Breakthrough Writer

1A Thesis

Even though I find Bell Hooks to be a recalcitrant whiner as she ascends education on her full scholarships to Stanford, her description of the working-class struggle to survive in a bourgeois college environment are compelling and convincing when we consider the mockery these students must absorb from envious working-class friends, and loved ones' failed comprehension of the demands of matriculating through college, the necessary self-isolation to succeed in college, the inevitable growing apart and in extreme cases complete alienation between family and friends, and a defiance of family values that results in more resentment and acrimony.  

1A Agenda 5-23-18: "Trigger Warning Myth" and "Why College Rankings Are a Joke"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hanging Indent 

 

One. Check Homework #20 

Four. Final In-Class Blue Book Exam for June 4:

You can prepare for your in-class blue book exam by reading Bell Hooks’ “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” (available in your book and online as a PDF).

Here is your prompt:

In a 4-paragraph essay, develop a thesis that addresses how Bell Hooks’ race and social class conflict with her aspirations to climb the educational ladder at the college level. Do you agree with her assessment? Do you find her burden too personal to generalize to other people of color who come from a similar social class? Explain.

You can take notes at home, but you must write the exam in class on June 4th.

http://cindykopp.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/9/3/12938517/bell_hooks_shadow_of_race_and_class_.pdf

You don't need an introduction. You can simply begin with your thesis. 

Example of Thesis in Support of Hooks

Bell Hooks has written a sympathetic portrait of someone climbing the educational ladder as she must confront her own demons arising from the conflict between her race and social class with bourgeois values. This conflict results in _________________, ______________, ___________________, and ___________________. 

Example of Thesis That Partly Refutes Hooks

While Hooks is a sympathetic figure in her quest to climb the educational ladder, her expressed grief in the face of her race and social class conflicts seems overplayed when we consider ________________, ________________, __________________, and ____________________. 

 

Purdue Owl MLA Works Cited for Kindle, eBooks, PDF, Etc.

 

Essay #5 Options: Capstone Essay with 5 Sources for Works Cited Due 6-6-18.

One. 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. In other words, will students benefit from an accountability-free education? Why? Explain.

Two. 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. To rub shoulders with the privileged, do we have to "sell out," to conform to their snobbish ways, and in doing so, are we betraying our core values and turning our backs on our roots?

Three. In the context of Kristina Rizga’s “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong” (253), support, refute, or complicate the assertion that standardized testing is a money-making canard sodden with incompetence, corruption, and moral bankruptcy, and therefore must be abolished.

Four. Addressing Aaron Hanlon’s “The Trigger Warning Myth” (309) and Ferentz Lafargue’s “Welcome to the ‘Real World’” (317), develop a thesis about colleges, microaggressions, and hate speech. You can also refer to Greg Lukianoff’s and Jonathan Haidt’s online Atlantic essay, “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

Five. In the context of Frank Bruni’s “Why College Rankings Are a Joke” (296) and Ben Casselman’s “Shut Up About Harvard” (301), develop a thesis about the notion that college rankings “skew the broader debate about education.” 

This is an essay about the guilt for "playing the game" to ascend the education and economic ladder. 

Sources You Can Use for Bell Hooks Essay Option

"Keeping Close to Home"

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

"The Cost of Balancing Academia and Racism"

"One Day, Two Students" from The Washington Post (to see your dog 99)

 

Two. "Trigger Warning Myth" by Aaron Hanlon

Study Questions

One. In what ways does Hanlon argue that the influential essay "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt is misguided?

Hanlon agrees that coddling students by overplaying the trigger warnings, political correctness and microaggression card can be bad, but not as bad as the authors claim. 

Further, the essay in question, according to Hanlon, is misguided about trigger warnings in general. 

A trigger warning doesn't lead to censorship; to the contrary, a trigger warning helps professors talk more about sensitive material.

Two. How would Hanlon's course syllabus offend both social justice warriors on the Left and morality crusaders on the Right?

He goes to very extreme places in his literary works, which some would argue would cause PTSD in the snowflake students and others would say are encroaching on basic decency and morality of the student population. 

Three. What is Hanlon's defense of using a trigger warning? 

He wants everyone to be ready for some disturbing material:

trig·ger warn·ing

noun

noun: trigger warning; plural noun: trigger warnings

 

a statement at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc., alerting the reader or viewer to the fact that it contains potentially distressing material (often used to introduce a description of such content).

"there probably should be a trigger warning for people dealing with grief"

 

Four. Does Hanlon do a good job of critiquing "The Coddling of the American Mind"?

 

I read the essay, and I can say the essay does more than talk about trigger warnings. It talks about an obsession with microaggressions that makes students offended by the slightest thing to the point they suffer from being hyper sensitive. That doesn't mean that microaggressions don't exist, coming people who are ignorant, passive-aggressive, or outright belligerent and overtly racist. They do.

 

Five. What are microaggressions?

 

Here are some legit microaggressions posted on Buzzfeed. 

 

Hanlon would have been better served had he argued about microaggressions. By focusing on trigger warnings, he committed a Straw Man fallacy against the essay he critiques. 

 

Six. Does Hanlon defend his claim that irresponsible speech is not dangerous when it comes from marginalized groups. 

 

The backlash against trigger warnings is part of a larger iteration of backlash against political correctness, which tells us something important about where the public thinks the power lies. People on the margins may get press for tweeting things like “kill all white men,” and the occasional professor may be undeservedly shamed or ousted for running afoul of students with certain P.C. language expectations. In both scenarios, however, the heart of the matter is who holds the authority to choose the best (or worst) course of action. The P.C. backlash and the trigger-warning backlash hold a common fallacy: They see pushback from the margins and mistake it for threats to the most institutionally powerful.

“Kill all white people” is a despicable sentiment, but in practice it’s not white people who face the gravest threats of being gunned down by those who wield the authority to do so. Similarly, students can demand trigger warnings or sensitivity trainings, but students remain more vulnerable to institutional power than the professors who assign their grades or the administrators who adjudicate their missteps. And if there exist situations in which professors really are “terrified” by our students, and students are actually lapsing into mental distress because we’re too afraid to cross them, then the problem is much bigger than trigger warnings. The problem is mistrusting the experience and authority of professors in our roles as teachers and intellectual caregivers. If we can lose our jobs either for teaching traumatic material or for failing to warn students adequately about it, what’s really happening here isn’t that we’re ruining students by coddling them; we’re losing the authority we rely on to be sensitive to students’ anxieties without giving into them, to use techniques like trigger warnings judiciously without being forced to use them in some generalized and codified way.

A Refutation of the Idea That Students Should be Stronger and "Grin and Bear It" in the Face of Social Injustice:

Ferentz Lafargue

“The imaginary college student is a character born of someone else’s pessimism. It is an easy target, a perverse distillation of all the self-regard and self-absorption ascribed to what’s often called the millennial generation. But perhaps it goes both ways, and the reason that college stories have garnered so much attention this year is our general suspicion, within the real world, that the system no longer works.”

—Hua Hsu, “The Year of the Imaginary College Student,” The New Yorker, Dec. 31, 2015

In the work I do as a diversity advocate in higher education, I often hear a concern that some of our efforts in pursuit of equity may be doing students a disservice—that we’re not preparing them for the “real world.” The implied logic is that if students feel empowered to voice their discontent with micro-aggressions experienced on campus, then they’re not developing the thick skin necessary to deal with the slights they’ll see in the workplace, out in the “real world.” Students should “toughen up,” and we should stop “coddling” them, we’re told.

I’ve heard these sentiments expressed about Williams’ efforts to counsel students against donning offensive Halloween costumes, the distribution of a “Pronouns Matter” pamphlet last fall and in more general discussions about what constitutes a “safe space” on campus.

To be sure, the real world is full of anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism and racism. The question is: Do we prepare students to accept the world as it is, or do we prepare them to change it? Telling students either explicitly or implicitly that they should grin and bear it is the last thing one should do as an educator. Yet that’s essentially the gospel that the “wait until the real world” parishioners would have many of us adopt.

The purpose of a college experience isn’t to make students feel as if they’re in a well-insulated bubble. Just as the image of the “imaginary college student” as a video game-addicted humanities major who uses the pronoun “they” and abides by a strict gluten-free diet disregards the lived experiences of countless students, so, too, do any allusions that colleges are idyllic enclaves. It’s worth remembering that being at Williams doesn’t immediately reshape all students’ lives into concentric circles with Frosh Quad at their center.

Instead, each student has a Venn diagram-like series of circles of their families, previous neighborhoods, schools and friend groups, all bartering for space among 2,200 other students. Over the last five years, to help mitigate some of the tensions that are bound to arise from this complex configuration, staff members at the Davis Center have been leading workshops on social identity formation and facilitation as part of the spring and fall training sessions for junior advisors. These trainings are complemented by an array of events during First Days that seek to provide the entering class an introduction to the identities and perspectives they’re likely to encounter here at Williams.

Hua Hsu’s “imaginary college student” is, for a casual observer of the various controversies that have affected campuses across the country this past year, an easy explanation. It’s a caricature that allowed vast swaths of the reading public to cast college students as “absurdly thin-skinned, unduly obsessed with ‘safe spaces’ and political correctness,” as Hsu writes in The New Yorker.

