The role of the college should be to teach students to lift themselves up from their lower class and into a more privileged class. That’s the point of going to college, to go from a lower station to a higher station in life. Secondly, having these ambitions doesn’t make us anti-humanitarian or contemptuous of the lower classes. We simply want to work toward a place of more privilege. That’s normal human nature that addresses the Darwinian, often brutal realities we face in this world. Bell Hooks has the luxury as someone who makes hundreds of thousand of dollars a year to decry the privileged class, but she needs to face the fact that she belongs to that privileged class and she worked hard to get there. Finally, Bell Hooks does a disservice if she doesn’t tell students from the working class the hard truth about succeeding at college, which is that to be successful we must disavow ourselves of our tribalistic past, even if it means separating ourselves from our working-class parents and community, even if our abandoning that family and community, as Bell Hooks herself did, gives us shame and guilt, because that separation is essential for becoming reborn as an empowered member of the privileged class who is now in a position to help our family in ways we never were before.

Response That Refutes the Above

The refutation of Bell Hooks under the claim that we must sell our souls to the devil in order to be successful is a grotesque absurdity misinformed by the blind ambition of class privilege, a convenient worship of Darwinian self-centeredness, and a failure to acknowledge that we can enjoy the joining the privileged ranks without disavowing our past identity, family, and community.

Response to the Above Refutation

I never claimed we should sell our soul to the devil and engage in Darwinian self-centeredness. My argument, contrary to the one misconstrued above, is that to embrace the new life of college, its ideas, its knowledge, its new identity, and yes the privileges that come with higher learning, we must go through the excruciating process of dying to our old self, the very self that was raised in our working-class homes and communities and that this process of dying and being reborn again is the very process that Bell Hooks admits to going through in order to become the success she is today.

Sentence Fragment Review

Don’t allow gerunds and participles to stand alone.

Babbling about the Presidential election.

Stuffing my mouth with cream cheese and bagels.

Examining the reasons for staying in college.

Running toward the buffet table.

Running toward the buffet table is dangerous. (gerund noun phrase)

Running toward the buffet table, Mo tripped and broke his wrist. (participle phrase modifies Mo, so it’s also called an adjective phrase)

Eating bucket-fulls of cashew and walnut pesto larded with Parmesan cheese.

Eating bucket-fulls of cashew and walnut pesto larded with Parmesan cheese can lead to a heart attack. (gerund noun phrase)

Eating bucket-fulls of cashew and walnut pesto larded with Parmesan cheese, Augustine was oblivious of his girlfriend who sat across from him at the table looking at his exhibition of gluttony with horror and disgust. (participle phrase that modifies Augustine).

Augustine dreams of eating a ricotta pound cake smothered with whipped cream and strawberries. (gerund noun phrase is the object of the sentence)

Faulty

Elliot was a vulgar philistine. Evidenced by a love of gold and sequin-encrusted toilets.

Corrected

Elliot was a vulgar philistine evidenced by a love of gold and sequin-encrusted toilets.

Don’t let prepositional phrases stand alone.

A prepositional phrase starts with a preposition.

Under the bridge, the Red Hot Chili Peppers rock star contemplated the emptiness of his life and wrote “Under the Bridge.”

In "Growing Up Tethered" by Sherry Turkle is talking about why more teens are more focused on their phones than real people.

In the above, get rid of the preposition "In."

Faulty

I enjoyed my run. In spite of your choice to abandon me and leave me to run alone in the rain. (prepositional phrase can’t stand alone)

Corrected

I enjoyed my run in spite of your choice to abandon me and leave me to run alone in the rain.

Don’t let an appositional phrase stand alone.

An appositional phrase is a the use of phrase to rename a noun.

My father, a military man, speaks in a loud, bombastic voice.

I listen to the loud voice of my father, a military man.

Faulty

I dreamed last night that I was sitting behind the wheel of a Lexus GS350. One of the greatest cars ever built.

Corrected

I dreamed last night that I was sitting behind the wheel of a Lexus GS350, one of the greatest cars ever built.

Faulty

In 1969, I swooned over my third grade classmate Patty Wilson. A pulchritudinous goddess from another planet.

