5-30 If we have time, we will cover a Hasan Minhaj essay topic. We will cover Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
6-4: Peer Edit
6-6 Essay #5 due on turnitin; Portfolio 2 Grade Check in class
Essay 5 Due 6-6-18
This is your Capstone Essay. It requires 3 sources for your Works Cited to get credit.
Option A
Read Jelani Cobb’s “Black Like Her” and "I Refuse to Rubberneck Rachel Dolezal’s Train Wreck" by Kitanya Harrison and write an essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the contention that it is morally objectionable for white woman Rachel Dolezal to fabricate an identity to pass as being black. Also consult the parody of Rachel Dolezal in the Atlanta episode “B.A.N.” in which Paper Boi discusses “trans-racial” issues with Montague. You can also consult Netflix documentary The Rachel Divide.
Option B
Take yet another topic we haven’t yet covered from Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act and develop an argumentative thesis.
Read David Brooks’ “How We Are Ruining America” and support, refute, or complicate the contention that Brooks has written a misleading, stupid, deceptive, and grossly wrong-minded essay.
Option F
Read Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” and address the claim that Bloom, trying to sell lots of books, is writing a disingenuous argument, relying more on semantics and trickery than substance, to write a sensationalistic, hyped-up thesis.
Option G
Read “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and write an argumentative essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the authors’ claim that a certain type of coddling is destroying young people’s mental health.
Option H
Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay “Giving Up on Preventative Care” and support, refute, or complicate her thesis that we should resist the preventive care of America’s medical establishment.
Option I
Based on the following content, develop an argumentative thesis about the role of technology and social media creating a surveillance state. Read Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
Option J
In the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" and Hasan Minhaj's Netflix 72-minute comedy special "Homecoming King," compare and contrast the chimera of social status as a chimera between a white man, Dexter Green, and a self-described member of the "New Brown America," Hasan Minhaj. What special challenges do immigrants of color face as they try to find belonging, acceptance, and social status in America? How do these immigrants struggle to fit in with their American peers and fit their parents' expectations at the same time? How does this conflict add pressure to their quest to find status and belonging in America?
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 I
Based on the following content, develop an argumentative thesis about the role of technology and social media creating a surveillance state. Read Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
Excerpts from "Alexa, Should We Trust You?"
(Subheadings my own)
Conquering Private Space in Increments (You make a chicken bald by plucking one feather at a time)
Privacy concerns have not stopped the march of these devices into our homes, however. Amazon doesn’t disclose exact figures, but when I asked how many Echo devices have been sold, a spokeswoman said “tens of millions.” By the end of last year, more than 40 million smart speakers had been installed worldwide, according to Canalys, a technology-research firm. Based on current sales, Canalys estimates that this figure will reach 100 million by the end of this year. According to a 2018 report by National Public Radio and Edison Research, 8 million Americans own three or more smart speakers, suggesting that they feel the need to always have one within earshot. By 2021, according to another research firm, Ovum, there will be almost as many voice-activated assistants on the planet as people. It took about 30 years for mobile phones to outnumber humans. Alexa and her ilk may get there in less than half that time.
One reason is that Amazon and Google are pushing these devices hard, discounting them so heavily during last year’s holiday season that industry observers suspect that the companies lost money on each unit sold. These and other tech corporations have grand ambitions. They want to colonize space. Not interplanetary space. Everyday space: home, office, car. In the near future, everything from your lighting to your air-conditioning to your refrigerator, your coffee maker, and even your toilet could be wired to a system controlled by voice.
Technology Changes Bring New Social Orders
The ramifications of this shift are likely to be wide and profound. Human history is a by-product of human inventions. New tools—wheels, plows, PCs—usher in new economic and social orders. They create and destroy civilizations. Voice technologies such as telephones, recording devices, and the radio have had a particularly momentous impact on the course of political history—speech and rhetoric being, of course, the classical means of persuasion. Radio broadcasts of Adolf Hitler’s rallies helped create a dictator; Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats edged America toward the war that toppled that dictator.
Perhaps you think that talking to Alexa is just a new way to do the things you already do on a screen: shopping, catching up on the news, trying to figure out whether your dog is sick or just depressed. It’s not that simple. It’s not a matter of switching out the body parts used to accomplish those tasks—replacing fingers and eyes with mouths and ears. We’re talking about a change in status for the technology itself—an upgrade, as it were. When we converse with our personal assistants, we bring them closer to our own level.
Getting rid of "friction": We become dependent on a frictionless world.
The beauty of Alexa, Reid continued, is that she makes such interactions “frictionless”—a term I’d hear again and again in my conversations with the designers and engineers behind these products. No need to walk over to the desktop and type a search term into a browser; no need to track down your iPhone and punch in your passcode. Like the ideal servant in a Victorian manor, Alexa hovers in the background, ready to do her master’s bidding swiftly yet meticulously.
Frictionlessness is the goal, anyway. For the moment, considerable friction remains. It really is remarkable how often smart speakers—even Google Home, which often outperforms the Echo in tests conducted by tech websites—flub their lines. They’ll misconstrue a question, stress the wrong syllable, offer a bizarre answer, apologize for not yet knowing some highly knowable fact. Alexa’s bloopers float around the internet like clips from an absurdist comedy show. In one howler that went viral on YouTube, a toddler lisps, “Lexa, play ‘Ticker Ticker’ ”—presumably he wants to hear “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
Technology that uses voice will go deeper inside our heads to hijack our brains:
Lacking a face isn’t necessarily a hindrance to a smart speaker. In fact, it may be a boon. Voices can express certain emotional truths better than faces can. We are generally less adept at controlling the muscles that modulate our voices than our facial muscles (unless, of course, we’re trained singers or actors). Even if we try to suppress our real feelings, anger, boredom, or anxiety will often reveal themselves when we speak.
