Essay Two, drawn from the book From Inquiry to Academic Writing, Is Due October 17: Choose One:
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 1,250-word essay has a counterargument section and three sources in your Works Cited page.
My 1A students wrote on this topic, and they may quote from their papers, but they cannot re-submit their 1A papers because turnitin will correctly find them committing plagiarism. Because this topic is so urgent, we must confront it again if we wrote this in 1A and 1C, and I won't deny this topic to my 1C students who did not take my 1A class.
You have to remember the history of world religions is this:
One. Paganism
Two. Monotheism
Three. Consumerism (after the Industrial Revolution and advent of mass media)
Four. Social Media It's All About Me-Ism (only 10 years old. This is new stuff we're still processing. We're living the beginning of a new period of history.
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
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 1,250-word essay and a Works Cited page with 3 sources minimum.
Writing Assignment Option 4
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 5
Apply Beverly Daniel Tatum’s theory of “oppositional identity” to the racial divide evidenced during the O.J. Simpson Trial.
Writing Assignment Option 6 (adapted from book):
In a 1,250-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 Option 7
Developing Hooks’ idea in “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor” (482) 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 1,250 words and have 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Writing Assignment Option 8
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'?
Writing Assignment Option 9
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 10
In a 1,250-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.
For October 12: Blue Book In-Class Open-Book Essay Exam
Blue Book Exam:
Developing Hooks’ ideas in “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor” (482) that the poor are painted with negative stereotypes in various stratums of society (media, college, TV, movies, popular culture, etc.) and Jonathan Kozol's "Still Separate, Still Unequal" (347), draw insights from both essays to analyze the myths and realities of being poor. What ways do you see common social class stereotypes perpetuated in your daily life be it college, friends, family, movies, or TV? What realities, as opposed to myths about the poor, do you see in Kozol's essay? Your essay should be 500 words and needs to address Hooks' and/or Kozol's text at least 3 times throughout the essay.
Consider the following:
Too often, perhaps, Americans make poor people synonymous with stupidity, disease, helplessness, moral bankruptcy, and victimhood.
And the converse is true: Too often Americans make rich people synonymous with intelligence, virtue, inventiveness, innovation, self-reliance, moral superiority, and Darwinian advantage.
Perhaps these stereotypes speak to our greatest fears and desires and these fears and desires are codified and reinforced in consumer and media images.
Your Blue Book Essay Requirements
To reach our 6,000 word total (4 typed essays of 1,250 words and two Blue Book essays of 500 words), your Blue Book essay should be a thesis followed by four 120-word paragraphs to insure 500 words.
You can rewrite from a draft in class.
You can refer to book and notes.
You can use smartphone as a dictionary.
You should quote, paraphrase, or summarize from Hooks' and/or Kozol's essays at least 3 times.
You don't need any sources other than Hooks' and Kozols' essay.
Your essay could be checked for plagiarism if you use material that is not your own.
You should write medium to large, never small "ant" writing.
You should use a dark pen or pencil, never a light one, to save my eyes.
You can cross out words here and there.
You should double-space (skip a line) so I can write comments.
While you don't need an introduction or a conclusion, you can write an intro or a closing if writing them makes you feel better or helps your writing.
If you're happy with this assignment, you may expand it for your second typed essay.
Study Questions for Beverly Daniel Tatum's Essay on Oppositional Identity
One. Why do people gravitate toward people like themselves?
We’re hard-wired to be tribalistic and seek people who remind us of ourselves. Part of this is survival, wanting to belong and find cooperation within the group.
Part of the tendency is energy saving: It requires less energy to acclimate to people who share our values, likes and struggles.
Part of the tendency is wanting to stay in our comfort zone.
Another role is trust.
Yet another role is shared values.
And yet another role is desiring empathy from others.
In adolescence, the desire to seek “members of our tribe” intensifies as adolescents seek an identity.
