All Your 13 Essay Options for Essay #3:
Writing Assignment Option 1
In the context of the Media Studies essays in Chapter 13, support, refute, or complicate Turkle’s argument that technology is degrading our humanity in many ways, not the least of which is our “tethered self.” Be sure your 1,000-word essay has a counterargument section and three sources in your Works Cited page.
Writing Assignment Option 2
In the context of Sherry Turkle's essay "Growing Up Tethered" (428) and CNN's video "Being Thirteen: The Secret World of Teens," develop a cause and effect thesis that addresses the special vulnerabilities 13-year-olds face as they navigate through the morass of social media.
Writing Assignment Option 3
Are you drinking McGonigal’s Kool-Aid, believing that gamification has the potential to unite us into a common purpose, help us find meaning, and help us find the four basic human needs while promoting positive social change? Refute, support, or complicate McGonigal’s argument in a 1,000 word essay. Be sure to have a counterargument section and a Works Cited page with 3 sources minimum.
Writing Assignment Option 4
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Kozol’s essay about poor schools is just the tip of the iceberg about a great scandal in which America neglects, abuses, and exploits the poor while patting itself on the back for being the land of the free. Be sure to have a counterargument section in your 1,000-word essay and a Works Cited page with 3 sources minimum.
Writing Assignment Option 5
In the context of Beverly Daniel Tatum’s essay (374), develop a thesis that analyzes the causes and effects of “oppositional identity” as the driving force behind the “psychology of being black.”
Writing Assignment Option 6
Apply Beverly Daniel Tatum’s theory of “oppositional identity” to the racial divide evidenced during the O.J. Simpson Trial.
Writing Assignment Option 7 (adapted from book):
In a 1,000-word essay, develop an analytical thesis that compares the denigration of education that you see in Edmundson’s essay (389) and Kozol’s (347). Draw examples from your own education as you develop your thesis.
Writing Assignment Options for Bell Hooks' "Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor" (482)
Option 8
Developing Hooks’ idea that the poor are painted with negative stereotypes in various stratums of society (media, college, TV, movies, popular culture, etc.), draw insights from Hooks’ essay to analyze the way you see common social class stereotypes perpetuated in your daily life be it college, friends, family, movies, or TV. You may want to use a personal interview. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Option 9
In the context of Bell Hook's essay (482), develop an analytical thesis about the way class is perceived in the African American community or another ethnic group. How do race, culture, and history contribute to the unique attitudes minorities attach to the codes of social class?
Option 10
Defend, refute, or complicate Hooks' assertion that the poor, contrary to the perception of "progressive intellectuals from privileged classes," can lead "a rich and meaningful life." Does Hooks provide enough context in her essay to defend such a position? Why are we as Americans horrified by poverty, not just from an economic, but a psychological sense? How do Hooks' views of the poor differ from most Americans'?
Option 11
Defend, refute, or complicate Hooks' defense of the poor. Is poverty a virtue? Does poverty encourage integrity? Does poverty encourage moral values? Why? Why not? Explain.
Writing Assignment Option 12
In a 1,000-word essay, show how Kozol’s essay, “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” complements Ravitch’s argument that we need a macro view of the educational disparity crisis. Be sure to have a counterargument section and a Works Cited page with 3 sources minimum.
Writing Assignment Option 13
Write an essay that argues that oppositional identity, as defined in the essay by Beverly Daniel Tatum, is not limited to one race but is a widespread phenomenon that often transcends race and speaks more to "the tribe."
In-Class Essay for Bluebook
Based on the essay "On the Uses of Liberal Education" (389), analyze the causes behind the dumbing down of college education in America.
“On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students” by Mark Edmundson
Video Above Explains Forces of Idiocracy
These forces are lies, and these lies contribute to the dumbing down of America.
Crocs represent the easy life. If you're the smartest person in the room, get out of the room. The people in the room will make you dumb. An easy job will make you rot.
Entertainment is the apotheosis of existence. American Idol would get 150 million votes in one night.
Voyeurism evident in "reality shows" is an acceptable diversion.
A reality show star, on the basis of his TV appeal, can make a run for the President of The United States.
One. What are Edmundson’s misgivings about the teacher evaluations that are filled out by his students?
Education becomes reduced to a consumer experience with numerical metrics like a Yelp review. Yelp reviews are evident of consumer culture, not critical thinking culture.
The standards for a yelp review are lower than the standards for a New York Times book review.
A yelp review, like Rate My Professor, focuses on the consumer experience.
College should exist in the realm of critical thinking, the cultivating of informed opinions; restaurants and smoothies should be placed in consumer culture. The two worlds should not mix.
But here's the bad news. The two world have mixed, resulting in the dumbing down of education.
Students reward professors, not for intellectual rigor, but for being entertaining.
Inevitably, student evaluations reward those teachers who entertain and turn the classroom into a palatable “consumer experience.” It's human nature, for professors to get dumber and dumber in this whole process. It's human nature. If professors are disdained in the yelp review format for their intellectual rigor and rewarded for dumbing these down with tawdry entertainment, then professors will be encouraged to be dumb.