The power of the voice is at its uncanniest when we can’t locate its owner—when it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. There’s a reason God speaks to Adam and Moses. In the beginning was the Word, not the Scroll. In her chilling allegory of charismatic totalitarianism, A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle conjures a demonic version of an all-pervasive voice. IT, the supernatural leader of a North Korea–like state, can insert its voice inside people’s heads and force them to say whatever it tells them to say. Disembodied voices accrue yet more influence from the primal yearning they awaken. A fetus recognizes his mother’s voice while still in the womb. Before we’re even born, we have already associated an unseen voice with nourishment and comfort.
A 2017 study published in American Psychologist makes the case that when people talk without seeing each other, they’re better at recognizing each other’s feelings. They’re more empathetic. Freud understood this long before empirical research demonstrated it. That’s why he had his patients lie on a couch, facing away from him. He could listen all the harder for the nuggets of truth in their ramblings, while they, undistracted by scowls or smiles, slipped into that twilight state in which they could unburden themselves of stifled feelings.
Human shallowness is the final destination:
If I have learned anything in my years of therapy, it is that the human psyche defaults to shallowness. We cling to our denials. It’s easier to pretend that deeper feelings don’t exist, because, of course, a lot of them are painful. What better way to avoid all that unpleasantness than to keep company with emotive entities unencumbered by actual emotions? But feelings don’t just go away like that. They have a way of making themselves known. I wonder how sweet my grandchildren’s dreams will be.
Topic for Your Thesis
Technology seduces us with "persuasion architecture," convenience, "frictionless" tasks, more efficient decision making, more productivity, and more pleasure; however, the end result is a dystopia based on economic decline for the masses, loss of privacy, shallowness, dehumanization, and a general hijacking of the brain resulting in a loss of free will.
5-28 Go over Barbara Ehrenreich’s argument in her essay “Why I’m Giving Up Preventative Care.” Homework #18: Based on the following content, develop an argumentative thesis about the role of technology and social media creating a surveillance state. Read Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook.” You can also consult the video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
5-30 If we have time, we will cover a Hasan Minhaj essay topic. We will cover Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
6-4: Peer Edit
6-6 Essay #5 due on turnitin; Portfolio 2 Grade Check in class
Essay 5 Due 6-6-18
This is your Capstone Essay. It requires 3 sources for your Works Cited to get credit.
Option A
Read Jelani Cobb’s “Black Like Her” and "I Refuse to Rubberneck Rachel Dolezal’s Train Wreck" by Kitanya Harrison and write an essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the contention that it is morally objectionable for white woman Rachel Dolezal to fabricate an identity to pass as being black. Also consult the parody of Rachel Dolezal in the Atlanta episode “B.A.N.” in which Paper Boi discusses “trans-racial” issues with Montague. You can also consult Netflix documentary The Rachel Divide.
Option B
Take yet another topic we haven’t yet covered from Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act and develop an argumentative thesis.
Read David Brooks’ “How We Are Ruining America” and support, refute, or complicate the contention that Brooks has written a misleading, stupid, deceptive, and grossly wrong-minded essay.
Option F
Read Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” and address the claim that Bloom, trying to sell lots of books, is writing a disingenuous argument, relying more on semantics and trickery than substance, to write a sensationalistic, hyped-up thesis.
Option G
Read “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and write an argumentative essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the authors’ claim that a certain type of coddling is destroying young people’s mental health.
Option H
Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay “Giving Up on Preventative Care” and support, refute, or complicate her thesis that we should resist the preventive care of America’s medical establishment.
Option I
Based on the following content, develop an argumentative thesis about the role of technology and social media creating a surveillance state. Read Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
Option J
In the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" and Hasan Minhaj's Netflix 72-minute comedy special "Homecoming King," compare and contrast the chimera of social status as a chimera between a white man, Dexter Green, and a self-described member of the "New Brown America," Hasan Minhaj. What special challenges do immigrants of color face as they try to find belonging, acceptance, and social status in America? How do these immigrants struggle to fit in with their American peers and fit their parents' expectations at the same time? How does this conflict add pressure to their quest to find status and belonging in America?
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.
Coddling of the American Mind Lesson
Option G
Read “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and write an argumentative essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the authors’ claim that a certain type of coddling is destroying young people’s mental health.
One. What are microaggressions and how do they provide a controversy?
Buzzfeed has an example of 21 so-called “microaggressions.”
The Microaggression Fallacy
The suggestion in the prefix “micro” is that the aggression is small, subtle, not a flagrant act of racial hatred but unconscious, subtle hostility and ignorance.
One can argue that the bullheaded ignorance that informs the acts described above is not a microaggression at all, but rather conspicuous racial animosity.
To use the term microaggression, as the authors do, may be a Straw Man Fallacy, a misrepresentation of overt racism to help the authors’ claim that students are over sensitive. Using the term microaggression may be a misnomer.
The Lump All Together Fallacy
Some aggressions that students point at are legit; others are not, but let us not lump all of these complaints together to paint the students as overly sensitive snowflakes.
Two. What is the difference between political correctness in the 1990s and today?
Back in the 90s, political correctness was about curbing hate speech by saying it wasn’t saved under the umbrella of free speech.
Secondly, in the 90s there was an attack on the White Holy Canon of books, music, and art, which tended to exclude people of color.
Today political correctness is focused more on emotional well-being.
Have we created a safe space for our students in which we shield them from words and triggers that will make them anxious, distraught, and threatened?
A student who is easily triggered is called a snowflake. Some of the triggers are more substantial than others, and we can debate what should and what should not traumatized students; however, we should be aware of the Snowflake Fallacy:
Beware of Snowflake Fallacy (variation of Ad Hominem):
In a campus debate, you upset an opponent and rather than address the substance of the opponent’s content, you attack the person by calling him or her a snowflake.
Three. Why might some challenge the authors’ claim that campuses are turning into overly sensitive Snowflake Factories?
One might attack the authors of lacking proportion. And here we arrive at another fallacy:
The Distraction Fallacy:
You pound a fringe topic while ignoring far worse, far more pervasive issues.