Part of the reason that college students are such fraught discursive subjects is because colleges themselves are undergoing their own existential dilemmas. Is college a place for intellectual exploration? Or is it a glorified worker-training program?

We’re not immune to this debate here at Williams, and some of our students and families bear its weight more than others. Students whose families are facing financial distress often feel guilty about engaging in any pursuit that’s not alleviating their family’s hardships. The decisions these students are forced to make range from deciding whether to take time off from school to find jobs so they can better support their families to choosing majors based on projected earning expectations immediately after graduation.

Moreover, a more general national debate over the value of a college education manifests differently for individual students. For some, it’s a question of the value of college broadly or of their particular college education and experience. For others, it’s yet another variable in trying to understand how they fit into this system—and if they are worth such investment.

My colleagues and I at the Davis Center and so many of us here at Williams do our best to assure all students they are worth the efforts that they and their families are making so they can attend college.

Whether one is suspicious of the merits of college as a whole or cynical about the existence of “safe spaces,” the truth of the matter is that “coddled” college students aren’t the problem. The real culprits—on campuses and in the real world—are the persistent effects of homophobia, income inequality, misogyny, poverty, racism, sexism, white supremacy and xenophobia. When students refuse to accept discrimination on college campuses, they’re learning important lessons about how to fight it everywhere.

Ferentz Lafargue is director of the Davis Center.

Four. Addressing Aaron Hanlon’s “The Trigger Warning Myth” (309) and Ferentz Lafargue’s “Welcome to the ‘Real World’” (317), develop a thesis about colleges, microaggressions, and hate speech. You can also refer to Greg Lukianoff’s and Jonathan Haidt’s online Atlantic essay, “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

 

Sample Thesis

While some campuses have gone overboard with their social justice warrior costume resulting in hyper-sensitive students, one can make a strong case that there are legitimate microaggressions and social injustices that can, as Aaron Hanlon and Ferentz Lafargue correctly argue, be addressed in a responsible way and that address these injustices should not be cause for legit protest to be lumped together with extreme protests. To lump both together is to do a disservice to the cause of fighting for justice evidenced by _____________, _______________, __________________, and _____________________. 

 

"Why College Rankings Are a Joke"

Shortly before the newest U.S. News & World Report college rankings came out last week, I got a fresh glimpse of how ridiculous they can be — and of why panicked high school seniors and their status-conscious parents should not spend the next months obsessing over them.

I was reporting a column on how few veterans are admitted to elite colleges and stumbled across a U.S. News sub-ranking of top schools for veterans. Its irrelevance floored me. It merely mirrored the general rankings — same institutions, same order — minus the minority of prominent schools that don’t participate in certain federal education benefits for veterans.

It didn’t take into account whether there were many — or, for that matter, any — veterans on a given campus. It didn’t reflect what support for them did or didn’t exist.

It was just another way to package and peddle the overall U.S. News rankings, illustrating the extent to which they’re a marketing ploy. No wonder so many college presidents, provosts and deans of admissions express disdain for them. How sad that they participate in them nonetheless.

The rankings nourish the myth that the richest, most selective colleges have some corner on superior education; don’t adequately recognize public institutions that prioritize access and affordability; and do insufficient justice to the particular virtues of individual campuses.

Consider a school I visited this month, in conjunction with its 50th birthday: the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

At the Starbucks in the middle of campus, I met a senior majoring in film. He has the usual Hollywood dreams but more than the usual optimism about making them come true. After all, a short movie that he wrote and directed as a sophomore got a showing at the Cannes Film Festival.

Later I spoke with a renowned mathematics professor, Manil Suri, who is also the openly gay author of an acclaimed sequence of novels set in India, where he was born, and who has contributed frequently to The Times. His conversations with undergraduates range far beyond algorithms.

I slipped into the arts center, completed just two years ago, where there’s a stunning music hall with sumptuous acoustics and a theater of eye-popping technical sophistication.

I dropped in on Michael Summers, a biochemist who has done pioneering research into retroviruses and H.I.V. He said that he’d never trade his faculty position here for one elsewhere, though he has been wooed, because of U.M.B.C.’s almost unrivaled record for guiding African-American undergraduates toward doctorates and other postgraduate degrees in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math).

“We’re doing something that nobody else is doing,” Summers told me. In a conversation with another journalist years ago, he put it this way: “If you see a group of black students walking together on a college campus, your first thought might be, ‘Oh, there goes the basketball team.’ Here you think, ‘There goes the chemistry honors club, or the chess team.’ It’s just a different attitude.”

The U.M.B.C. chess team has won the national college chess championship six times over the last 13 years. But Summers’s remarks also reflect something else: In 1988, the school started the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, designed to address the paucity of minorities in STEM fields by giving generous financial aid and extensive mentorship to talented African-American students.

More than 1,100 men and women of all races have been through the program, typically going on to extraordinary careers. Summers and I chatted about one graduate we both knew, Isaac Kinde, who said no to Stanford in order to attend U.M.B.C. He recently completed a combined medical degree and doctorate at Johns Hopkins and is now at a biotech start-up.

“He has found a way to detect ovarian cancer with a Pap smear,” Summers said. “That guy is going to revolutionize health care for women.”

Four former Meyerhoff Scholars are on the faculty of Duke University’s medical school, including Damon Tweedy, who wrote the 2015 best seller “Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine.”

Duke is where Tweedy himself went to medical school, and he told me that although most of his classmates there were from colleges more selective than U.M.B.C. and families with more money than his, “I scored in the top 20 percent of my class during that first year of basic science classes, which are the toughest part of med school.” U.M.B.C. had prepared him well, not just academically but also, he said, by making him feel that he was “part of something more than just your individual attainment.”

 

He recalled that before he decided to go there, several Ivy League colleges tried to recruit him — for basketball. In contrast, he first came on to U.M.B.C.’s radar because of his aptitude for science.

More than one in four U.M.B.C. undergraduates qualifies for federal Pell grants, meant to serve low-income families. About 45 percent are white, while 18 percent are Asian-American and 16 percent are African-American.

From the ceiling of the student commons hang flags of countries from which students have come. There are more than 100. It’s a kind of kaleidoscope, and as I walked under it with Freeman Hrabowski, U.M.B.C.’s dynamic president, he stressed the school’s determination to “connect students to people different from themselves and lives different from their own.” The young men and women who ate, talked or studied at almost every one of the tables around us were a mix of colors, and I couldn’t map the room in terms of any obvious tribes or cliques.

Diversity, socioeconomic or otherwise, doesn’t factor much into U.S. News rankings, though a broadening of perspectives lies at the heart of the best education. U.M.B.C., with its acceptance rate of nearly 60 percent, places 159th among national universities.

One of the main factors in a school’s rank is how highly officials at peer institutions and secondary-school guidance counselors esteem it. But they may not know it well. They’re going by its reputation, established in no small part by previous U.S. News evaluations. A lofty rank perpetuates itself.

Another main factor is the percentage of a school’s students who graduate within six years. But this says as much about a school’s selectiveness — the proven achievement and discipline of the students it admits — as about its stewardship of them.

Schools try to game the system and score better on additional criteria that go into their rank, though Robert Morse, the chief data strategist for U.S. News, told me in an email that the methodology had evolved so that “you cannot make a meaningful rise in the rankings by tweaking one or two numbers.”

He also noted, rightly, that the copious information that U.S. News collects about the student bodies and academic tracks at hundreds of schools produces a mother lode of useful facts and figures that go far beyond the numerical rankings.

But those rankings are front and center, fostering the idea that schools are brands in competition with one another. The rankings elevate clout above learning, which isn’t as easily measured.

Intentionally or not, they fuel a frenzy to get into the most selective schools. They can’t adjust for how well certain colleges serve certain ambitions.

And they err. For the newest rankings, in what was obviously meant as an improvement, the sub-list for veterans included only schools at which 20 or more students were using G.I. Bill benefits.

But those benefits flow to dependents of veterans — their children, for example — as well as to veterans themselves. They’re a fatally flawed metric. So M.I.T. is ranked second though it knows of only four veterans among its undergraduates. (I checked.) Duke is tied for third though it knows of only two.

These colleges’ best-for-veterans triumphs still have no real relevance. There’s a larger lesson in that.   

 

"Shut Up About Harvard" 

 

Sample Successful Thesis:

Clearly, college ranking systems are a fraud based on misrepresentation of "high-performance" schools, failure to recognize small-name campuses, a pandering to rich universities, and a failure to acknowledge that some colleges fudge their numbers to appear more successful. 

Sample Failed Thesis:

Fraudulent or not, it is in a student's best interest to attend a high-ranked college because it has more cachet with employers. 

 

 

1A Agenda 5-21-18: See "One Day, Two Students": Finish Bell Hooks Essay, Standardized Testing and "Against School" Debates

One. One week from today is a holiday.

Two. Homework Check #19

Three. In 3-paragraph essay, explain why Frank Bruni in his essay "Why College Ratings Are a Joke" makes the claim that we should reject the validity of college ratings. 

Four. Final In-Class Blue Book Exam for June 4:

You can prepare for your in-class blue book exam by reading Bell Hooks’ “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” (available in your book and online as a PDF).

