Essay #5 Due Date: 6-5-19
You need 5 credible sources for the MLA Works Cited page in your final capstone essay.
Option One: In context of Alfie Kohn’s “From Degrading to De-Grading,” support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion 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.
Option Two: Read Bell Hooks’ “Learning in the Shadow of Race and her essay “keeping close to home.” In the context of those essays, 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?
Option Three. Read Bryan Caplan’s “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone” and write an essay that analyzes the validity of his claim. You should see this critical review in The Washington Post of Caplan’s ideas.
Option Four: See Netflix Explained episode “Why Women Are Paid Less” and develop an argumentative thesis about the “motherhood penalty.”
Option Five: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend "A Teacher's Defense of Homework" and develop an argumentative essay about giving homework to middle school and high school students.
Option Six: Read “Choosing School for My Daughter in a Segregated City” and develop an argument over what the best moral choice is for Nikole Hannah-Jones as she decides on what kind of school is best for her daughter (vs. the interests of society at large?)
Option Seven: Read “Are Private Schools Immoral?” and write an argument about the moral implications of sending one’s children to private schools. You might want to consult Netflix documentary Teach Us All and Will Stancil essay “School Segregation Is Not a Myth” for your research sources.
Option Eight: See the Netflix documentary Teach Us All and develop an argumentative thesis about school segregation. For a source, consult Will Stancil’s “School Segregation Is Not a Myth.”
Option Nine: Watch Hasan Minhaj defend affirmative action in the context of Asian Americans suing Harvard (Netflix Patriotic Act, first episode), and write a research paper that defends, refutes, or complicates Hasan's argument. Consult "The 'Whitening' of Asian Americans" in The Atlantic; "The Rise and Fall of Affirmative Action" in The New Yorker; "The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans" in The New Yorker, and a source from a book.
Option Ten. Develop a thesis that about the ritualization of violence as described by Steve Almond in his essay “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” and his video “Eager Violence of the Heart--America’s Football Obsession.” As a source, you can also consult The Professor in the Cage by Jonathan Gottschall.
Option Eleven. At many schools there is a conflict between the school’s lunch debt on one hand and the students who can’t pay for their lunches on the other. Often this conflict results in the school resorting to something called “lunch shaming.” This practice and the conflict that surrounds it are presented in Bettina Elias Siegel’s NYT essay “Shaming Children So Parents Will Pay the School Lunch Bill.” More recently, lunch shaming has been chronicled in Antonia Noori Farzan’s Washington Post article “‘It’s Embarrassing to the Kids.’” For your essay, develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the conflict between the schools’ need to recoup money to pay their lunch debt and their desperate measures to rely on shaming students to get that money. You might also consult Soraya Ferdman’s “3 things you can do to stop student lunch shaming,” Anne Schimke’s “When Denver stopped lunch-shaming, debt from unpaid meals skyrocketed,” and a chapter in a book about poverty, children, and food insecurity so you will fulfill the book research source as part of the requirements for the capstone final essay.
Option Twelve. In the context of Madeleine Pape's Guardian essay "I was sore at losing to Caster Semeyna," develop an argumentative thesis about the controversy surrounding Semeyna's desire to compete in women's sports. You can also consult the NYT editorial "The Myth of Testosterone," "The Controversy Around Caster Semeyna Explained," and "The Caster Semeyna Ruling Is a Disgrace to the Sporting World." See PBS video. Also see Vox article "'I am a woman and I am fast.'" Also see Washington Post on the debate on what is scientific or not about gender.
Option Thirteen. Justin Peters' essay "Joe Rogan's Galaxy Brain," published in liberal-slanting Slate magazine, presents an argument that Joe Rogan and his podcast guest philosopher Sam Harris are wrong to believe in giving a platform to hateful voices. In the words of Peters, Rogan and Harris are morally wrong in their following premise: "[Liberals and progressives holding] people accountable for what they say and what those words do is an offense far worse than saying cruel, racist, and divisive things in the first place. The reputational damage done to the utterer is the real social problem, not the more diffuse damage done by the utterance."
Joe Rogan defends giving a platform to Alt-Right "crackpots" while talking to comedian Neil Brennan in this podcast segment published on You Tube under title "Why Joe Rogan Has Right Wing Guests on His Show." Rogan argues that deplatforming is dangerous to American democracy and freedom of speech. This notion of deplatforming is under further controversy by democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren refusing to go on Fox News because she argues that Fox News is a "hate-for-profit racket." But others, like Megan Day in her essay "Elizabeth Warren Should Have Gone on Fox News," argue that Warren's virtue signaling is actually misguided and shows she is too interested in showcasing her moral purity than she is in engaging people with contrary ideas to her own. Even liberal MSNBC's "Morning Joe" criticizes Warren for not going into enemy territory to argue her message.