Yes, some campuses might exhibit fringe behavior that encourages snowflakes, but this problem pales in comparison to more heavy-hitting, pervasive crises on campuses:
Cost of education
Student debt
Student cheating
Arbitrary, corrupt methods of accepting students into campus
Rich parents bribing officials to get their students into college.
One in five California community college students suffer from food and shelter insecurity; do we really need to fret over microaggressions and snowflakes?
Four. What is the authors’ thesis:
The new protectiveness is teaching students to think pathologically. In other words, by encouraging them to become snowflakes, they become weak whiners, complainers, groaners. All they do is fuss.
Such people are insufferable in the workplace. No one wants to hire them.
Some of the surrounding information may be somewhat distorted, as I’ve tried to show above, but their thesis seems defensible: If you paint a picture of a snowflake as a hyper-sensitive, sniveling whiner, then indeed such a person is pathological and is insufferable as a friend, family member, student, or potential employee.
I seriously doubt my students, who do not act the way described in this essay, want to hang out with snowflakes.
So while I agree with the authors’ thesis, I disagree with the scope of the problem, at least at a community college.
Five. What are the causes of Helicopter Parents who create Snowflakes?
In the 1980s, parents were terrified of milk cartons with photos of kidnapped children on them. They started walking their children to school.
When we over protect our children, we make them weak, and we suffocate and hurt them.
Political tribalism:
We read:
These same children grew up in a culture that was (and still is) becoming more politically polarized. Republicans and Democrats have never particularly liked each other, but survey data going back to the 1970s show that on average, their mutual dislike used to be surprisingly mild. Negative feelings have grown steadily stronger, however, particularly since the early 2000s. Political scientists call this process “affective partisan polarization,” and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.
So it’s not hard to imagine why students arriving on campus today might be more desirous of protection and more hostile toward ideological opponents than in generations past. This hostility, and the self-righteousness fueled by strong partisan emotions, can be expected to add force to any moral crusade. A principle of moral psychology is that “morality binds and blinds.” Part of what we do when we make moral judgments is express allegiance to a team. But that can interfere with our ability to think critically. Acknowledging that the other side’s viewpoint has any merit is risky—your teammates may see you as a traitor.
Social Media:
We read:
Social media makes it extraordinarily easy to join crusades, express solidarity and outrage, and shun traitors. Facebook was founded in 2004, and since 2006 it has allowed children as young as 13 to join. This means that the first wave of students who spent all their teen years using Facebook reached college in 2011, and graduated from college only this year.
These first true “social-media natives” may be different from members of previous generations in how they go about sharing their moral judgments and supporting one another in moral campaigns and conflicts. We find much to like about these trends; young people today are engaged with one another, with news stories, and with prosocial endeavors to a greater degree than when the dominant technology was television. But social media has also fundamentally shifted the balance of power in relationships between students and faculty; the latter increasingly fear what students might do to their reputations and careers by stirring up online mobs against them.
Increased Diagnosis of Mental Illness Causes Over Protection
We read:
We do not mean to imply simple causation, but rates of mental illness in young adults have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades. Some portion of the increase is surely due to better diagnosis and greater willingness to seek help, but most experts seem to agree that some portion of the trend is real. Nearly all of the campus mental-health directors surveyed in 2013 by the American College Counseling Association reported that the number of students with severe psychological problems was rising at their schools. The rate of emotional distress reported by students themselves is also high, and rising. In a 2014 survey by the American College Health Association, 54 percent of college students surveyed said that they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the past 12 months, up from 49 percent in the same survey just five years earlier. Students seem to be reporting more emotional crises; many seem fragile, and this has surely changed the way university faculty and administrators interact with them. The question is whether some of those changes might be doing more harm than good.
We’ve replaced critical thinking on campuses with “emotional reasoning.”
We read:
Burns defines emotional reasoning as assuming “that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: ‘I feel it, therefore it must be true.’ ” Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define it as letting “your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.” But, of course, subjective feelings are not always trustworthy guides; unrestrained, they can cause people to lash out at others who have done nothing wrong. Therapy often involves talking yourself down from the idea that each of your emotional responses represents something true or important.
Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions. A claim that someone’s words are “offensive” is not just an expression of one’s own subjective feeling of offendedness. It is, rather, a public charge that the speaker has done something objectively wrong. It is a demand that the speaker apologize or be punished by some authority for committing an offense.
Yet another cause: Being a bratty little snowflake gets you to the top.
I recently met a Texan couple whose son was still in diapers. They were angling to get him into a preschool that feeds into a private preparatory school with a great record for college admissions.
The couple were ambivalent about doing this. They were from immigrant and working-class backgrounds, and had thrived in public schools. In theory, they believed that all children should have an equal chance to succeed. But I suspected that if they got their son a spot in the preschool, they’d take it. These days, such chances are hard to pass up.
It’s a familiar story. Psychologists, sociologists and journalists have spent more than a decade diagnosing and critiquing the habits of “helicopter parents” and their school obsessions. They insist that hyper-parenting backfires — creating a generation of stressed-out kids who can’t function alone. Parents themselves alternate between feeling guilty, panicked and ridiculous.
But new research shows that in our unequal era, this kind of parenting brings life-changing benefits. That’s the message of the book “Love, Money and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids,” by the economists Matthias Doepke of Northwestern University and Fabrizio Zilibotti of Yale. It’s true that high-octane, hardworking child-rearing has some pointless excesses, and it doesn’t spark joy for parents. But done right, it works for kids, not just in the United States but in rich countries around the world.
The authors explain that when inequality hit a low in the 1970s, there wasn’t that much of a gap between what someone earned with or without a college degree. Strict parenting gave way to an era of “permissive parenting” — giving children lots of freedom with little oversight. Why spend 18 years nagging kids to succeed if the rewards weren’t worth it?
In the 1980s, however, inequality increased sharply in Western countries, especially the United States, and the gap between white- and blue-collar pay widened. Permissive parenting was replaced by helicopter parenting. Middle- and upper-class parents who’d gone to public schools and spent evenings playing kickball in the neighborhood began elbowing their toddlers into fast-track preschools and spending evenings monitoring their homework and chauffeuring them to activities.