Here is your prompt:

In a 4-paragraph essay, develop a thesis that addresses how Bell Hooks’ race and social class conflict with her aspirations to climb the educational ladder at the college level. Do you agree with her assessment? Do you find her burden too personal to generalize to other people of color who come from a similar social class? Explain.

You can take notes at home, but you must write the exam in class on June 4th.

http://cindykopp.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/9/3/12938517/bell_hooks_shadow_of_race_and_class_.pdf

 

Purdue Owl MLA Works Cited for Kindle, eBooks, PDF, Etc.

 

Essay #5 Options: Capstone Essay with 5 Sources for Works Cited Due 6-6-18.

One. 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. In other words, will students benefit from an accountability-free education? Why? Explain.

Two. 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. To rub shoulders with the privileged, do we have to "sell out," to conform to their snobbish ways, and in doing so, are we betraying our core values and turning our backs on our roots?

Three. In the context of Kristina Rizga’s “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong” (253), support, refute, or complicate the assertion that standardized testing is a money-making canard sodden with incompetence, corruption, and moral bankruptcy, and therefore must be abolished.

Four. Addressing Aaron Hanlon’s “The Trigger Warning Myth” (309) and Ferentz Lafargue’s “Welcome to the ‘Real World’” (317), develop a thesis about colleges, microaggressions, and hate speech. You can also refer to Greg Lukianoff’s and Jonathan Haidt’s online Atlantic essay, “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

Five. In the context of Frank Bruni’s “Why College Rankings Are a Joke” (296) and Ben Casselman’s “Shut Up About Harvard” (301), develop a thesis about the notion that college rankings “skew the broader debate about education.”

 

This is an essay about the guilt for "playing the game" to ascend the education and economic ladder. 

Sources You Can Use for Bell Hooks Essay Option

"Keeping Close to Home"

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

"The Cost of Balancing Academia and Racism"

"One Day, Two Students" from The Washington Post (to see your dog 99)

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. 

Sample Outline

Paragraph 1: Write about someone you know who succeeded or failed to ascend one social class to another with the help of higher education. 250 words.

Paragraph 2: Summarize bell hooks' essay. 250 words

Paragraph 3: Thesis: Support or refute the idea that educational and social ascent requires a sort of betrayal of one's working-class roots and give 4 reasons to support your thesis. 150 words. 650 words for subtotal.

Paragraphs 4-7: 150 each for 600 words. 1,250 subtotal.

Paragraph 8: Counterargument-rebuttal. 150 words. 1,400 subtotal.

Paragraph 9: Conclusion 100 words. 1,500 total. 

 

Essay Option about Standardized Testing

In the context of one or more essays we’ve read about standardized testing, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that standardized testing is a money-making canard sodden with incompetence, corruption, and moral bankruptcy, and therefore must be abolished.

Essay Outline

Paragraph 1: Summarize John Oliver video or the essay "Why Poor Schools Can't Win at Standardized Testing." 250 words.

Paragraph 2: Thesis: Defend or refute the above assertion. 150 words.

Paragraphs: 3-7 Supporting paragraphs, 150 each, 750 and 400 is 1,150 subtotal.

Paragraph 8: Counterargument-rebuttal. 150 for 1,300 subtotal.

Paragraph 9: Conclusion 100-200 words for 1,400-1,500 total. 

"Everything You've Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong"  252

 "Sorry, I'm Not Taking the Test"

In the past three years, I interviewed hundreds of students across the nation while reporting my book, Mission High. In schools both urban and suburban, affluent and struggling, students told me that preparing for such tests cut into things that advanced their education—projects, field trips, and electives like music or computer classes.

“Testing felt like such a waste,” Alexia Garcia, a 2013 graduate of Lincoln High in Portland, Oregon, told me. “It felt really irrelevant and disconnected from what we were doing in classes.” As a senior, Garcia became a lead organizer with the Portland Student Union, a coalition with members in 12 area high schools that has been one of the most visible student groups in the national student opt-out movement. Garcia, who is now at Vassar College, told me that this year—thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement—students are also increasingly talking about how standardized testing contributes to inequality and ultimately the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

Joshua Katz, Kiana Hernandez’s math teacher, says he tests his students using a variety of challenges and quizzes, but the only ones that officially count are the fill-in-the-bubble variety. “They tell me I must have data, and they don’t consider tests data unless it comes from multiple-choice,” Katz told me.

Every nine weeks, Katz has to stop whatever his students are doing and make time for the district’s benchmark tests measuring student progress toward the big Common Core exam in the spring. (Proponents of the Common Core standards, now in place in 43 states, promised fewer tests and less of a focus on multiple-choice. But most of the teachers told me there had been no change in the number of standardized assessments. “This year was a circus—16 weeks of testing scheduled at the high school level,” Katz said.)

And University High, whose neighborhood and student population is largely middle class, didn’t bear as heavy a load of tests and drills as its poorer counterparts: One recent study found that urban high school students spend 266 percent more time taking district-level exams than their suburban counterparts. That’s in part because the stakes for these schools are so high: Test scores determine not just how much funding a school will get, but whether it will be allowed to stay open at all. In response, some administrators have been taking desperate measures, including pushing the lowest-performing students out entirely. Suspensions have been growing across the country, especially among African American and Latino students, and many researchers correlate this with pressure to raise scores. And in the 2011-12 school year, the Government Accountability Office reported that officials in 33 states confirmed at least one instance of school staff flat-out cheating.

When it comes to standardized testing, this means that schools that educate low-income students start out at a disadvantage: They are much more likely to have lower-paid and less-qualified teachers; lack college preparatory classes, books, and supplies; and offer fewer arts and sports programs. When their students don’t make it to the same “proficiency” benchmarks on yearly tests as their wealthier counterparts, politicians label them and their teachers as “failing.” And that begins a vicious cycle: Struggling students are pushed into remedial classes that zero in on what’s measured on the tests, further limiting their opportunities to learn the advanced skills they’ll need in college or the workplace.

“What I observed was egregious,” Ceresta Smith, a 26-year veteran teacher in Miami and a cofounder of United Opt Out National, told me about a predominantly African American, low-income school where she worked from 2008 to 2010. Some teachers tried to incorporate writing and intellectually engaging readings, she said, but most resorted to remediation of basic skills. “Students are reading random passages and practice picking the correct multiple-choice. It was very separate and unequal.”

The proponents of testing-based reform like to argue that—while imperfect—the current approach has been working better than any other, leading to rising graduation rates and standardized test scores. But as Stanford researcher Linda Darling-Hammond has pointed out, there’s a bit of circular logic at work here: A system singularly focused on producing better test scores leads to…better test scores. Meanwhile, though, American students’ performance compared to other nations—on tests that measure skills and knowledge more broadly—remained flat or declined between 2000 and 2012.

Most importantly, test-based accountability is failing on its most important mandate—eliminating the achievement gap between different groups of students. While racial gaps have narrowed slightly since 2001, they remain stubbornly large. The gaps in math and reading for African American and Latino students shrank far more dramatically before No Child Left Behind—when policies focused on equalizing funding and school integration, rather than on test scores. In the 1970s and ’80s, the achievement gap between black and white 13-year-olds was cut roughly in half nationwide. In the mid-’70s, the rates at which white, black, and Latino graduates attended college reached parity for the first and only time.

In the decades since, the encouraging news is that the black-white achievement gap has kept slowly shrinking. But at the same time, the gap between students from poor and affluent families has widened into a chasm, growing by 40 percent between 1985 and 2001. Sean Reardon, a Stanford professor who focuses on poverty and inequality in education, says this is not surprising—affluent families can spend more than ever on enrichment activities. He argues it’s up to government to level the playing field, by making sure low-­income students get the opportunity to succeed. But in many places, government is instead pulling back from the civil rights era’s focus on educational inequality.

Today, many students of color are once again going to segregated, high-poverty schools that struggle to offer advanced classes and attract teachers and counselors. Some 40 percent of black and Latino students now are in schools at which 90 to 100 percent of the student body are kids of color.

"How Much Testing Is Too Much"

It’s not hard to find a teacher willing to bend your ear about the volume of standardized testing in schools today, and the pressure for “test prep.” But how widespread are such concerns among educators? And what’s the on-the-ground reality they experience?

New survey data suggest these impressions about over-testing and test prep are more than just anecdotal: They are the norm for the majority of public-school teachers.

Eighty-one percent believe their students spend too much time taking tests mandated by their state or district, according to the study by the Center on Education Policy, based at George Washington University.

How much time is too much? On average, students spend 10 days taking district-mandated tests during the school year and nine days taking state-mandated tests, the teachers estimate. But underneath these averages are wide variations, from less than a week (the most popular response in both cases) to more than a month, the survey finds.

When it comes to test prep, 62 percent of teachers say they spend too much time readying students for state-mandated exams. And 51 percent feel that way about district-mandated tests, according to the nationally representative survey conducted in late 2015.

On average, teachers estimate spending 14 days preparing students for state-mandated exams, and 12 days for district-mandated exams.

Of course, not all test prep is created equal. It can mean many things, some good, some not so good. The CEP report defines it as “drilling students on specific content and skills covered on the tests, using practice tests, and/or teaching test-taking skills like time-management and pacing.”

Test prep is especially prevalent in high-poverty and medium-poverty schools, according to the survey. Thirty-six percent of teachers spend at least a month on test prep for state-mandated exams, for example. By contrast, the figure is 23 percent in low-poverty schools.