Tatum quotes James Marcia’s four identity “statuses” to explain the adolescent’s quest:
Diffuse: a state of casual identity exploration and commitment
Foreclosed: a state of living with the beliefs from one’s parents
Moratorium: a state of active identity exploration with no commitment
Achieved: a state of strong personal commitment to a particular identity
Tatum argues that people of color, traditionally placed in the oppressed role, are hungrier for identity than white students, so they are going to be more likely to stick together. Additionally, young people of color are more hungry for a strong identity to counter the ugly media-driven myths and stereotypes that permeate the culture. Tatum suggests that this strong counter identity is an "oppositional identity."
Black students see themselves as “black” more intensely than whites see themselves as “white” because in part society sees black people as “black.” Too often "blackness" is demonized in the media and the popular culture. Such demonization compels a counter identity.
Tatum makes an interesting point about her 10-year-old black son David who doesn’t see himself as “black” yet, because he’s not yet the age where society says he’s “black” in terms of certain negative stereotypes, but when he’s a teenager and he has to be cautious around the police, he’ll know he’s “black.”
Perhaps One of the Essay's Greatest Truths
Our identity is partly formed by the way we perceive others perceiving us.
If we're perceived as being of certain race, then we are more inclined to identify with that race.
If we're perceived as being of a certain social or economic class, we are inclined to identify that class.
If we're perceived as nice or smart or dumb or mean, we often take on these characteristics so that perception is self-reinforcing.
In other words, the way people perceive us propels a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Two. What is “the psychology of becoming Black”?
In the first stage, “the Black child absorbs many of the beliefs and values of the dominant White culture, including the idea that it is better to be White. The stereotypes, omissions, and distortions that reinforce notions of White superiority are breathed in by Black children as well as White.”
In this first stage, called pre-encounter, “the personal and social significance of one’s racial group membership has not yet been realized, and racial identity is not yet under examination.
In the second stage, encounter, the child encounters racism and stereotypes, which forces him to be aware of “being black.” This stage occurs in late adolescence and early adulthood.
This shared struggle against racism and stereotypes becomes a glue that makes black youth stick together. Human nature dictates that we gravitate toward those who share our struggle.
Some teachers, as advanced as college, let their students know they’re “Black” by overt and covert racism. There is the infamous case of Malcolm X, a straight-A student, who was told by his junior high school teacher, that he would never amount to anything.
There are teachers today, I’ve been told, who don’t call on an African-American student when he raises his hand for an entire semester. That student is saying to himself, “The teacher is calling on the white students, but he’s not calling on me, not today, not ever. I’m black, all right.”
Three. Why does a black child gravitate more to other black children than white children?
The author Tatum gives an example of a black child being treated as a stereotype by a white teacher and then the black child tells her white friend. The white friend says, “Mr. So and So is a really nice guy. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” Even if the white friend is telling the truth, her tendency to dismiss the black friend’s concerns, makes her less appealing to another black friend who will feel the full weight of disrespect that her black friend feels.
People naturally seek empathy and other people who “get it.”
Four. What is oppositional identity?
We read that for many black adolescents, a time they are aware of “being black” in a white society, they feel repelled by “white” things and attracted to “black” things. As Tatum writes, “Certain styles of speech, dress, and music, for example, may be embraced as 'authentically Black' and becomes highly valued, while attitudes and behaviors associated with Whites are viewed with disdain. The peer group’s evaluation of what is Black and what is not can have a powerful impact on adolescent behavior.”
According to Tatum, then, oppositional identity is a coping mechanism to the stress of being racially stereotyped and denigrated in a white-dominated society.
Tatum wants to make it clear that black students sitting together in the cafeteria are not plotting mayhem or showing hostility toward others; they are simply dealing with the stress in their lives through this bonding, which is a coping mechanism to the stress Tatum describes.
Tatum adds that this oppositional identity can be self-limiting to black adolescent students because this identity, ironically enough, can be based on black stereotypes. See page 381, paragraph 29.
She adds that academic achievement, regrettably, is not of the black stereotypes embraced as part of black oppositional identity. She writes, “Being smart becomes the opposite of being cool.” Some black kids who achieve well academically are accused by other black students “as not being black.”