American parents eventually increased their hands-on caregiving by about 12 hours a week, compared with the 1970s. Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Canadian and British parents ramped up their child care, too. (In Japan, hyper-involved mothers are known as “monster parents.”)
Not all the changes were rational. When some parents learned that talking to toddlers helps to develop their young brains, they began monologuing at them constantly.
But for the most part, the new parenting efforts seemed effective. Dr. Doepke and Dr. Zilibotti can’t prove causality (to do that, you’d have to randomly assign parenting styles to different families). But when they analyzed the 2012 PISA, an academic test of 15-year-olds around the world, along with reports from the teenagers and their parents about how they interact, they found that an “intensive parenting style” correlated with higher scores on the test. This was true even among teenagers whose parents had similar levels of education.
It’s not enough just to hover over your kids, however. If you do it as an “authoritarian” parent — defined as someone who issues directives, expects children to obey and sometimes hits those who don’t — you won’t get the full benefits.
The most effective parents, according to the authors, are “authoritative.” They use reasoning to persuade kids to do things that are good for them. Instead of strict obedience, they emphasize adaptability, problem-solving and independence — skills that will help their offspring in future workplaces that we can’t even imagine yet.
And they seem most successful at helping their kids achieve the holy grails of modern parenting: college and postgraduate degrees, which now have a huge financial payoff. Using data from a national studythat followed thousands of American teenagers for years, the authors found that the offspring of “authoritative” parents were more likely to graduate from college and graduate school, especially compared with those with authoritarian parents. This was true even when they controlled for the parents’ education and income.
The benefits aren’t just academic. In a British study, kids raised by authoritative parents reported better health and higher self-esteem. In the American study, they were less likely to use drugs, smoke or abuse alcohol; they started having sex at older ages, and they were more likely to use condoms.
So why wouldn’t everyone just become an authoritative parent? Religious people, regardless of their income, are more likely to be authoritarian parents who expect obedience and believe in corporal punishment, the authors found.
Working-class and poor parents might not have the leisure time to hover or the budget to pay for activities and expensive schools. And they may rightly feel that they need to prepare their children for jobs in which rule-following matters more than debating skills.
Those who can afford to helicopter are probably making things even more unequal for the next generation. As with the Texan couple, this doesn’t always match their political beliefs. In the “Hidden Tribes” survey published last year by the nonprofit group More in Common, respondents who valued self-reliance and creativity in children — staples of both authoritative and permissive parents — were more likely to have voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Those with more authoritarian views on parenting were more likely to have voted for Donald Trump.
Since there’s apparently no limit to how much people will do for their kids, the prognosis for parenting doesn’t look good. Yet another reason to elect people who’ll make America more equal: We grown-ups can finally stop doing homework.
Books and Materials You Need to Buy for This Class
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
Rules for Writers, 8th Edition by Diana Hacker
1 pocketed, flat folder for your Homework Portfolio
Work You Must Do in This Class
One: Five Typed Essays
You will write 5 typed essays in MLA format. The first 4 essays will be 1,000 words. The fifth essay, your capstone essay, will be 1,200 words and will need 5 sources for your Works Cited. The first 4 essays are worth 150 points. The final fifth essay is worth 250 points. These essays will be uploaded on turnitin.
Late Essays
Late essays are accepted for a week after deadline and are marked down a full grade.
Two Reading Response Portfolio
You must generate a writing response to every reading. Instead of getting quizzed on the readings, you will write 3-paragraph reading-response essays to the readings. Each mini essay should have at least 3 signal phrases citing the text of the assigned reading. You will not be uploading these essays on turnitin.com. Instead, you will bring a typed hard copy to class and discussing it with your team of 3 or 4 students.. An unacceptable essay won’t be given credit. You will keep these essays in a flat, pocketed folder, which I will grade during Finals Week. Unless you have a doctor’s note, you cannot make-up missing mini essays. You should be motivated to show up to every class. Your portfolio is worth 150 points. I grade it two halves at 75 points per half.
Three. Before the essays are due on turnitin, there is a peer edit session with some exceptions like when a holiday falls the week before final due date. You bring hard copies of your completed typed draft so your team can review your work, and you can review theirs. Like your mini essays, the completed draft gets a stamp, either a top-tier stamp or a middling one.
Grading Based on 1,000 Points
First 4 essays: 150 for 600
Final 5th essay: 250
Portfolio, Part 1 and Part 2, 75 each for 150
Grading Point Scheme
Total Points: 1,000 (A is 900-100; B is 800-899; C is 700-799; D is 600 to 699)
Essay 1 Options
Option 1:
In an essay of 1,000 words, defend, refute, or complicate Cal Newport’s claim from his book excerpt from So Good They Can’t Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset. Your second source will be “In the Name of Love” by Miya Tokumitsu. You won’t receive credit unless you have an MLA format Works Cited page at the end of your essay.
Option 2:
In the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s online short story "Winter Dreams" and Hasan Minhaj's Netflix 72-minute comedy special "Homecoming King," develop a thesis about two men in search of validation in pursuit of “The Great White Princess” and why Hasan Minhaj’s validation quest is triumphant while Dexter Green’s quest is one of utter failure.
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.
In the context of Jamelle Bouie’s “Remembering History as Fable” and Jack Schwartz’s “It’s Time for the Lost Cause to Get Lost,” develop a thesis that evaluates the assertion that for many Americans the Civil War denies real history and replaces that real history with a pernicious mythology, often called The Lost Cause, that perpetuates the false doctrine of white supremacy. You may also consultJohn Oliver Confederate Flag critique video.
Develop a claim that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that electoral college should be replaced by the popular vote. Be sure to have a counterargument section.