The report cautions that its line of questioning was not meant to imply that “all test prep activities are an ineffective use of time — if the activities are helping students master the knowledge and skills in the standards they can be useful.”

Meanwhile, this spring the teacher-advocacy group Teach Plus issued a report on test prep, drawing on survey data from educators in the Teach Plus network. It even created a “typology” of 17 common test-prep activities, based on information gathered through focus groups with teachers. Some activities are valued by educators, some not, according to the report.

Among the “highly valued” activities: developing students’ computer skills; workshops to improve students’ writing with evidence; and helping them use dictionaries, calculators, and other tools on assessments.

Activities not finding favor included test-taking strategies, taking students to motivational pep rallies, and administering predictive tests.

As with the CEP report, the Teach Plus survey finds an overall negative tilt toward the amount of time for test prep. Fifty-seven percent of teachers surveyed say they spend “too much” time on test prep, compared with 43 percent who say it is “about right” or “too little.” (The survey is not nationally representative of educators.)

But it also finds that the attitude of teachers is influenced by the conditions they face. For example, teachers are more favorable toward test prep when they have leeway to select the kinds of activities they believe would be most “appropriate and valuable,” and when the tests align with the curriculum.

“Most people think of test prep as one monolithic iceberg of time, not valued by teachers and detrimental to instruction,” the report says. “But teachers use ‘test prep’ to refer to lots of different things.”

"Race and the Standardized Testing Wars"

Many educators and parents say the tests have forced schools with low scores to focus all their attention on basic reading and math skills, to the detriment of subjects like science and social studies, let alone art. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools were rated based on their test scores and those that did not improve could eventually be closed. (The reauthorized law passed last year gives states more leeway in rating schools and handling those that do not meet targets.)

Some also say the tests have led to excessive use of discipline.

“There are schools where you don’t get a class trip until after the test,” said José Luis Vilson, a middle schoolteacher in New York City and the author of “This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education.”

“There are places where students just feel like it’s a jail,” he added. “Testing often exacerbates that, to the point that it doesn’t feel like you’re going to school to learn — you’re just going to take a test.”

In a rap video produced by the Baltimore Algebra Project, the youth advocacy group that organized the student protest this month, one singer lamented: “They really using this test to tell what I’m-a be/They probably want me in jail or probably in the streets.”

Pro-testing educators say they are listening closely to the calls by black and Hispanic parents and students for a richer educational experience, although some point out that the era before standardized testing was hardly better.

 

 

“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.

I have a Turkish friend who complained that Americans thought he was stupid because of his accent, as if an accent, or not, is a sign of intelligence. 

The real issue isn't intelligence. An accent presses the buttons of the close-minded tribalist who's afraid of Los Otros. 

Therefore, a lack of English speaking and writing makes student in the essay an outsider, La Otra. She's not a member of the tribe. The tribalists (people who only accept their "own kind") 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.

Nothing like having a teacher who has contempt for her students. 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.”

Nothing like having a counselor or an administrative official rely on stereotypes for an "analysis" of the student. 

We have lowered expectations and racism ushering a girl into the lower economic and social classes, and this degradation is reinforced by standardized tests that cater to the upper 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, but it actually punishes them.

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. 

 

We should also consider the profit motive of standardized testing. 

Eight Strikes Against Standardized Tests

No Profit Left Behind in Politico

 

  

 

"Why Poor Schools Can't Win at Standardized Testing"

Today's Essay Prompt:

In the context of one or more essays we’ve read about standardized testing, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that standardized testing is a money-making canard sodden with incompetence, corruption, and moral bankruptcy, and therefore must be abolished.

Essay Outline

Paragraph 1: Summarize John Oliver video or the essay "Why Poor Schools Can't Win at Standardized Testing." 250 words.

Paragraph 2: Thesis: Defend or refute the above assertion. 150 words.

Paragraphs: 3-7 Supporting paragraphs, 150 each, 750 and 400 is 1,150 subtotal.

Paragraph 8: Counterargument-rebuttal. 150 for 1,300 subtotal.

Paragraph 9: Conclusion 100-200 words for 1,400-1,500 total.

Developing Your Thesis  

A thesis statement is one sentence that articulates the central idea of your essay.  

A thesis statement is one sentence that tells readers your position or argument.  

A thesis statement often outlines your essay’s body paragraphs with mapping components.  

A thesis statement is born out of your assigned topic.  

A thesis statement can never be merely a statement of your topic. Rather, it must be the point you are making about your topic.  

Example  

Topic  

Standardized testing is part of the No Child Left Behind program.  

Argumentative Thesis Statement  

Standardized testing is a sham that we need to replace with more reliable measures of student learning outcomes.  

Standardized testing is a sham that we need to replace with more reliable measures of student learning outcomes because the evidence shows that _______________, ___________________, ________________, and _________________.  

Topic  

In high numbers, upper class educated Anglos are not vaccinating their children from measles and other diseases.  

Cause and Effect Thesis Statement  

Many upper class educated Anglos are not vaccinating their children because their pride, paranoia, and pseudo-science have intoxicated them into embracing all the myths de jour of the anti-vaccine movement.  

Argumentative Thesis Statement  

There should be harsh penalties incurred against parents who don’t vaccinate their children because ________________, ________________, _______________, and _______________________.  

Topic Is Not a Thesis

Unlike other first-world countries, the United States spends close to 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare while other countries spend closer to 10 percent.  

Cause and Effect Thesis Statement  

The United States is resigned to spending 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare because __________________, __________________, _________________, and _______________________. 

Argumentative Thesis Statement  

The United States needs to get its healthcare GDP down to about 10 percent because _______________, _______________, ______________, and ___________________. 

Topic  

The manner in which John Gatto would respond to teachers committing plagiarism in the classroom is a writing topic.  

Definition Thesis  

Reading "How We Learn," we see that plagiarism is not all kinds of imitation, but imitation  characterized by ____________, _____________, _____________, and _______________. 

Cause and Effect Thesis  

Reading "How We Learn," we can imagine John Gatto being outraged by the link between teaching hypocrisy and student boredom when we analyze ________________, __________________, ______________, and ___________________. 

A strong case can be made that John Gatto, when faced with the hypocrisy mentioned in Toor's essay, would use this hypocrisy as ammunition to support his thesis evidenced by _______________, _______________, ________________, and ___________________. 

As The Geography of Bliss teaches us however implicitly, it is imperative that we embrace strong moral cultural norms to create happiness evidenced by _________________, __________________, ________________, and ____________________.

Your Essay Must Have a Thesis Statement That Is the Engine of Your Essay's Body Paragraphs

A thesis statement is an assertion that can be demonstrated with logic, reasoning, and examples. 

We read in US & World News Report that, "Among millennials ages 25 to 32, earnings for college-degree holders are $17,500 greater than for those with high school diplomas only, a new study finds."

The above is not a thesis; it is a fact. We could use such a fact or study to support a thesis. 

A thesis from the above would look like this:

While college costs are punitive and oppressive, especially to those with modest financial means, going to college for most people is worth its steep investment when we consider gains in lifetime income, networking with diverse populations, developing literacy, and creating a legacy of higher income for future generations.  

Thesis statements or claims go under four different categories: 

One. Claims about solutions or policies: The claim argues for a certain solution or policy change: 

America's War on Drugs should be abolished and replaced with drug rehab. 

Two. Claims of cause and effect: These claims argue that a person, thing, policy or event caused another event or thing to occur. 

Social media has turned our generation into a bunch of narcissistic solipsists with limited attention spans, an inflated sense of self-importance, and a shrinking degree of empathy. 

Three. Claims of value: These claims argue how important something is on the Importance Scale and determine its proportion to other things.

Global warming poses a far greater threat to our safety than does terrorism. 

Four. Claims of definition. These claims argue that we must re-define a common and inaccurate assumption. 

In America the notion of "self-esteem," so commonly taught in schools, is in reality a cult of narcissism. While real self-esteem teaches self-confidence, discipline, and accountability, the fake American brand of self-esteem is about celebrating the low expectations of mediocrity, and this results in narcissism, vanity, and sloth. 

Essay Prompt  for John Gatto's "Against School"

In the context of John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School,” support, refute, or complicate the argument 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. 

Outline

Paragraph 1: Summarize "Against School."250 words.

Paragraph 2: Write about an experience in which you felt school betrayed all its promises of critical thinking, independence, and freedom and instead proved to be a controlling business or glorified baby-sitting service. Or if you disagree with Gatto, write about your amazing school experience. 250 words. 

Paragraph 3: Your thesis should address the above. 150 words.

Paragraphs 4-7 are your supporting paragraphs. 150 words for 4 paragraphs is 600; 1,150 subtotal.

Paragraph 8: Counterargument-rebuttal. 150 words. 1,300 (two counterargument paragraphs would give you 1,550 words total)

Paragraph 9: Conclusion 100 words for 1,400

Sample Thesis

John Taylor Gatto accurately diagnoses the corruption of school by pointing out that it is not designed to educate us to be our better selves; rather, public education is about indoctrinating us to be malleable slaves to mediocrity and conformity evidenced by _____________, _____________, _____________, and ______________. 

 

“Against School” by John Taylor Gatto (271) 

Here is the essay online. 