We further read that to be labelled as a "brainiac" will result in ostracism or rejection from one's peers.
Five. What's the best strategy for black students who are academically advanced?
Tatum says they should not reject their blackness but become an "emissary," someone who champions the racial group through achievements.
Six. What painful irony does Tatum bring up regarding education in a post-civil rights America?
During segregation, blackness was championed by furthering one's education; in our post-segregated society education is looked at as a betrayal of blackness for too many black adolescents.
Tatum emphasizes that blacks should know their history because such knowledge will show them that there is a great intellectual legacy in black America including Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Frederick Douglass. We can today look to Michael Eric Dyson, Cornel West, Jamelle Boui, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, to name a few.
Writing Assignment Option 4
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.”
Sample Thesis
Young people of all races often feel compelled to adopt an oppositional identity to prove their authenticity, their scrappiness, their rebellion against oppressive forces ("The Man"), and their loyalty to the interests of a certain group.
Counter Thesis
Adopting an oppositional identity is a fraud that results in conformity to a stupid litmus test of "authenticity," and an adolescent pose of a hollow rebel, and self-destruction.
Complicating Thesis
To call oppositional identity a fraud that is "hollow" and results in self-destruction, as we read above, is an absurd oversimplification of oppositional identity evidencing a superficial understanding of its meaning. A careful reading of Beverly Daniel Tatum shows that in fact oppositional identity is a contradictory beast, both empowering on one hand and potentially self-destructive on the other.
Refutation of Beverly Daniel Tatum's Notion of "Oppositional Identity"
The implications of "oppositional identity" in Tatum's essay are that such an identity is ultimately foolish and wrongheaded. However, the term should be changed to "adaptational identity," an identity of necessity in a country where even "good" white people with good intentions do blacks harm. People of color are not so much in "opposition" as they are about surviving by creating natural defense mechanisms as evidenced in Brit Bennett's essay "I Don't Know What to Do with Good White People."
Supporting Beverly Daniel Tatum's Notion of "Oppositional Identity"
Beverly Daniel Tatum makes a convincing case for sympathizing with people of color who, navigating in a culture saturated with implicit and explicit racism, must take on oppositional identity, a persona that proves both adaptive and maladaptive evidenced by ________________, _________________, ________________, and _______________________.
Writing Assignment Option 5
Apply Beverly Daniel Tatum’s theory of “oppositional identity” to the racial divide evidenced during the O.J. Simpson Trial.
Sample Thesis
An African-American women who was in her late teens and living in Los Angeles during the O.J. Simpson trial told me that she and her friends believed Simpson was guilty of the murders, but they did not dare say a word because their community had made it clear, both explicitly and implicitly, that to be a loyal member of the black community one had to proclaim Simpson's innocence in order to acquire justice for decades of racist police abuse. In other words, oppositional identity was about sharing a common goal, embracing a position that was not based on the trial's evidence, and repressing personal opinions that contradicted the group's common sympathies.
“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 6 (adapted from book):
In a 1,250-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.
Sample Thesis:
Kozol's and Edmundson's essays convincingly show that education is increasingly market-driven, class-biased, and consumer-friendly resulting in severe compromises to our ideals of justice, democracy, and critical thinking.
Sample Refutation Theses
Kozol's and Edmundon's misguided pieces exaggerate the forces of class bias and consumerism as a diversion from the real causes of education's demise: a culture so beholden to making money, social media popularity, and entertainment that education is held in incurable contempt that no amount of Kozol and Edmundon's scolding can cure. Seriously, McMahon, why did you make me write an essay for which there is no solution? You depress me.