Essay Assignment 4
Option A
See Monica Lewinsky Ted Talk video “The Price of Shame” and John Oliver video on “Public Shaming” and develop an argumentative thesis about what type of shaming is good for society and what kind of shaming cannot be defended. Consult Conor Friedersdorf essay “John Oliver’s Weak Case for Callout Culture.”
Option B
Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the human inclination for staying within the tribe of sameness as explained in David Brooks’ “People Like Us.” ConsultVice video about social media and tribalism; also consultBrian Klaas video on how tribalism in social media is undermining democracy. Also consult the role ofBackfire Effect and tribalism.
Option C
Read Kajsa Elas Ekman’s essay “All surrogacy is exploitation” and write an argumentative thesis that supports or refutes her claim.
Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer toCNN Special Report: Being Thirteen.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,000-word essay
8 Paragraphs, 130 words per paragraph, approx. 1,000 words (1,040 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-5: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 6 & 7: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Make sure to include a Works Cited page.
Essay #5
You need 5 credible sources for the MLA Works Cited page in your final capstone essay.
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.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,200-word essay
9 Paragraphs, 135 words per paragraph, approx. 1,200 words (1,215 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-6: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 7 & 8: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
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.
Support, refute, or complicate Harlan Coben’s argument from “The Undercover Parent” that spyware is a legit and compelling safety measure that parents may need to use for their children’s computers.
Option F
Read “Is Dentistry a Science?” by Ferris Jabr and refute or defend his claim that dentistry is rife with venality (greed) and corruption that compromises a patient’s best interests. For this assignment, you will need to interview two people who feel they were ripped off by a dentist. For your fourth and fifth sources, consult: “Dentists Need to Up Their Game” and “Is Your Dentist Ripping You Off?”
Fall 1A 2019 Reading and Writing Schedule
August 26 Introduction and “In the Name of Love” by Miya Tokumitsu. Homework #1 for August 28: Read Cal Newport’s claim from his book excerpt from So Good They Can’t Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset and in 3 paragraphs explain how he arrives at his claim.
August 28 Go over Newport chapters 1-3. Homework #2 for September 4: Read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s online short story “Winter Dreams” and explain in 3 paragraphs how Dexter Green was addicted to Judy Jones as if she were an illegal narcotic.
September 2 Holiday
September 4 Go over “Winter Dreams” and “Homecoming King.” Homework #3 for September 9: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend "A Teacher's Defense of Homework" and in 3 paragraphs explain the dilemma parents face when struggling with their children’s homework.
September 9 Go over homework debate. Homework #4 is to read Justin Peters' essay "Joe Rogan's Galaxy Brain," published in liberal-slanting Slate magazine, and in 3 paragraphs explain Peters’ criticism of Joe Rogan.
September 11 Go over Joe Rogan and deplatforming debate.
September 16Essay 1 Due on turnitin. Go over Andrew Sullivan’s “I Used to be a Human Being,”, Sherry Turkle, and Tristan Harris. Watch “Nosedive.” Homework #5 for September 18: Read Lanier pages 1-39 and in 3 paragraphs explain how social media destroys free will.
September 18 Go over Lanier 1-39. Homework #6 for September 23: Read pages 39-76 and in 3 paragraphs explain how social media makes us terrible versions of ourselves.
September 23 Go over Lanier 39-76. Homework #7 for September 25: Read Lanier 76-145 and email me your thesis.
September 25 Go over Lanier 76-145. Go over student thesis statements in class. Your homework #8 for September 30 is to turn in introduction, thesis, and Works Cited with 3 sources. All of this is typed.
October 16: Turn in typed introduction, thesis, and Works Cited with 3 sources and correct MLA format (homework #12). Grade Portfolio, Part 1.
October 21Essay 3 Due on turnitin. See Monica Lewinsky Ted Talk video “The Price of Shame” and John Oliver video on “Public Shaming” and develop an argumentative thesis about what type of shaming is good for society and what kind of shaming cannot be defended. If we have time, we will go over Kajsa Elas Ekman’s essay “All surrogacy is exploitation” and address essay strategies. Homework #13 for October 23 is to read David Brooks’ Atlantic essay “People Like Us” and explain why we gravitate people who share our values.
For your counterargument regarding Clint Smith’s essay, we will look at David Brooks’ notorious essay “How We Are Ruining America.”
Homework #16 for next class is to read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s).
November 4 We will go over Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer toCNN Special Report: Being Thirteen. Your homework #17 is to turn in introduction, thesis and Works Cited with 3 sources.
November 6: Turn in introduction, thesis and Works Cited with 3 sources.
November 20 We will go over Alfie Kohn’s “From Degrading to De-Grading” and explain in 3 paragraphs how Kohn supports his claim that grades are bad for education. Homework #20 is to read Steve Almond’s essay “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” and in 3 paragraphs support or refute his claim.
November 25 We will go over Steve Almond’s essay. We will also watch 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. Your homework #21 for next class is to read Harlan Coben’s argument from “The Undercover Parent” and discuss if spyware is a legit and compelling safety measure that parents may need to use for their children’s computers.
November 27 We will go over Harlan Coben’s argument from “The Undercover Parent” and discuss if spyware is a legit and compelling safety measure that parents may need to use for their children’s computers. We will also go over Hasan Minhaj video “Civil Rights Under Trump.” We will go over counterarguments. We will also go over your introductions and thesis statements in class. Your homework #22 is to read “Is Dentistry a Science?” by Ferris Jabr and refute or defend his claim that dentistry is rife with venality (greed) and corruption that compromises a patient’s best interests.
December 2 We will go over “Is Dentistry a Science?” by Ferris Jabr and refute or defend his claim that dentistry is rife with venality (greed) and corruption that compromises a patient’s best interests. For this assignment, you will need to interview two people who feel they were ripped off by a dentist. For your fourth and fifth sources, consult: “Dentists Need to Up Their Game” and “Is Your Dentist Ripping You Off?” Your homework #23 for next class is to turn in thesis, introduction, and Works Cited.
December 4 We will go over thesis, introduction, and Works Cited. Homework #24 is to write your counterargument and rebuttal section.