One. In the essay’s opening, we see that boredom is not a benign condition. Rather, boredom is a malignancy. This becomes clear when we see that boredom is a synonym for all sorts of horrible things. Give a list of things boredom stands for. 

Learned helplessness 

Resentment or mutual loathing (everyone blames everyone else for the problems at school) 

Recurring cycles of futility, which brings up Einstein’s definition of insanity 

Monotony 

Lethargy, the fatigue and enervation from being mired in a problem with no apparent solution for so long 

Lowered expectations 

Dysfunction, settling into the idea that “this is how it is” and “nothing can be done,” so I’ll just “ride this out.” 

Ennui

Acedia 

Two. Who does Gatto blame? 

All of us. We are all responsible, according to Gatto’s grandfather, to entertain and amuse ourselves. 

We have all been responsible for the apathy and tolerance to brain-dead mediocrity. 

Three. For Gatto, what is the difference between education and forced schooling? 

He argues that “mass compulsory schooling” is not associated with success if we look at history. 

The goals of “mass compulsory schooling” were defined, we read during 1905 and 1915 and they focused on the following: 

One. To make good people. 

Two. To make good citizens. 

Three. To make each person his or her personal best. 

For Gatto and H.L. Mencken who Gatto quotes, education is a form of indoctrination in which we brainwash students to fit with the system, be mediocre, and conform into the same type of safe person. This conformity is to the model of the mindless consumer who is obedient to marketing and advertising in order to insure a robust economy. 

From Gatto's essay:

Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold: 
1) To make good people. 
2) To make good citizens. 
3) To make each person his or her personal best.

These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not 

to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim.. . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else. 

We further read that schools base their operations on indoctrination, not critical thinking. 

Obedience to authority, conformity to norms, learning the “correct” social role, labeling the students according to perceived rank (tag the “unfit”; promote the desirables), pass on elite power to younger generation of the elite and to hell with the rest of them (276). 

In contrast, a teacher serves his students well if he gives them critical thinking skills: 

Learn how to think for yourself by establishing informed or considered opinions, not habitual or peer-driven ones. 

Learn how to read critically. 

Learn the difference between causation and correlation. 

Identify logical fallacies. 

Grow and flourish as you become an adult and independent thinker.

Four. What are the functions of school? 

Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

 

 

 

 

 

"The Consequences--Undoing Sanity" by Louis Uchitelle

One. Is it enough to say unemployment kills self-esteem?

No, it's not. That's an understatement. Unemployment kills the former self. We become a ghost of our former self. Stacy Brown missed her husband, the one who had a job. The new one was insufferable. 

Erin suffers from learned helplessness, the sense that he is trapped in a cycle of futility that compels him to give up on getting a job, himself, his wife, and Life. 

Studies show after three years without a job we become unemployable. 

We read that for men especially, but women also, "incapacitating illness" takes over the mind and soul. 

We further read about a close correlation between unemployment and suicide rates. 

Even in the face of being a good person and a good worker, the unemployed take a "blow" that "erodes human capital" and eats away at them like a pernicious, ongoing disease. 

You've heard the cliche: "I'll define you not how you fall off the horse, but what you do AFTER you fall off the horse."

But for the unemployed, falling off the horse is easy compared to the shame and self-loathing that follows. How do you get back on the horse again when you're hit with a "blow" to the guts?

Two. What happens to the stay-at-home dad?

Rather than connect with his family, a huge barrier separates him and his family as he withdraws into his world of shame and depression. 

We read that men don't communicate their feelings of depression well, so they just suffer a slow rot in isolation. 

The American Psychiatric Association has officially declared being laid-off has dangerous to your mental health. 

The disease spreads from the laid-off parent to the children who too are overcome by shame, depression, and low self-esteem. 

Lexicon

1. Anhedonia: you reach a state of unhappiness from which there is no return. Once you wear this quality on your sleeve, you become unemployable.
2. What’s harder on a man, begging for love or work? Work. Humiliation results in anhedonia.
3. Inertia (resistance to change); paralysis that feeds on itself.
4. Male vs. female hardwiring and their different effects in the workplace: Women are more adaptable, take more risks, and seek change. In contrast, men like routine, comfort, and stability.
5. Unemployment is referred to as the “acuteness of the blow." One person in the essay is so traumatized he cannot face the anxieties, the rejection, and the sense of insignificance all over again, so he sabotages future prospects.
6. The double hit of unemployment: The feeling of being worthless coupled with self-blame. Let's add a third hit: You lose your medical coverage. 
7. “Finessing layoffs”: The attempt to “finesse” a layoff is futile.
8. The layoff is followed by a breaking of emotional bonds with others; it has a rippling effect. The person withdraws into depression. 
9. Despondence and apathy set in.
10. Ennui (the cycle: despondence, apathy and inertia, ennui, and then anhedonia)
11. Husband’s unemployment devastates the wife: She has to carry her soul, and his, up the mountain. She can't do it forever. Eventually, she gives up. Divorce is the common result. 
12. “Going postal”
13. Unemployment spreads shame through the entire family. We read that the rippling effects spread in unforgiving fashion. Children lose confidence that they can achieve. They fear they will fail like their parents. 
14. Shell-shocked: You become so traumatized that you build a defensive wall that is worse than the problem that made you shell-shocked in the first place. (describe the student with the scowl on her face)   

Summary of Unemployment Effects

1. family withdraws from one another

2. children are "emotional sponges" and internalize and absorb their parents' emotional trauma.

3. alcoholism increases

4. divorce increases

5. suicide (murder-suicide in Wilmington)

6. long-term stigma

7. long-term low self-esteem and self-blame

8. long-term physical ailments including hypertension, ulcers, chronic fatigue, etc.

9. women reach out for social support more than men so women tend to fare better.

10. Vicious cycle of unemployment: You become depressed, which makes you less employable, which makes you more depressed, and so on and so on. "Layoffs deplete life."  

"The Mental Health Consequences of Unemployment"

Unemployment and Opioids

"Is Any Job Really Better Than No Job?"

Linda Tirado's "This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense"

Cathy Young's "Linda Tirado's Poverty Tale: Not Quite Fake, Far from Accurate"

Michelle Goldberg's "Linda Tirado Is Not a Hoax"

Essay Option

Addressing Cathy Young's online essay "Linda Tirado's Poverty Tale: Not Quite Fake, Far from Accurate," develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the charge that Tirado is guilty of committing a "poverty hoax." 

 

Top Twenty Writing Errors 

According to Andrea A. Lunsford in The St. Martin’s Handbook, Eight Edition, there are 20 writing errors that merit “The Top 20.” 

One. Wrong word: Confusing one word for another.

Here's a list of wrong word usage.  

A full-bodied red wine compliments the Pasta Pomodoro. 

Compliment is a to say something nice about someone. "You look nice in that pumpkin polo shirt. Very nice pumpkin accents."

Complement is to complete or match well with something. "This full-bodied red wine complements the spaghetti." 

The BMW salesman excepted my counteroffer of 55K for the sports sedan. 

The word should be accepted. 

Kryptonite effects Superman in such a way that he loses his powers. 

Effect is a noun. Affect is a verb, so it should be the following: 

Kryptonite affects Superman in a such a way that he loses his powers. 

Confusing their and there

There superpowers were compromised by the Gamma rays. 

We need to use the possessive plural pronoun their. 

Two. Missing comma after an introductory phrase or clause

 

Terrified of slimy foods Robert hid behind the restaurant’s dumpster. 

In spite of my aversion to rollercoasters I attended the carnival with my family. 

Three. Incomplete documentation 

Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that “Dieting is a mental illness.” 

It should read: 

Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that “Dieting is a mental illness” (277). 

Four. Vague Pronoun Reference 

Focusing on the pecs during your Monday-Wednesday-Friday workouts is a way of giving you more time to work on your quads and glutes and specializing on the way they’re used in different exercises. 

Before Jennifer screamed at Brittany, she came to the conclusion that she was justified in stealing her boyfriend. 

Five. Spelling (including homonyms, words that have same spelling but different meanings or same sound but different meanings) 

No one came forward to bare witness to the crime. 

No one came forward to bear witness to the crime. 

 

Love is a disease. It’s sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation. 

Its sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation. 

Six. Mechanical error with a quotation 

Incorrect

In his best-selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure”. 

Correct

In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure.” 

Incorrect

In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure.” (18) 

Correct

In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure” (18). 

Incorrect

“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love”, Michael Manderlin writes (22). 

Correct

“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love,” Michael Manderlin writes (22). 

Seven. Unnecessary comma 

I need to workout when at home, and while taking vacations. 

You do however use a comma if the comma is between two independent clauses: 

I need to workout at home, and when I go on vacations, I bring my yoga mat to hotels. 

I need to workout every day, because I’m addicted to the exercise-induced dopamine. 

You do however use a comma after a dependent clause beginning with because: 

Because I’m addicted to exercise-induced dopamine, I need to workout everyday. 

Peaches, that are green, taste hideous. 

The above is an example of an independent clause with a essential information or restrictive information. Not all peaches taste hideous, only green ones. The meaning of the entire sentence needs the dependent clause so there are no commas. 

However, if the clause is additional information, the clause is called nonessential or nonrestrictive, and we do use commas: 

Peaches, which are on sale at Whole Foods, are my favorite fruit. 