Sample Thesis Refutation of the Above Refutation
I'm sorry to see that the above student is depressed, but I can see why. He has capitulated to a narrow-minded pessimism that speaks more to his dysfunctional temperament than a comprehensive understanding of history and human psychology. Yes, he is correct in observing that society is "so beholden to making money, social media popularity, and entertainment" that acquiring an in-depth education and critical thinking skills are being threatened. However if history teaches us anything, this entropy and regression, if you will, cannot continue indefinitely. Crises and catastrophes will force the human race to adapt, and it is clear these adaptations will force us to radically re-orient ourselves to consumer culture's false idols and replace those idols with core values that will help us flourish. I am no starry-eyed optimist eager to quell the pessimism of the above thesis; rather, I am a student of history who sees our current path will indeed destroy us to the point that we will be forced to adapt and relinquish the misguided values that have resulted in our "dumbed-down" anorexic bird-brained popular culture.
New Essay Option: Support or refute the following video:
Find Fragments and Comma Splices
The other night I consumed a tub of Greek yogurt with peanut butter and honey so I'd have enough energy to watch a documentary about world hunger.
I wasn't really hungry, I was anxious. Whenever I get anxious; which is all the time, I eat like a demon.
Anxiety propels me to stuff my face even when I’m not hungry. The mechanical act of eating. Using my greedy hands to lift food to my mouth and then hearing my mandibles and molars crunch the food matter into mush, has a soothing effect on my anxieties—like giving a teething biscuit to a baby.
Anxiety compels me to engage in the practice of “preemptive eating.” The idea that I even though I’m not hungry in this moment, I might be “on the road” inside my car far away from nutritional resources so I had better fill up while I can. In truth, I’m not “on the road” that often evidenced by the fact that my nine-year-old car has only 33 thousand miles on the odometer. Clearly, then, my impulse for preemptive eating is indefensible.
But you see, my anxieties exaggerate the circumstances, so that I have ample food reserves in my car—cases of high-protein chocolate peanut butter bars and a case of bottled water. All that unnecessary weight in the trunk compromises my gas mileage, but my anxieties are a cruel tyrant.
Anxiety is the reason that, in spite of my hardcore kettlebell workouts, I am a good twenty pounds overweight. Being twenty pounds overweight makes me anxious, and these anxieties in turn make me want to eat more.
Contemplating this vicious cycle is making me extremely anxious.
Good food makes me anxious.
Just thinking about good food can make me so anxious I’ll obsess over it in bed, so I’ll toss and turn all night. Like a heroin addict.
When I was in my early twenties, I ate donuts that were so good I wanted to drop out of college, give up on relationships, and hole myself up in my mother’s basement. Where I’d spend the rest of my life eating donuts.
I suffer from food insomnia. Meaning that fixating at night on a certain delicious meal I once had can prevent me from falling asleep.
There’s one food in particular that keeps me up at night—chocolate brownies.
Chocolate brownies are the best delivery system for sending an explosion of chocolate into the brain’s pleasure centers. Chocolate brownies saturate my brain with so much dopamine that after eating a brownie platter it’s not safe for me to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment. When I was a kid, I took cough medicine laced with codeine, and there was a warning label on the back: “Not safe to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment.” Chocolate brownie mix should have the same warning on the back of the box.
The best brownies mix I’ve ever had are Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies from Costco. I’ve purchased the same brand from other stores, but the Costco version is the best. Costco apparently uses its special powers to have Ghirardelli make an exclusive proprietary formula that is far superior to other versions, this fact has been corroborated by conversations I’ve had with Orange County housewives.
I don’t live in Orange County, and I don’t normally have conversations with housewives. That I talked with them about the superior quality of the exclusive Costco version of Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies mix attests to the severity of my unhealthy dependence on food.
Costco does a good job of making you think about food. Before you even walk inside Costco, you smell the freshly baked cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip cookies, and cream Danish. The smell makes you run inside the store.
Chronologically speaking, I am supposed to be an adult, but like a kid I’m running toward the Costco entrance while pushing an empty shopping cart. I must be a scary sight. This 240-pound middle-aged bald guy aggressively pushing his battering ram into a giant food larder. Where he will pillage the spoils. I’m like an Old Testament warlord about to ransack a defeated city.
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