Corrected

In 1969, I swooned over my third grade classmate Patty Wilson, a pulchritudinous goddess from another planet.

Don’t let an infinitive phrase stand alone. An infinitive phrase is a “to verb,” which is not a real verb.

To know me is to love me.

Faulty

Working in his lab for ten years, Dr. Kragen was obsessed with creating a new type of Greek yogurt. To see if he could create a yogurt with 100 grams of protein per cup.

Working in his lab for ten years, Dr. Kragen was obsessed with creating a new type of Greek yogurt to see if he could create a yogurt with 100 grams of protein per cup.

Don’t let an adjective clause stand alone.

An adjective clause is that or which followed by a subject and a verb.

I like cars that feel like they’ve been built with care and precision.

Spotify, which I joined last year, has kept me from spending money on iTunes.

Faulty

I spend most of my listening time on Spotify. Which costs me ten dollars a month and saves me from spending up to $100 a month on iTunes.

Corrected

I spend most of my listening time on Spotify, which costs me ten dollars a month and saves me from spending up to $100 a month on iTunes.

Faulty

People who lard their salads with candied nuts.

Corrected

People who lard their salads with candied nuts have to admit they can only eat salad if they make it taste like pecan pie.

Don’t let an adverbial clause stand alone.

An adverbial clause modifies a verb.

I like to do my kettlebell workouts when my twins are in school.

When it’s too hot to exercise, I slog through my kettlebell workouts.

Faulty

I tend to inhale gallons of rocky road chocolate chip ice cream. As a depressive reaction to “Lonely Night Saturdays.”

Corrected

I tend to inhale gallons of rocky road chocolate chip ice cream as a depressive reaction to “Lonely Night Saturdays.”

Don’t let any long phrase or clause be confused with a complete sentence.

Faulty

Although I studied herpetology and kinesiology during my stay in the Peruvian mountains while keeping warm in the hides of Alpaca and other mountain-dwelling bovine creatures.

Corrected

Although I studied herpetology and kinesiology during my stay in the Peruvian mountains while keeping warm in the hides of Alpaca and other mountain-dwelling bovine creatures, I feel I didn’t retain much information during my two-year stay there.

Find Fragments and Comma Splices

The other night I consumed a tub of Greek yogurt with peanut butter and honey so I'd have enough energy to watch a documentary about world hunger.

I wasn't really hungry, I was anxious. Whenever I get anxious; which is all the time, I eat like a demon.

Anxiety propels me to stuff my face even when I’m not hungry. The mechanical act of eating. Using my greedy hands to lift food to my mouth and then hearing my mandibles and molars crunch the food matter into mush, has a soothing effect on my anxieties—like giving a teething biscuit to a baby.

Anxiety compels me to engage in the practice of “preemptive eating.” The idea that I even though I’m not hungry in this moment, I might be “on the road” inside my car far away from nutritional resources so I had better fill up while I can. In truth, I’m not “on the road” that often evidenced by the fact that my nine-year-old car has only 33 thousand miles on the odometer. Clearly, then, my impulse for preemptive eating is indefensible.

But you see, my anxieties exaggerate the circumstances, so that I have ample food reserves in my car—cases of high-protein chocolate peanut butter bars and a case of bottled water. All that unnecessary weight in the trunk compromises my gas mileage, but my anxieties are a cruel tyrant.

Anxiety is the reason that, in spite of my hardcore kettlebell workouts, I am a good twenty pounds overweight. Being twenty pounds overweight makes me anxious, and these anxieties in turn make me want to eat more.

Contemplating this vicious cycle is making me extremely anxious.

Good food makes me anxious.

Just thinking about good food can make me so anxious I’ll obsess over it in bed, so I’ll toss and turn all night. Like a heroin addict.

When I was in my early twenties, I ate donuts that were so good I wanted to drop out of college, give up on relationships, and hole myself up in my mother’s basement. Where I’d spend the rest of my life eating donuts.

I suffer from food insomnia. Meaning that fixating at night on a certain delicious meal I once had can prevent me from falling asleep.

There’s one food in particular that keeps me up at night—chocolate brownies.