Mr. Manderlin, who is fond of shopping at the farmer's market on the weekends, had to stay in bed all day nursing a virulent abscess. 

Eight. Unnecessary or missing capitalization 

Some Traditional Chinese Medicines containing Ephedraremain are legal.

We only use capital letters for proper nouns, proper adjectives, first words of sentences, important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships. 

Nine. Missing word 

Incorrect

The site foreman discriminated women and promoted men with less experience. 

Correct

The site foreman discriminated against women and promoted men with less experience. 

Incorrect

Chris’ behavior becomes bizarre that his family asks for help. 

Correct

Chris’ behavior becomes so bizarre that his family asks for help. 

Ten. Faulty sentence structure 

The information which high school athletes are presented with mainly includes information on what credits needed to graduate and thinking about the college which athletes are trying to play for, and apply. 

A sentence that starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind can confuse readers. Make sure that each sentence contains a subject and a verb, that subjects and predicates make sense together, and that comparisons have clear meanings. When you join elements (such as subjects or verb phrases) with a coordinating conjunction, make sure that the elements have parallel structures. 

Incorrect

The reason I prefer yoga at home to the gym is because I prefer privacy. 

Correct

I prefer yoga at home to the gym because I enjoy more privacy at home than in a studio. 

Incorrect

In conclusion, it is essential that drug laws be strictly enforced in today’s society to stop criminals in their tracks and put them behind bars not just criminals but every day people who suffer from really bad addictions and who break the law in order to do their bad behavior so that we can live in a safer better society to protect the children and for all people who need to walk the streets without these kind of worries because without these kinds of strict laws our country would be in chaos and our country’s children will be the innocent victims.

The above is impossible to correct because even edited nothing is being said. Faulty sentence structure can only be edited if there is substance or real content. The above is saying nothing. 

11. Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element 

Marina who was the president of the club was the first to speak. 

The clause who was the president of the club does not affect the basic meaning of the sentence: Marina was the first to speak. 

A nonrestrictive element gives information not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence. Use commas to set off a nonrestrictive element. 

12. Unnecessary Shift in Verb Tense 

Priya was watching the great blue heron. Then she slips and falls into the swamp. 

Verbs that shift from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers. 

13. Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence

 

Incorrect

Meredith waited for Samir and her sister grew impatient. 

Correct

Meredith waited for Samir, and her sister grew impatient. 

Without the comma, a reader may think at first that Meredith waited for both Samir and her sister. 

A compound sentence consists of two or more parts that could each stand alone as a sentence. When the parts are joined by a coordinating conjunction, use a comma before the conjunction to indicate a pause between the two thoughts. 

14. Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it's) 

Overambitious parents can be very harmful to a childs well-being. 

The car is lying on it's side in the ditch. Its a white 2004 Passat. 

To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed's book) or an apostrophe alone (the boys' gym). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and hers. Useits to mean belong to it; use it's only when you mean it is or it has. 

15. Fused (run-on) sentence 

Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated. 

She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once. 

A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation. 

16. Comma Splice 

I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny. 

We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday. 

A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence. 

17. 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. 

18. Poorly Integrated Quotation 

A 1970s study of what makes food appetizing "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).

Corrected

In a 1970s study about what makes food appetizing, we read, "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).  

Incorrect

"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life" (Eighner 383). Finding edible food is especially tricky.

Corrected

"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life," we read in Eighner's book (383). One of the drawbacks is that finding food can be especially difficult.  

Quotations should fit smoothly into the surrounding sentence structure. They should be linked clearly to the writing around them (usually with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing. 

19. Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen 

This paper looks at fictional and real life examples. 

A compound adjective modifying a noun that follows it requires a hyphen. 

Corrected

This paper looks at fictional and real-life examples. 

Incorrect (using hyphen for a verb)

The buyers want to fix-up the house and resell it. 

A two-word verb should not be hyphenated. A compound adjective that appears before a noun needs a hyphen. However, be careful not to hyphenate two-word verbs or word groups that serve as subject complements. 

Corrected

The buyers want to fix up the house and resell it. 

20. Sentence Fragment 

No subject 

Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution. 

No complete verb 

The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer. 

Beginning with a subordinating word 

We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies. 

A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.

1A Agenda 5-18-18: "Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class" and "Against School"

Homework 19

In the context of Kristina Rizga's essay "Everything You've Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong," write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the claim that standardized testing improves education.

Essay #5 Options: Capstone Essay with 5 Sources for Works Cited Due 6-6-18.

One. 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. In other words, will students benefit from an accountability-free education? Why? Explain.

Two. 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. To rub shoulders with the privileged, do we have to "sell out," to conform to their snobbish ways, and in doing so, are we betraying our core values and turning our backs on our roots?

Three. In the context of Kristina Rizga’s “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong” (253), support, refute, or complicate the assertion that standardized testing is a money-making canard sodden with incompetence, corruption, and moral bankruptcy, and therefore must be abolished.

Four. Addressing Aaron Hanlon’s “The Trigger Warning Myth” (309) and Ferentz Lafargue’s “Welcome to the ‘Real World’” (317), develop a thesis about colleges, microaggressions, and hate speech. You can also refer to Greg Lukianoff’s and Jonathan Haidt’s online Atlantic essay, “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

Five. In the context of Frank Bruni’s “Why College Rankings Are a Joke” (296) and Ben Casselman’s “Shut Up About Harvard” (301), develop a thesis about the notion that college rankings “skew the broader debate about education.”  

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. 

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. 

 

Writing Option Simplified

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.

This is an essay about class divisions based on language,

money,

aesthetics,

values,

aspirations,

privilege,

conformity,

community and family loyalty,

pretentiousness,

affections,

and notions of authenticity.  

This is an essay about the guilt for leaving people, including loved ones, behind.

This is an essay about guilt for "not knowing your place" and dreaming for "more than what you need" and "excess." Of course, these notions are all relative. 

This is an essay about guilt for having desires of any kind, for envying what "the other people have." 

This is an essay about the guilt for "playing the game" to ascend the education and economic ladder. 

"Keeping Close to Home"

“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. 

Sample Outline

Paragraph 1: Write about someone you know who succeeded or failed to ascend one social class to another with the help of higher education. 250 words.

Paragraph 2: Summarize bell hooks' essay. 250 words

Paragraph 3: Thesis: Support or refute the idea that educational and social ascent requires a sort of betrayal of one's working-class roots and give 4 reasons to support your thesis. 150 words. 650 words for subtotal.

Paragraphs 4-7: 150 each for 600 words. 1,250 subtotal.

Paragraph 8: Counterargument-rebuttal. 150 words. 1,400 subtotal.

Paragraph 9: Conclusion 100 words. 1,500 total. 

Essay Prompt  for John Gatto's "Against School"

In the context of John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School,” support, refute, or complicate the argument 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. 

Outline

Paragraph 1: Summarize "Against School."250 words.

Paragraph 2: Write about an experience in which you felt school betrayed all its promises of critical thinking, independence, and freedom and instead proved to be a controlling business or glorified baby-sitting service. Or if you disagree with Gatto, write about your amazing school experience. 250 words. 

Paragraph 3: Your thesis should address the above. 150 words.

Paragraphs 4-7 are your supporting paragraphs. 150 words for 4 paragraphs is 600; 1,150 subtotal.

Paragraph 8: Counterargument-rebuttal. 150 words. 1,300 (two counterargument paragraphs would give you 1,550 words total)

Paragraph 9: Conclusion 100 words for 1,400

Developing Your Thesis  

A thesis statement is one sentence that articulates the central idea of your essay.  

A thesis statement is one sentence that tells readers your position or argument.  

A thesis statement often outlines your essay’s body paragraphs with mapping components.  

A thesis statement is born out of your assigned topic.  

A thesis statement can never be merely a statement of your topic. Rather, it must be the point you are making about your topic.  

Example  

Topic  

Standardized testing is part of the No Child Left Behind program.  

Argumentative Thesis Statement  

Standardized testing is a sham that we need to replace with more reliable measures of student learning outcomes.  

Standardized testing is a sham that we need to replace with more reliable measures of student learning outcomes because the evidence shows that _______________, ___________________, ________________, and _________________.  

Topic  

In high numbers, upper class educated Anglos are not vaccinating their children from measles and other diseases.  

Cause and Effect Thesis Statement  

Many upper class educated Anglos are not vaccinating their children because their pride, paranoia, and pseudo-science have intoxicated them into embracing all the myths de jour of the anti-vaccine movement.  

Argumentative Thesis Statement  

There should be harsh penalties incurred against parents who don’t vaccinate their children because ________________, ________________, _______________, and _______________________.  

Topic Is Not a Thesis

Unlike other first-world countries, the United States spends close to 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare while other countries spend closer to 10 percent.  

Cause and Effect Thesis Statement  

The United States is resigned to spending 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare because __________________, __________________, _________________, and _______________________. 

Argumentative Thesis Statement  

The United States needs to get its healthcare GDP down to about 10 percent because _______________, _______________, ______________, and ___________________. 

Topic  

The manner in which John Gatto would respond to teachers committing plagiarism in the classroom is a writing topic.  

Definition Thesis  

Reading "How We Learn," we see that plagiarism is not all kinds of imitation, but imitation  characterized by ____________, _____________, _____________, and _______________. 