December 9 We will go over introduction, thesis, counterargument, and Works Cited.
December 11Essay 5 is due on turnitin. In class, we will grade Portfolio 2.
Each essay must be submitted to www.turnitin.com where it will be checked for illegal copying/plagiarism. I cannot give credit for an essay that is not submitted to this site by the deadline.
The process is very simple; if you need help, detailed instructions are available at http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/student-quickstart-guide
You will need two pieces of information to use the site:
Class ID and Enrollment Password, which I will give you first week of class
Classroom Decorum: No smart phones can be used in class. If you’re on your smartphone and I see you, you get a warning the first time. Second time, you must leave the class and take an absence
Tardies: Two tardies equals one absence.
Homework for Your Portfolio
Your Homework Portfolio connects with a 20-minute class activity that begins the class in your team (of 3 or 4 people).
Your essays are of the “mini” variety: 3 paragraphs, 350 words long, and have at least 3 signal phrases citing the text in the form of direct quotations, paraphrase, or summary.
Almost every class-assigned reading has a mini essay that you will keep in your portfolio.
Every class, while you discuss the study question with your team, I will come around and put a stamp on the completed typed mini essay.
Even though I grade your Portfolio mid-way into the semester as “Portfolio 1,” keep all your subsequent essays in the same Homework Portfolio. In other words, don’t throw your hard-copies of your essay away after I grade “Portfolio 1.”
Course Catalog Description:
This course is designed to strengthen the students’ ability to read with understanding and discernment, to discuss assigned readings intelligently, and to write clearly. Emphasis will be on writing essays in which each paragraph relates to a controlling idea, has an introduction and a conclusion, and contains primary and secondary support. College-level reading material will be assigned to provide the stimulus for class discussion and writing assignments, including a required research paper.
Course Objectives:
One. Recognize and revise sentence-level grammar and usage errors.
Two. Read and apply critical-thinking skills to numerous published articles and to college-level, book-length works for the purpose of writing and discussion.
Three. Apply appropriate strategies in the writing process including prewriting, composing, revising, and editing techniques.
Four. Compose multi-paragraph, thesis-driven essays with logical and appropriate supporting ideas, and with unity and coherence.
Five. Demonstrate ability to locate and utilize a variety of academic databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scholarly websites.
Six. Utilize MLA guidelines to format essays, cite sources in the texts of essays, and compile Works Cited lists.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course, students will:
Complete a research-based essay that has been written out of class and undergone revision. It should demonstrate the student’s ability to thoughtfully support a single thesis using analysis and synthesis.
Integrate multiple sources, including a book-length work and a variety of academic databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scholarly websites. Citations must be in MLA format and include a Works Cited page.
Demonstrate logical paragraph composition and sentence structure. The essay should have correct grammar, spelling, and word use.
Students with Disabilities:
It is the policy of the El Camino Community College District to encourage full inclusion of people with disabilities in all programs and services. Students with disabilities who believe they may need accommodations in this class should contact the campus Special Resource Center (310) 660-3295, as soon as possible. This will ensure that students are able to fully participate.
Academic Honesty and Plagiarism:
El Camino College places a high value on the integrity of its student scholars. When an instructor determines that there is evidence of dishonesty in any academic work (including, but not limited to cheating, plagiarism, or theft of exam materials), disciplinary action appropriate to the misconduct as defined in BP 5500 may be taken. A failing grade on an assignment in which academic dishonesty has occurred and suspension from class are among the disciplinary actions for academic dishonesty (AP 5520). Students with any questions about the Academic Honesty or discipline policies are encouraged to speak with their instructor in advance.
Attendance and Class Participation
You can’t miss more than 4 classes. A tardy counts as one half an absence. These rules are designed so that we will be compliant with Title 5 Contact Hour Laws prescribed by the State of California.
Student Resources:
Reading Success Center (East Library Basement E-36)
Software and tutors are available for vocabulary development & reading comprehension.
Library Media Technology Center - LMTC (East Library Basement)
Computers are available for free use. Bring your student ID # & flash drive. There’s a charge for printing.
Writing Center (H122)
Computers are available for free use. Free tutoring is available for writing assignments, grammar, and vocabulary. Bring your student ID & flash drive to save work. Printing is NOT available.
Learning Resource Center - LRC (West Wing of the Library, 2nd floor)
The LRC Tutorial Program offers free drop-in tutoring. For the tutoring schedule, go toelcamino.edu/library/lrc/tutoring .The LRC also offers individualized computer adaptive programs to help build your reading comprehension skills.
Student Health Center (Next to the Pool)
The Health Center offers free medical and psychological services as well as free workshops on topics like “test anxiety.” Low cost medical testing is also available.
Special Resource Center – SRC (Southwest Wing of Student Services Building)
The SRC provides free disability services, including interpreters, testing accommodations, counseling, and adaptive computer technology.
Books and Materials You Need to Buy for This Class
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
Rules for Writers, 8th Edition by Diana Hacker
1 pocketed, flat folder for your Homework Portfolio
Work You Must Do in This Class
One: Five Typed Essays
You will write 5 typed essays in MLA format. The first 4 essays will be 1,000 words. The fifth essay, your capstone essay, will be 1,200 words and will need 5 sources for your Works Cited. The first 4 essays are worth 150 points. The final fifth essay is worth 250 points. These essays will be uploaded on turnitin.
Late Essays
Late essays are accepted for a week after deadline and are marked down a full grade.
Two Reading Response Portfolio
You must generate a writing response to every reading. Instead of getting quizzed on the readings, you will write 3-paragraph reading-response essays to the readings. Each mini essay should have at least 3 signal phrases citing the text of the assigned reading. You will not be uploading these essays on turnitin.com. Instead, you will bring a typed hard copy to class and discussing it with your team of 3 or 4 students.. An unacceptable essay won’t be given credit. You will keep these essays in a flat, pocketed folder, which I will grade during Finals Week. Unless you have a doctor’s note, you cannot make-up missing mini essays. You should be motivated to show up to every class. Your portfolio is worth 150 points. I grade it two halves at 75 points per half.