Chocolate brownies are the best delivery system for sending an explosion of chocolate into the brain’s pleasure centers. Chocolate brownies saturate my brain with so much dopamine that after eating a brownie platter it’s not safe for me to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment. When I was a kid, I took cough medicine laced with codeine, and there was a warning label on the back: “Not safe to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment.” Chocolate brownie mix should have the same warning on the back of the box.

The best brownies mix I’ve ever had are Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies from Costco. I’ve purchased the same brand from other stores, but the Costco version is the best. Costco apparently uses its special powers to have Ghirardelli make an exclusive proprietary formula that is far superior to other versions, this fact has been corroborated by conversations I’ve had with Orange County housewives.

I don’t live in Orange County, and I don’t normally have conversations with housewives. That I talked with them about the superior quality of the exclusive Costco version of Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies mix attests to the severity of my unhealthy dependence on food.

Costco does a good job of making you think about food. Before you even walk inside Costco, you smell the freshly baked cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip cookies, and cream Danish. The smell makes you run inside the store.

Chronologically speaking, I am supposed to be an adult, but like a kid I’m running toward the Costco entrance while pushing an empty shopping cart. I must be a scary sight. This 240-pound middle-aged bald guy aggressively pushing his battering ram into a giant food larder. Where he will pillage the spoils. I’m like an Old Testament warlord about to ransack a defeated city.

Pronoun Errors

Vague Pronoun Reference

Possible reference to more than one word

Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.

In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.

Reference implied but not stated

The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.

What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.

A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.

Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement

Every student must provide their own uniform.

Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.

Incorrect pronoun case

Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.

Incorrect:

Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.

Correct:

Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.

Incorrect:

Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.

Correct:

Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.

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 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 hold of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.

McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure

Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.

Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.

Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb

Faulty

For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.

Corrected

For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.

Faulty

In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.

Corrected

In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.

Faulty

Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.

Corrected

The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.

Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause

Faulty

When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.

Corrected

Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.

Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction

Faulty

Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.

Corrected

Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.

Faulty

Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.

Corrected

Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.

Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over

Faulty

In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.

Corrected

In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.

Faulty

Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.

Corrected

Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.

Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.

Faulty

We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.

Corrected

We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.

Faulty

Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.

Corrected

Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.

Faulty

Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.

Corrected

Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.

Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent

Faulty

The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.

Corrected

Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.

Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction

College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.

Faulty

Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.

Corrected

Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.

Faulty

A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.

Corrected

A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.

Faulty

The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.

Corrected

I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.

Faulty

The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.

Corrected

I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.

In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:

One. Verb after a prepositional phrase

Two. Verb after a dependent clause

Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)

Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.

Five. Faulty predication

Six: Faulty apposition

Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction

"Our Baby, Her Womb" by Arlie Russell Hoschild

One. What is a typical surrogate mom situation?

A woman hits about 40 because she's worked during that time, she has a lot of financial resources, and she realizes she's too old to bear a child, so she seeks a younger, less financially endowed woman.

The dynamic of power is someone with money buying someone's body and that body belongs to a someone of modest financial means.

An aside: Just like the documentary we saw on temporary work, whenever we're short on financial resources we find ourselves vulnerable to sacrificing our bodies to survive.

I'd rather be a surrogate mother than work in a chicken farm.

The total cost is $80,000, and this includes psychological evaluations. However, in India, the total cost is $10,000.

Two. What are the typical steps at attempting pregnancy?

First, the husband and wife have a doctor implant their embryo in a surrogate's womb.

If step one doesn't work, step two is combining the husband's sperm with a surrogate's egg (a donor egg) and implanting into another surrogate's womb.

In the case of Dr. Patel, she increases the chances of success by implanting "about five embryos at at time, aborting fetuses if they numbered more than two."

Fourth Option

In the context of “Our Baby, Her Womb,” support, defend, or complicate the argument that surrogate motherhood is a moral abomination.

Sample Thesis

A close examination of the surrogate motherhood industry reveals it to be a moral abomination evidenced by _______________, ________________, _______________, and ___________________.

Thesis That Defends Surrogacy

With the right regulations, surrogate motherhood can be a viable alternative for couples who depend on this method as way of becoming parents. We're not going to stop the business, so we should regulate it. We shouldn't deprive couples of free choice. In the free market, the transaction can be mutually beneficial.