Cause and Effect Thesis  

Reading "How We Learn," we can imagine John Gatto being outraged by the link between teaching hypocrisy and student boredom when we analyze ________________, __________________, ______________, and ___________________. 

A strong case can be made that John Gatto, when faced with the hypocrisy mentioned in Toor's essay, would use this hypocrisy as ammunition to support his thesis evidenced by _______________, _______________, ________________, and ___________________. 

As The Geography of Bliss teaches us however implicitly, it is imperative that we embrace strong moral cultural norms to create happiness evidenced by _________________, __________________, ________________, and ____________________.

Your Essay Must Have a Thesis Statement That Is the Engine of Your Essay's Body Paragraphs

A thesis statement is an assertion that can be demonstrated with logic, reasoning, and examples. 

We read in US & World News Report that, "Among millennials ages 25 to 32, earnings for college-degree holders are $17,500 greater than for those with high school diplomas only, a new study finds."

The above is not a thesis; it is a fact. We could use such a fact or study to support a thesis. 

A thesis from the above would look like this:

While college costs are punitive and oppressive, especially to those with modest financial means, going to college for most people is worth its steep investment when we consider gains in lifetime income, networking with diverse populations, developing literacy, and creating a legacy of higher income for future generations.  

Thesis statements or claims go under four different categories: 

One. Claims about solutions or policies: The claim argues for a certain solution or policy change: 

America's War on Drugs should be abolished and replaced with drug rehab. 

Two. Claims of cause and effect: These claims argue that a person, thing, policy or event caused another event or thing to occur. 

Social media has turned our generation into a bunch of narcissistic solipsists with limited attention spans, an inflated sense of self-importance, and a shrinking degree of empathy. 

Three. Claims of value: These claims argue how important something is on the Importance Scale and determine its proportion to other things.

Global warming poses a far greater threat to our safety than does terrorism. 

Four. Claims of definition. These claims argue that we must re-define a common and inaccurate assumption. 

In America the notion of "self-esteem," so commonly taught in schools, is in reality a cult of narcissism. While real self-esteem teaches self-confidence, discipline, and accountability, the fake American brand of self-esteem is about celebrating the low expectations of mediocrity, and this results in narcissism, vanity, and sloth. 

Sample Thesis

John Taylor Gatto accurately diagnoses the corruption of school by pointing out that it is not designed to educate us to be our better selves; rather, public education is about indoctrinating us to be malleable slaves to mediocrity and conformity evidenced by _____________, _____________, _____________, and ______________. 

 

“Against School” by John Taylor Gatto (271) 

Here is the essay online. 

One. In the essay’s opening, we see that boredom is not a benign condition. Rather, boredom is a malignancy. This becomes clear when we see that boredom is a synonym for all sorts of horrible things. Give a list of things boredom stands for. 

Learned helplessness 

Resentment or mutual loathing (everyone blames everyone else for the problems at school) 

Recurring cycles of futility, which brings up Einstein’s definition of insanity 

Monotony 

Lethargy, the fatigue and enervation from being mired in a problem with no apparent solution for so long 

Lowered expectations 

Dysfunction, settling into the idea that “this is how it is” and “nothing can be done,” so I’ll just “ride this out.” 

Ennui

Acedia 

Two. Who does Gatto blame? 

All of us. We are all responsible, according to Gatto’s grandfather, to entertain and amuse ourselves. 

We have all been responsible for the apathy and tolerance to brain-dead mediocrity. 

Three. For Gatto, what is the difference between education and forced schooling? 

He argues that “mass compulsory schooling” is not associated with success if we look at history. 

The goals of “mass compulsory schooling” were defined, we read during 1905 and 1915 and they focused on the following: 

One. To make good people. 

Two. To make good citizens. 

Three. To make each person his or her personal best. 

For Gatto and H.L. Mencken who Gatto quotes, education is a form of indoctrination in which we brainwash students to fit with the system, be mediocre, and conform into the same type of safe person. This conformity is to the model of the mindless consumer who is obedient to marketing and advertising in order to insure a robust economy. 

From Gatto's essay:

Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold: 
1) To make good people. 
2) To make good citizens. 
3) To make each person his or her personal best.

These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not 

to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim.. . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else. 

We further read that schools base their operations on indoctrination, not critical thinking. 

Obedience to authority, conformity to norms, learning the “correct” social role, labeling the students according to perceived rank (tag the “unfit”; promote the desirables), pass on elite power to younger generation of the elite and to hell with the rest of them (276). 

In contrast, a teacher serves his students well if he gives them critical thinking skills: 

Learn how to think for yourself by establishing informed or considered opinions, not habitual or peer-driven ones. 

Learn how to read critically. 

Learn the difference between causation and correlation. 

Identify logical fallacies. 

Grow and flourish as you become an adult and independent thinker.

Four. What are the functions of school? 

Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

 

 

1A Agenda 5-14-18: "From Degrading to De-Grading"; Capstone #5 Writing Essay Topic Options

 Homework #17 for 5-14-18:

Write a 3-paragraph essay that gives 3 counterarguments to Alfie Kohn's claim that grading should be abolished as he presents his argument in "From Degrading to De-Grading."

 

 

 

 

 

Collect Homework #17: Alfie Kohn

Essay #5 Options: Capstone Essay with 5 Sources for Works Cited Due 6-6-18.

One. 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. In other words, will students benefit from an accountability-free education? Why? Explain.

Two. 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. To rub shoulders with the privileged, do we have to "sell out," to conform to their snobbish ways, and in doing so, are we betraying our core values and turning our backs on our roots?

Three. In the context of Kristina Rizga’s “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong” (253), support, refute, or complicate the assertion that standardized testing is a money-making canard sodden with incompetence, corruption, and moral bankruptcy, and therefore must be abolished.

Four. Addressing Aaron Hanlon’s “The Trigger Warning Myth” (309) and Ferentz Lafargue’s “Welcome to the ‘Real World’” (317), develop a thesis about colleges, microaggressions, and hate speech. You can also refer to Greg Lukianoff’s and Jonathan Haidt’s online Atlantic essay, “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

Five. In the context of Frank Bruni’s “Why College Rankings Are a Joke” (296) and Ben Casselman’s “Shut Up About Harvard” (301), develop a thesis about the notion that college rankings “skew the broader debate about education.”  

 

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.   

Homework 18 for 5-16-18

Write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the bell hooks struggle with race and social class in her essay "Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class" as she tries to climb the education ladder. 

 

“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. 

Circular reasoning or logic embedded in the premise of the comparison, which is a fallacy. 

"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. 

 

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. 

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. 

Using Commas, Dashes, Colons, and Semicolons

 

1A Agenda 5-9-18: Peer Edit and Options for Essay #5

Essay #5 Options: Capstone Essay with 5 Sources for Works Cited Due 6-6-18.

One. 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. In other words, will students benefit from an accountability-free education? Why? Explain.

Two. 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. To rub shoulders with the privileged, do we have to "sell out," to conform to their snobbish ways, and in doing so, are we betraying our core values and turning our backs on our roots?

Three. In the context of Kristina Rizga’s “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong” (253), support, refute, or complicate the assertion that standardized testing is a money-making canard sodden with incompetence, corruption, and moral bankruptcy, and therefore must be abolished.

Four. Addressing Aaron Hanlon’s “The Trigger Warning Myth” (309) and Ferentz Lafargue’s “Welcome to the ‘Real World’” (317), develop a thesis about colleges, microaggressions, and hate speech. You can also refer to Greg Lukianoff’s and Jonathan Haidt’s online Atlantic essay, “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

Five. In the context of Frank Bruni’s “Why College Rankings Are a Joke” (296) and Ben Casselman’s “Shut Up About Harvard” (301), develop a thesis about the notion that college rankings “skew the broader debate about education.”  

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.   

1A Agenda 5-7-18: Jim Crow Review, "How Predictable Is Our Taste" and "Why We Binge-Watch Television"

 

Essay #4 Options with 3 Sources for Works Cited Due 5-14-18

One. Support, refute, or complicate Debra J. Dickerson's argument that race in America is more of a social fantasy than a reflection of objective reality. In other words, race is not an objective fact; rather, race is a social construction, an invention to justify slavery, Jim Crow, and general racism in which the privileged race creates an artificial hierarchy to justify its privilege and to justify the exploitation of those designated as being lower on the hierarchy. 

Two. Show how the Jordan Peele movie Get Out builds on Debra J. Dickerson's argument that race in America is a cruel invention designed to create a hierarchy of power, one that can be seen in all its horror in post-Obama America. For sources, see NYT review , The Guardian review, and the Variety review.

Three. Develop a thesis that argues that Confederate flags and other iconography from the Confederacy should be relegated to museums.

Four. Develop a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow.” The first Jim Crow was the southern white backlash to the end of the Civil War and the government's attempt to make amends to black people. This attempt was mostly seen in the Freedman's Bureau, which existed from 1865 to 1877. Its demise came from KKK attacks and general resentment from white southerners. Jim Crow was the insidious reinvention of slavery in the form of segregation and oppression. Consult Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America.” Also consult Michelle Alexander's New Jim Crow Ted Talk video. I also recommend the 2016 Netflix documentary 13th. 