Three. Before the essays are due on turnitin, there is a peer edit session with some exceptions like when a holiday falls the week before final due date. You bring hard copies of your completed typed draft so your team can review your work, and you can review theirs. Like your mini essays, the completed draft gets a stamp, either a top-tier stamp or a middling one.
Grading Based on 1,000 Points
First 4 essays: 150 for 600
Final 5th essay: 250
Portfolio, Part 1 and Part 2, 75 each for 150
Grading Point Scheme
Total Points: 1,000 (A is 900-100; B is 800-899; C is 700-799; D is 600 to 699)
Essay Assignment 1 Options
Option 1:
In an essay of 1,000 words, defend, refute, or complicate Cal Newport’s claim from his book excerpt from So Good They Can’t Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset. Your second source will be “In the Name of Love” by Miya Tokumitsu. You won’t receive credit unless you have an MLA format Works Cited page at the end of your essay.
Option 2:
In the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s online short story "Winter Dreams" and Hasan Minhaj's Netflix 72-minute comedy special "Homecoming King," develop a thesis about two men in search of validation in pursuit of “The Great White Princess” and why Hasan Minhaj’s validation quest is triumphant while Dexter Green’s quest is one of utter failure.
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.
In the context of Jamelle Bouie’s “Remembering History as Fable” and Jack Schwartz’s “It’s Time for the Lost Cause to Get Lost,” develop a thesis that evaluates the assertion that for many Americans the Civil War denies real history and replaces that real history with a pernicious mythology, often called The Lost Cause, that perpetuates the false doctrine of white supremacy. You may also consultJohn Oliver Confederate Flag critique video.
Option C
Develop a claim that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that electoral college should be replaced by the popular vote. Be sure to have a counterargument section.
Essay Assignment 4
Option A
See Monica Lewinsky Ted Talk video “The Price of Shame” and John Oliver video on “Public Shaming” and develop an argumentative thesis about what type of shaming is good for society and what kind of shaming cannot be defended. Consult Conor Friedersdorf essay “John Oliver’s Weak Case for Callout Culture.”
Option B
Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the human inclination for staying within the tribe of sameness as explained in David Brooks’ “People Like Us.” ConsultVice video about social media and tribalism; also consultBrian Klaas video on how tribalism in social media is undermining democracy. Also consult the role ofBackfire Effect and tribalism.
Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer toCNN Special Report: Being Thirteen.
Read Kajsa Elas Ekman’s essay “All surrogacy is exploitation” and write an argumentative thesis that supports or refutes her claim.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,000-word essay
8 Paragraphs, 130 words per paragraph, approx. 1,000 words (1,040 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-5: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 6 & 7: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Make sure to include a Works Cited page.
Essay #5 Due Date: 6-5-19
You need 5 credible sources for the MLA Works Cited page in your final capstone essay.
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.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,200-word essay
9 Paragraphs, 135 words per paragraph, approx. 1,200 words (1,215 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-6: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 7 & 8: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
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.
Support, refute, or complicate Harlan Coben’s argument from “The Undercover Parent” that spyware is a legit and compelling safety measure that parents may need to use for their children’s computers.
June 17 Introduction. We will read Cal Newport’s claim from his book excerpt from So Good They Can’t Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset. We will also look at excerpts from “In the Name of Love” by Miya Tokumitsu. Homework #1 for June 18: Read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s online short story “Winter Dreams” and explain in 3 paragraphs how Dexter Green was addicted to Judy Jones as if she were an illegal narcotic.
June 18 Go over “Winter Dreams” and see Hasan Minhaj’s “Homecoming King.” 1-3. Homework #2 for June 19: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend "A Teacher's Defense of Homework" and in 3 paragraphs explain the dilemma parents face when struggling with their children’s homework.
June 19 Go over homework debate. Homework #3 for June 20: Read Justin Peters' essay "Joe Rogan's Galaxy Brain," published in liberal-slanting Slate magazine, and in 3 paragraphs explain Peters’ criticism of Joe Rogan.
June 20 Go over Joe Rogan and the debate about deplatforming. Go over thesis statements in class. We will work on 3 sample thesis statements in class.
Week 2 Jaron Lanier & Why You Should Delete Your Social Media Accounts
June 24 Essay 1 Due on turnitin. Go over Andrew Sullivan’s “I Used to be a Human Being,”, Sherry Turkle, and Tristan Harris. Watch “Nosedive.” Homework #4 for June 25: Read Lanier pages 1-39 and in 3 paragraphs explain how social media destroys free will.
June 25 Go over Lanier 1-39. Homework #5 for June 26: Read pages 39-76 and in 3 paragraphs explain how social media makes us terrible versions of ourselves.
June 26 Go over Lanier 39-76. Homework #6 for June 27: Read Lanier 76-145 and turn in a tentative thesis both in hard copy and email before class.
June 27 Go over Lanier 76-145. Go over student thesis statements in class.
Week 3 Old and New Jim Crow in America & Electoral Vs. Popular Vote
Week 4 Public Shaming, Tribalism, College, Student Loans
July 8Essay 3 due on turnitin. Grade Portfolio #1, which will consist of homework assignments 1-9. See Monica Lewinsky Ted Talk video “The Price of Shame” and John Oliver video on “Public Shaming” and develop an argumentative thesis about what type of shaming is good for society and what kind of shaming cannot be defended. If we have time, we will go over Kajsa Elas Ekman’s essay “All surrogacy is exploitation” and address essay strategies.
Homework #9 for July 9 is to read David Brooks’ Atlantic essay “People Like Us” and explain why we gravitate people who share our values.
For your counterargument regarding Clint Smith’s essay, we will look at David Brooks’ notorious essay “How We Are Ruining America.”
Homework #12 for July 11 is to submit an email and bring hard copy of your first essay’s first two pages, including a tentative thesis.