It's like the dumbing down effect on Facebook. Dumb posts get likes; serious posts are inconvenient and therefore ignored.
If a teacher who cares about his students has strict requirements evidencing his commitment to his job, his scores could be low by students who think he’s “mean.” This is especially true if the "mean" teacher is being compared to "nice" teachers.
On the other hand, an enabling vacuous professor with no standards who is “nice” could get higher ranks than the more committed instructor.
Two. Why does Edmundson argue that liberal-arts education is suffering?
Because, he claims, “American culture writ large, is, to put it crudely, ever more devoted to consumption and entertainment, to the using and using up of goods and images. For someone growing up in America now, there are few available alternatives to the cool consumer worldview.” Liberal arts trains the mind to question consumerism and its mindlessness. Therefore, liberal arts goes against the grain of consumer culture.
Society inculcates us into being content with being childish, mindless consumers. Why? Because we are opportunities, prey, if you will, for the predators of profit. Our default setting is consumer on the prowl. It’s a sort of dehumanized autopilot like people inhaling their e-cigarettes in their cars, and people using whatever gadget or product so they can avoid their real feelings.
The Internet has weakened our brains and made us more lazy and helpless than ever as we are beholden to the manipulative power of Madison Avenue. Market research teams can predict our every move.
Three. Why does Edmundson feel discouraged from having as mostly “consumer students” in his classroom?
Edmundson writes that most of his students come from the middle class. They are consumers. They rely on consumerism to get their buzz. The problem with this buzz is that after a consumer enjoys a “buzz spike,” he falls back to his low, thrumming level of existence, banal, perfunctory, and numbing.
Edmundson’s students lack passion, fire, pizazz, and moxie. They are mild-mannered, “self-contained,” and complacent. They rarely argue.
We've all been around the consumer merry-go-round so many times that we've become numbed and jaded. We enter the college classroom in this cynical benumbed state. Are we playing it cool, or are we just numb? Both?
Students have become like zombies. To hear Edmundson tell it: “They’re the progeny of one hundred cable channels and omnipresent Blockbuster outlets. TV, Marshal McLuhan famously said, is a cool medium. Those who play best on it are low-key and nonassertive; they blend in. Enthusiasm . . . looks absurd.”
We know longer have to fight to forge and shape our identity; we now buy a product that becomes a proxy for our identity. Apple computer makes us a “hipster.” BMW makes us a “player.” Mercedes makes us the “Apex Predator.”
He doesn’t blame the students for being consumers. They are raised in a consumer culture that is for the most part anti-intellectual.
College admissions are more like a marketing department, the author points out. He also observes that college departments compete against each other for students.
In order to not intimidate students, classrooms are moving away from lecture and Socratic dialogue to “active learning environments” where the students feel unchallenged and “safe.”
Four. How does GPA inflation result from the “Consumer University”?
The author contends that we make grades easier. He writes, “One of the ways we’ve tried to stay attractive is by loosening up. We grade much more softly than our colleagues in science. In English, we don’t give many Ds, or Cs for that matter.”
Five. How does society teach children to grow up and be sedated consumer students?
Edmundson writes, “Is it a surprise, then, that this generation of students—steeped in consumer culture before going off to school, treated as potent customers by the university well before their date of arrival, then pandered to from day one until the morning of the final kiss-off from Kermit or one of his kin—are inclined to see the books they read as a string of entertainments to be placidly enjoyed or languidly cast down?”
Just to remind us, what is consumer culture?
Consumer culture, the religion that entertainment and the acquisition of goods and services are the keys to our happiness, success, and salvation, becomes drilled into our brains at the expense of maturity, critical thinking, and irony.
Irony is the opposite of consumer culture.
Irony, I would contend, is the key to becoming an adult. Irony is the enjoyment of seeing life’s absurdities and contradictions. As “ironists,” we become connoisseurs of the absurd. Irony sees the absurdities behind the façade of glamour and happiness that consumer culture sells us.
Here's an example of irony: Last night I ate a tub of vanilla yogurt doused with peanut butter and honey so that I would have enough energy to watch a documentary about world hunger.
I don't know if I should laugh or cry, so I do both. That's irony.
Relationships. Can't live with them. Can't live without them. I'm laughing and crying. That's irony.
Someone steeped in irony would be repelled by mindless consumerism, with all its infantile absurdities and inevitable banalities.
An ironic person is the opposite of a consumer person. But I imagine an ironic person with lots of money could buy a Mercedes and Rolex and enjoy those items while being aware of the “irony” of the situation, possibly posting the absurdity of their luxury possessions in a social media humblebrag, an insidious form of bragging by pretending to whine or “suffer.” (“It’s so weird flying first-class to Dubai”). A true ironist knows that the humblebrag is BS, though.
Here’s another key ingredient to being an ironist: He sees the BS behind the hype whereas the consumer buys the hype and is a Kool-Aid Drinker for consumer culture’s hype.