In the context of the deplatforming controversy surrounding Joe Rogan and Elizabeth Warren, develop an argumentative thesis about deplatforming: Is engaging in conversations with opposing voices a way of giving harmful platform to hate and moral bankruptcy or is this cross-cultural conversation a way of shedding light on evil and finding opportunity to persuade one's opponents?
There can be a middle-ground in this debate. For example, one could justify having Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson on their show while eschewing a complete troll like Alex Jones.
Also consider that if you have strong opinions, they should be worth fighting for. Joe Rogan, who does MMA training and fighting, is a fighter. He doesn't mind going into the belly of beast and fighting the battles of the day. Elizabeth Warren, some might argue, is a pacifist who is eager to showboat her virtue to her crowd of the already converted but too cowardly to engage in battle with the enemy. If she can't fight, is she a worthy candidate? Some say no. Others say her moral purity is precisely her appeal. Frame the debate under your own terms.
Option Fourteen. Develop an argument that supports or refutes Chris Hughes' claim that Facebook should be broken up into smaller parts as presented in his essay, "It's Time to Break Up Facebook." Consult NYT's 5 Takeaways from Hughes' editorial and Alexis Madrigal's "We Don't Want to Know How Powerful Mark Zuckerberg Is" in The Atlantic. Also watch Chris Hughes' video. For counterarguments, consult Nick Clegg's NYT's piece "Breaking Up Facebook Is Not the Answer." Also see NYT editorial "Can Facebook Be Fixed? Should It Be?"
Sample #1
Three Things Lacking in the Thesis Statements
Context: What essay are you addressing?
Argument: What is your argument and why?
Mapping components: What reasons will you provide in your body paragraphs to support your thesis?
Original
It is displeasing that the IAAF commends discrimination against women in sport and therefore needing the approval of a sports decision team of experts to demand redundant implementations evidenced by eligibility, violating women's bodley freedom, integrity, and the interconnection between testosterone and athleticism.
Revision
It is both illegal and immoral that the IAAF commends discrimination against women in sports as evident in the mishandling of Caster Semeyna who has been violated in terms of unfounded eligibility rules, bodily harm, biased gender preferences, and the failure to discern between transexual and intersexual identification.
Sample #2
Original
In the Burnout Age, oppressive homework is a necessary evil because children are living in a Darwinian environment that requires their competitive skills.
Revision
We can all agree that homework, as early as elementary school, has become oppressive, but our Darwinian environment necessitates that we continue to suffer in this regard because of such compelling forces as the demand for STEM to be competitive in the international job market, the competition from other countries that are destroying America in the sciences, the need for American public schools to be accountable for teaching core standards, and the even greater struggles that would afflict the young generation if we resorted to more lackadaisical teaching methods.
Sample #3
Original
Kids who are in middle school and high school are being extremely overworked and while it is important for them to understand the importance of hardwork it is only making things harder on them mentally and physically. In Karl Taro Greenfeld’s in “My Daughter's Homework Is Killing Me” he argues that with students like his daughter who receive lots of homework do not have time for extracurricular activities or time to spend with friends and family, that his daughter puts an enormous amount of pressure on herself to do her homework, American schools are trying to compete with other countries to have the best education system, and how teachers who have tried to be talked to about the issue of too much homework threaten to put his daughter in remedial classes. One teacher named Andrea Townsend who read Greenfeld’s article argues that giving students homework is important and beneficial, prepares her students for college, says that she puts a huge amount of effort into her classes and expects her students to do the same, and that she is help preparing them for adulthood.
Revision
Kids who are in middle school and high school are being extremely overworked and while it is important for them to understand the importance of hardwork it is only making things harder on them mentally and physically. In Karl Taro Greenfeld’s in “My Daughter's Homework Is Killing Me” he argues that with students like his daughter who receive lots of homework do not have time for extracurricular activities or time to spend with friends and family, that his daughter puts an enormous amount of pressure on herself to do her homework, American schools are trying to compete with other countries to have the best education system, and how teachers who have tried to be talked to about the issue of too much homework threaten to put his daughter in remedial classes.
However, we see that a lot of Greenfeld’s criticisms are unfounded when his complaints are rebutted convincingly by Andrea Townsend who makes the strong case that giving students homework is important and beneficial, prepares her students for college, compels teachers to maintain a high level of standards, and encourages teachers to have high expectations for their students.