Types of Arguments

(I've adapted these ideas from Chapter 3 of How to Write Anything by John J. Ruszkiewicz.)

Know what kind of argument you are writing:

Argument to advance a thesis:

You argue for a thesis as you champion an idea or a cause.

For example, you might argue for eating steamed vegetables three times a day and provide the many benefits of employing such a practice.

Another example would be a writer who argues that the Paleo diet is the most effective way to maintain lean muscle mass.

Another example would be for a writer to argue for water rationing and triple water bills for homeowners who go over their water threshold.

Refutation argument:

You refute an already existing argument or practice, showing point by point why the argument is weak, precarious, or even fallacious (fallacy-laden).

For example, you might refute Civil War reenactments on the grounds that they are white male fantasies based on the infantile hunger for nostalgia, the toxic Kool-Aid of White Supremacy, and the denial of moral accountability for the evils of slavery.

In your refutation, you paint Civil War reenactments as a grotesque pageantry akin to a racist Disneyworld where are all the actors are white and black history has been erased because "it would be too disturbing" to the bogus, idealized world inhabited by the emotionally-arrested aspirants of "the good old Confederate days" and their other shameless displays of morally-bankrupt tomfoolery.

Once you decide on your argument or claim, you must consider finding compelling reasons to support your claim.

Support Your Claim

Without support consisting of data, statistics, reasoning, logic, and refutations to counterarguments, your opinion exists in an abyss or a vacuum. You must develop a considered or educated opinion, which is the result of fearlessly studying the pros and cons of your subject in which you try to minimize your prejudices, biases, and other emotional baggage that might blind you from the truth.

Understand Opposing Claims and Points of View

You don't have an educated or considered opinion until you have been tested by your opponents' strongest arguments. If you can refute those arguments, then you can continue with your claim.

You will also gain credibility with your readers for showing your understanding of your opponents' views.

You will gain even more credibility when you can refute your opponents with assured insouciance rather than infantile hostility. Also choose polite insouciance over hostility as the former is a sign of intellectual superiority; the latter is a sign of juvenile fear and inexperience.

Give Appropriate Sartorial (Clothing Style) Splendor (Writing Style) to Your Arguments

Your argument is the "body" of the essay. Your writing style is the fashion or sartorial choice you make in order to "dress up" your argument and give it power, moxie, and elan (passion).

Here is the same claim dressed up differently in the following two thesis statements:

Plain

Civil War reenactments are racist gibberish that need to go once and for all.

More Dressed Up

Our moral offense to civil war reenactments rests on our understanding that the participants are engaging in nostalgia for the days when the toxic religion of white supremacy ruled the day, that the participants gleefully and childishly erase black history to the detriment of truth, and that on a larger scale, they engage in the mythical revisionism of the Confederacy narratives, hiding its barbaric practices by esteeming racist thugs as if they were innocent and venerable Disney heroes. Their sham is so morally egregious and spiritually bankrupt that to examine its folly in all its shameless variations compels us to abolish the sordid practice without equivocation.

Plain

We need to stop blaming the poor for their poverty.

More Dressed Up

The idea that the rich are wealthy because of their superior moral character and that the poor live in poverty because of their inferior moral character is a glaring absurdity rooted in willful ignorance, the blind worship of money, and an irrational fear of poverty as if it were some kind of contagious disease.

Qualify Your Thesis to Make It More Persuasive and Reasonable

Qualifiers such as the following will make your thesis more bullet-proof from your opponents:

some

most

a few

often

under certain conditions

when necessary

occasionally

Example:

Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.

Examine Your Core Assumptions

Assumptions are the principles and values upon which we base our beliefs and actions.

Claim

Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.

Assumption

Treating drug use as a medical problem that requires rehabilitation is morally superior to relying on incarceration. Some may disagree with this assumption, so the writer will have to defend her assumption at some point in her essay.

Here's a link (with grammar errors) for writing counterarguments and refutations in your essay.

Notice the link, which is from a community college, is riddled with grammar errors. We all make mistakes from time to time, especially on the Internet, but a pattern of errors is disturbing indeed.