Getting a liberal education, becoming literate, and developing critical thinking skills inevitably give us an ironic view of life and warn us of the dangers and imbecilities of becoming Consumer Kool-Aid Drinkers.
The author’s lament in this essay is that the cultural forces that make us Consumer Kool-Aid Drinkers are winning. As Edmundson writes, “The consumer ethos is winning.”
Writing Assignment Option (adapted from book):
In a 1,000-word essay, develop an analytical thesis that compares the denigration of education that you see in Edmundson’s essay and Kozol’s. Draw examples from your own education as you develop your thesis.
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Essential and Nonessential Clauses
Birthdays that land on a Monday are a bummer.
Birthdays, which can be costly, are overrated.
Circle the relative clause and indicate if it’s essential with a capital E or nonessential with a capital N. Then use commas where necessary.
One. I’m looking for a sugar substitute that doesn’t have dangerous side effects.
Two. Sugar substitutes which often contain additives can wreak havoc on the digestive and nervous system.
Three. The man who trains in the gym every day for five hours is setting himself up for a serious muscle injury.
Four. Cars that operate on small turbo engines don’t last as long as non-turbo automobiles.
Five. Tuna which contains high amounts of mercury should only be eaten once or twice a week.
Six. The store manager who took your order has been arrested for fraud.
Seven. The store manager Ron Cousins who is now seventy-five years old is contemplating retirement.
Eight. Magnus Mills’ Restraint of Beasts which is my favorite novel was runner up for the Booker Prize.
Nine. Parenthood which is a sort of priesthood for which there is no pay or appreciation raises stress and cortisol levels.
Ten. I need to find a college that specializes in my actuarial math major.
Eleven. UCLA which has a strong actuarial math program is my first choice.
Twelve. My first choice of car is the Lexus which was awarded top overall quality honors from Consumer Reports.
Thirteen. Mangoes which sometimes cause a rash on my lips and chin area are my favorite fruit.
Fourteen. A strange man whom I’ve never known came up to me and offered to give me his brand new Mercedes.
Fifteen. My girlfriend who was showing off her brand new red dress arrived two hours late to the birthday party.
Sixteen. Students who meticulously follow the MLA format rules have a greater chance at success.
Seventeen. The student who tormented himself with the thesis lesson for six hours found himself more confused than before he started.
Eighteen. There are several distinctions between an analytical and argumentative thesis which we need to familiarize ourselves with before we embark on the essay assignment.
Nineteen. The peach that has a worm burrowing through its rotted skin should probably be tossed in the garbage.
Twenty. Peaches, which I love to eat by the bucketful are on sale at the farmer’s market.
Twenty-one. Baseball which used to be America’s pastime is declining in popularity.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Comma Rules (based in part by Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers)
Commas are designed to help writers avoid confusing sentences and to clarify the logic of their sentences.
If you cook Jeff will clean the dishes. (Will you cook Jeff?)
While we were eating a rattlesnake approached us. (Were we eating a rattlesnake?)
Comma Rule 1: Use a comma before a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS) joining two independent clauses.
Rattlesnakes are high in protein, but I’d rather eat a peanut butter sandwich.
Rattlesnakes are dangerous, and the desert species are even more so.
We are a proud people, for our ancestors passed down these famous delicacies over a period of five thousand years.
The exception to rule 1 is when the two independent clauses are short:
The plane took off and we were on our way.
Comma Rule 2: Use a comma after an introductory clause or phrase.
When Jeff Henderson was in prison, he developed an appetite for reading.
In the nearby room, the TV is blaring full blast.
Tanning in the hot Hermosa Beach sun for over two hours, I realized I had better call it a day.
The exception is when the short adverb clause or phrase is short and doesn’t create the possibility of a misreading:
In no time we were at 2,800 feet.
Comma Rule 3: Use a comma between all items in a series.
Jeff Henderson found redemption through hard work, self-reinvention, and social altruism.
Finding his passion, mastering his craft, and giving back to the community were all part of Jeff Henderson’s self-reinvention.
Comma Rule 4: Use a comma between coordinate adjectives not joined with “and.” Do not use a comma between cumulative adjectives.
The adjectives below are called coordinate because they modify the noun separately:
Jeff Henderson is a passionate, articulate, wise speaker.
The adjectives above are coordinate because they can be joined with “and.” Jeff Henderson is passionate and articulate and wise.
Adjectives that do not modify the noun separately are cumulative.
Three large gray shapes moved slowly toward us.
Chocolate fudge peanut butter swirl coconut cake is divine.
Comma Rule 5: Use commas to set off nonrestrictive (nonessential) elements.
Restrictive or essential information doesn’t have a comma:
For school the students need notebooks that are college-ruled.
Jeff’s cat that just had kittens became very aggressive.
Nonrestrictive:
For school the students need college-ruled notebooks, which are on sale at the bookstore.
Jeff Henderson’s mansion, which is located in Las Vegas, has a state-of-the-art kitchen.
My youngest sister, who plays left wing on the soccer team, now lives at The Sands, a beach house near Los Angeles.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
Comments