Five. Develop an argument that addresses the notion that Tom Jacob’s essay "It's Not Easy Being Green and Manly" (78) is a feeble solution to the problem of global warming in the context of Naomi Klein’s essay "One Way Or Another, Everything Changes" (70). Here is Klein's essay is non-PDF format. 

Six. Develop a thesis that examines how cultural tastes are part of our public personality in the context of Tom Vanderbilt’s “How Predictable Is Our Taste” (142 and not online as far as I can tell), Kevin Fallon’s “Why We Binge-Watch Television” (156), and David Brooks’ “People Like Us” (525). Also see Vanderbilt's "The Secret of Taste."

Thesis Template Examples

The New Jim Crow is a failed/successful analogy to the original Jim Crow because __________________, ________________, _____________________, and __________________.

While Alexander makes a compelling critique of the mass incarceration system, her analogy between Jim Crow and incarceration as "The New Jim Crow" collapses when we consider ______________, ______________, ___________, and ______________.

While through Alexander's own admission the analogy between Jim Crow and mass incarceration as "The New Jim Crow" is not a perfect one, we can make the case that those who would dismiss her analogy entirely are in grave error when we consider these major flaws in their thinking, which include ___________, ___________, _____________, and _______________.

Michelle Alexander has written a brilliant critique of mass incarceration in which she points out its moral bankruptcy in ways that are beyond dispute. However, her book is a failure because she squandered the opportunity to point out the real causes of this moral bankruptcy, which include __________, ___________, __________, and ____________.

The assertion that Alexander's book falls short because it fails to address the deeper problems caused by free market capitalism collapses when we consider ___________, __________, ___________, and ________________.

While Alexander's book is hardly perfect and contains some serious flaws, her overall argument is compelling when we consider ____________, ____________, __________, and _______________.

 

Sample Summary Thesis (professors consider summary thesis inferior to argumentative)

Michelle Alexander does an excellent job of showing the parallels between the original Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow. First, she compares the economic exploitation in two periods of history. Second, she shows the violence and harassment, one explicit and the other implicit, inflicted upon people of color in the two types of Jim Crows. Third, she shows the similarities of the racist media campaigns designed to denigrate people of color in both periods of history. Finally, she shows the immoral economies resulting from both types of oppression.

In the above the thesis, the writer will merely summarize Michelle Alexander’s main point, put a bow on his paper, present it to McMahon, and say, “All right, Teacher, I’m all finished.” But in fact, this student hasn’t elevated his critical thinking skills to meet the class’s expectations.

What’s the solution?

The writer would be better served to defend Michelle Alexander against her opposition.

Alternative Thesis That Avoids Summary by Refuting Opponents

While Michelle Alexander’s thesis has some flaws that diminish the complexity of the narrative she offers us, her overall argument holds up in the face of her opponents’ critiques, specifically, that she fails to convince me that mass incarceration compares to the evils of Jim Crow, racism is not as virulent today is it was in the Jim Crow era, her narrative paints people of color as victims rather than as active agents of their own destiny, and her solution to reduce prison sentencing is a reckless form of leniency that would result in a crime spike.

Sample Concession Thesis Statements That Address the Analogy Between Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0:

One. Support of Michelle Alexander:

While the New Jim Crow comparison to the Old is not a perfect analogy, there are compelling similarities evidenced by ______________, _______________, _______________, and _______________________. 

Two. Refutation of Michelle Alexander:

While I concede there are some disturbing parallels between Jim Crow 1.0 and what Michelle Alexander calls the New Jim Crow, the comparison ultimately collapses when we examine _____________, ______________, _______________, and _______________________. 

Three. Example of Thesis That Refutes Michelle Alexander

While Alexander makes compelling points about the loss of human rights and the link between degradation of justice in the face of the profit motives behind the disturbing expansion of the incarceration system in the Age of the Drug War, her narrative is an incomplete, highly selective propaganda piece that fails to address the link between drug crime and theft (Proposition 47 and the spike in Los Angeles crime), the demands of many African Americans for more robust police intervention to protect their communities, and the exaggerated analogy between Jim Crow and the alleged “New Jim Crow.”

Four. Example of Thesis That Supports Michelle Alexander

While Alexander’s analogy between Jim Crow 1.0 and the War on Drugs as a form of Jim Crow 2.0 has many flaws, there are enough compelling parallels to make her thesis persuasive, especially when we focus on the profit motive behind incarceration, the racial disparities in prison sentencing, and the loss of constitutional rights as a result of the futile Drug War.

Five. Thesis That Refutes Michelle Alexander

While Alexander makes some compelling points about the need for more drug treatment and making incarceration less profit-driven, her overall narrative is largely a fiction that does a great disservice to American society by demonizing all politicians and cops as money-hungry racists, by ignoring the crimes resulting from drug use, by ignoring how black communities suffer when the police back off from those communities, and by ignoring the role of economic class, not race, as a predictor of crimes that must result in imprisonment if we are to protect law-abiding citizens.

Six. Thesis That Supports Michelle Alexander

While Alexander's argument would be better served to take a more nuanced approach in her portrayal of the police, her overall New Jim Crow narrative is persuasive in light of racial arrest patterns, race-based loss of civil liberties, and the military-like expansion of police powers.

Review: What McMahon Would Do If He Were Writing This Essay 

For paragraph 1, I'd write an introduction that does four things: 

Defines Jim Crow 

Summarizes Alexander's major points and how they add up to support her main argument

 Introduce the question: How convincing is her argument? 

Answer the question with a thesis that includes 4 mapping components that will corrospond to the supporting evidence paragraphs

 Paragraphs 2-5 would be the supporting evidence paragraphs 

Paragraphs 6-7 would be counterarguments in which I'd anticipate my opponents' disagreement with Alexander and show why those opponents are wrong and/or misguided. 

Paragraph 8, my conclusion, would sum up my supporting evidence and restate my thesis in a dramatic fashion. 

Each paragraph would be approx. 150 words for 1,200-word total. 

How to Set Up a Counterargument in Your Rebuttal Section (The Templates)

Some of my critics will dismiss my claim that . . . but they are in error when we look closely at . . . 

Some readers will 0bject to my argument that . . . However, their disagreement is misguided when we consider that . . .

Some opponents will be hostile to my claim that . . . However, their hostility is unfounded when we examine . . .

Some Alexander critics argue that . . . However, their remarks collapse under the weight of various fallacies, which include

Common Rebuttal Points to Michelle Alexander

1. "She is encouraging the victim role instead of personal responsibility."
2. "Racism is over. Obama is President!" (or was President)
3. "Do the crime; pay the price."
4. "NJC is an exaggerated and offensive analogy to slavery."
5. James Forman has a very complex critique. This is the best critique I've seen. 

 

 

 

 

 

"How Predictable Is Our Taste?" by Tom Vanderbilt

One. What's the difference between likes and dislikes?

Likes are public like music that we love while dislikes are private, reserved for our close circle of friends like ugly gossip.

We live in an age where companies like Spotify live and die on their ability to match people to their tastes.

Our tastes define our tribe, which is exactly what marketers want to they can continue to feed us our desired consumer products and keep us insulated inside our tribal bubble.

While music is easy to predict, film is much more difficult in part because we surround ourselves with music; it becomes our ubiquitous wallpaper while most of us may only see films once in a while.

Two. What is the primary challenge of musicians and marketers of music?

Exposure.

People can't like what they don't know.

People tend to stick with what they know rather than explore new music.

Pretentious people and art snobs are more posers of taste so they don't reveal what they truly like. 

Three. What is dehumanizing about predicting personalities through social media?

Complex humans defy easy categorization. But human bots are easy to put inside little boxes and be mined for their consumer spending habits.

This is a point the author failed to develop though perhaps he made the point through implication. 

"Scientists Can Predict Your Personality Based On Just One Facebook Like"

 

"Why We Binge-Watch Television" by Kevin Fallon

One. TV is better.

Two. TV is "shelter from the storm" of stimulation overload.

Three. We love the idea that to binge is to accomplish something of great magnitude and as such is "brag-worthy."

Four. We binge when we find out that others in our social media tribe are binging on something because of FOMO (fear of missing out). 

Five. TV is a more convenient way to consume popular culture than going to the movies.

What is the larger point of the two assigned essays?

Both essays speak to tribalistic, predictable behavior as touched upon by David Brooks' essay, "People Like Us."

Essay Option Six: 

Develop a thesis that examines how cultural tastes are part of our public personality in the context of Tom Vanderbilt’s “How Predictable Is Our Taste” (142 and not online as far as I can tell), Kevin Fallon’s “Why We Binge-Watch Television” (156), and David Brooks’ “People Like Us” (525). Also see Vanderbilt's "The Secret of Taste."

Sample Thesis Statements

The business of predicting our tastes in music, TV, and other popular culture enterprises is dehumanizing in several ways, including the tendency to turn us into predictable stereotypes, the tendency to compel us to willingly surrender our private information, and the tendency for us to stay trapped inside our tribalistic information bubble. 

While I concede that the business of predicting our tastes reinforces our tribalism and encourages us to give up our private data, overall our taste-prediction sites such as Spotify improve our lives by making it easier for us to enjoy what we want, helping us connect to like-minded people, and helping us discover new art we will like through analytics that are superior to other sites such as Netflix.

Work on Your Thesis for Essay #4