Sample #4
Original
In American society Football has become a favorite pass time. There are so many NFL supporters that it has a cult like following, and some people might say that Sundays belongs to the NFL rather than the church. As Americans we glorify violence in real life, and in the entertainment industry, and there is a parallel between both. As explored in ‘’Is It Immoral to Watch Football’’ is Football a sport that promotes violence.
Revision
Football has become America’s number one pastime, raking in billions of dollars a year. There are so many NFL supporters that it has a cult-like following, and some people might say that Sundays belongs to the NFL rather than to church. Steve Almond makes a persuasive argument that patronizing football feeds a spiritual disease evidenced by the glorification of violence, misogyny-fueled domestic abuse, parasitic taxpayer trickery, exploitation of the underclass, high risk of permanent brain trauma, and narcissism-inducing jockitocracy.
Sample #5
Original
Although it is true that many teachers tend to give students unfair grades just because they have different views from them, Alfie Kohn’s arguments towards the idea of ending grading systems are not convincing enough. On the contrary, Kohn has created a false contrast between grading and learning, to influence people to believe that grades are a problem which ruins schools and minds. While in fact, grades are a normal part of the judgment process, and judgement is how we survive. His arguments are a mess of oversimplification, awful fallacies, and sloppy thinking. In other words, Kohn’s idea is simply a fantasy which can never defeat the reality.
Revision
Although it is true that many teachers tend to give students unfair grades just because they have different views from them, Alfie Kohn’s arguments towards the idea of ending grading systems are not convincing enough.
Kohn’s ludicrous proposal is based on the false contrast between grading and learning, the misguided demonization of holding students to grading standards and accountability, the failure to see that matriculating through school without any judgment and accountability will have disastrous effects in the real world, and the failure to acknowledge that grading is not part of some sadistic educator but a natural part of life.
Sample #6
Original
School education is probably one of the most important and significant stages in the life of every person. It does not matter what gender, race or religion you are. In the last century defenders of rights and freedoms in the United States have done a lot to draw attention to the government problem of school segregation. By the way, a lot was done and partly the situation began to improve from 60s to late 80s. However, in the past ten to fifteen years, the number of segregated schools has begun to grow again. This problematic can be compared with a sleeping volcano that had been dozing for a long time, and now it is again awakening and gradually begins to spew smoke, ash and red-hot lava.
Will Stancil, who wrote the article "School Segregation is not a Myth" mentions the process of school segregation and indicates the society needs to pay attention to this phenomenon. Like any phenomenon occurring in nature, it requires a scientific approach to study the reasons for which it arises and consequences which it affects on society as well.
Revised
The social injustice of school segregation began to improve from 60s to late 80s. However, in the past ten to fifteen years, the number of segregated schools has begun to grow again. We must implement aggressive measures to reverse school segregation because this problem is like a sleeping volcano that had been dozing for a long time, and now it is again awakening and gradually begins to spew smoke, ash and red-hot lava. Unabated, this volcano will manifest in disastrous ways, including _____________________, __________________, _______________________, and ________________________.
Sample #7
Original
Nevertheless, besides presenting opinions disguised as data, Caplan’s argument has some grave errors, his case is wrong in economics or equality, and while college might not be for everyone, it is significant for most people.
Revised
While Caplan makes some fair criticisms of higher education, his claim that fewer should go to college doesn’t address the root of the problem, excludes too many Americans from fair opportunities, fails to address better ways to make more Americans college-ready through earlier interventions, and offers no solutions to the crises of American education.
Sample #8
Original
While the Author makes many provocative and intriguing points to whereas kids are overwhelmed and burnt out with homework, his arguments must be dismissed as inaccurate when we take into account the benefits of developing competitive skills and performance, assigning quality over quantity, preparation for future success, and teachers best education interest.
Revised
While Greenfeld makes many provocative and intriguing points that children are overwhelmed and burnt out with homework, his arguments must be dismissed as inaccurate when we take into account the benefits of developing competitive skills and performance, assigning quality over quantity, preparation for future success, and teachers having the best educational interests of their students.
Sample #9
Original
Currently middle and high school students are bombarded with loads of homework causing stress, lacking sleep and stealing their best years, their childhood.
Revised
Greenfeld makes a compelling case that middle and high school students are bombarded with loads of homework, causing stress, a lack of sleep, the theft of a normal childhood, and a homework tsunami with no empirical evidence of effective outcomes.
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