Week 5 Anti-Vaxxers, Marijuana, and NFL Violence
July 15 Essay 4 due on turnitin. Your homework #13 for July 16 is to read Annie Lowry’s essay “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts” and in 3 paragraphs support, refute, or complicate the argument that legalizing weed is a bad idea.
July 17 We will go over Steve Almond’s essay. We will also watch 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. Your homework #15 for July 18 is to write an introduction and thesis to be emailed to me before class. Also bring a hard copy to class.
July 18 We will go over Harlan Coben’s argument from “The Undercover Parent” and discuss if spyware is a legit and compelling safety measure that parents may need to use for their children’s computers. We will go over counterarguments. We will also go over your introductions and thesis statements in class. Your homework #16: In the context of Madeleine Pape's Guardian essay "I was sore at losing to Caster Semeyna," explain in 3 paragraphs Pape’s defense of Caster Semeyna.
July 23 We will go over your essay in progress. Your homework #18 is to submit two counterarguments and rebuttals and Works Cited with 5 sources in both email and hard copies.
July 24 We will go over your counterarguments and overall essay in progress with emphasis on counterarguments and rebuttals.
July 25Essay 5 is due on turnitin. We will grade your Portfolio #2 in class.
You Must Use turnitin to submit essay and bring hard copy on due date
Each essay must be submitted to www.turnitin.com where it will be checked for illegal copying/plagiarism. I cannot give credit for an essay that is not submitted to this site by the deadline.
The process is very simple; if you need help, detailed instructions are available at http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/student-quickstart-guide
You will need two pieces of information to use the site:
Class ID and Enrollment Password, which I will give you first week of class
Classroom Decorum: No smart phones can be used in class. If you’re on your smartphone and I see you, you get a warning the first time. Second time, you must leave the class and take an absence
Tardies: Two tardies equals one absence.
Homework for Your Portfolio
Your Homework Portfolio connects with a 20-minute class activity that begins the class in your team (of 3 or 4 people).
Your essays are of the “mini” variety: 3 paragraphs, 350 words long, and have at least 3 signal phrases citing the text in the form of direct quotations, paraphrase, or summary.
Almost every class-assigned reading has a mini essay that you will keep in your portfolio.
Every class, while you discuss the study question with your team, I will come around and put a stamp on the completed typed mini essay.
Even though I grade your Portfolio mid-way into the semester as “Portfolio 1,” keep all your subsequent essays in the same Homework Portfolio. In other words, don’t throw your hard-copies of your essay away after I grade “Portfolio 1.”
Course Catalog Description:
This course is designed to strengthen the students’ ability to read with understanding and discernment, to discuss assigned readings intelligently, and to write clearly. Emphasis will be on writing essays in which each paragraph relates to a controlling idea, has an introduction and a conclusion, and contains primary and secondary support. College-level reading material will be assigned to provide the stimulus for class discussion and writing assignments, including a required research paper.
Course Objectives:
One. Recognize and revise sentence-level grammar and usage errors.
Two. Read and apply critical-thinking skills to numerous published articles and to college-level, book-length works for the purpose of writing and discussion.
Three. Apply appropriate strategies in the writing process including prewriting, composing, revising, and editing techniques.
Four. Compose multi-paragraph, thesis-driven essays with logical and appropriate supporting ideas, and with unity and coherence.
Five. Demonstrate ability to locate and utilize a variety of academic databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scholarly websites.
Six. Utilize MLA guidelines to format essays, cite sources in the texts of essays, and compile Works Cited lists.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course, students will:
Complete a research-based essay that has been written out of class and undergone revision. It should demonstrate the student’s ability to thoughtfully support a single thesis using analysis and synthesis.
Integrate multiple sources, including a book-length work and a variety of academic databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scholarly websites. Citations must be in MLA format and include a Works Cited page.
Demonstrate logical paragraph composition and sentence structure. The essay should have correct grammar, spelling, and word use.
Students with Disabilities:
It is the policy of the El Camino Community College District to encourage full inclusion of people with disabilities in all programs and services. Students with disabilities who believe they may need accommodations in this class should contact the campus Special Resource Center (310) 660-3295, as soon as possible. This will ensure that students are able to fully participate.
Academic Honesty and Plagiarism:
El Camino College places a high value on the integrity of its student scholars. When an instructor determines that there is evidence of dishonesty in any academic work (including, but not limited to cheating, plagiarism, or theft of exam materials), disciplinary action appropriate to the misconduct as defined in BP 5500 may be taken. A failing grade on an assignment in which academic dishonesty has occurred and suspension from class are among the disciplinary actions for academic dishonesty (AP 5520). Students with any questions about the Academic Honesty or discipline policies are encouraged to speak with their instructor in advance.
Attendance and Class Participation
You can’t miss more than 4 classes. A tardy counts as one half an absence. These rules are designed so that we will be compliant with Title 5 Contact Hour Laws prescribed by the State of California.
Student Resources:
Reading Success Center (East Library Basement E-36)
Software and tutors are available for vocabulary development & reading comprehension.
Library Media Technology Center - LMTC (East Library Basement)
Computers are available for free use. Bring your student ID # & flash drive. There’s a charge for printing.
Writing Center (H122)
Computers are available for free use. Free tutoring is available for writing assignments, grammar, and vocabulary. Bring your student ID & flash drive to save work. Printing is NOT available.
Learning Resource Center - LRC (West Wing of the Library, 2nd floor)
The LRC Tutorial Program offers free drop-in tutoring. For the tutoring schedule, go toelcamino.edu/library/lrc/tutoring .The LRC also offers individualized computer adaptive programs to help build your reading comprehension skills.
Student Health Center (Next to the Pool)
The Health Center offers free medical and psychological services as well as free workshops on topics like “test anxiety.” Low cost medical testing is also available.
Special Resource Center – SRC (Southwest Wing of Student Services Building)
The SRC provides free disability services, including interpreters, testing accommodations, counseling, and adaptive computer technology.
This is your Capstone Essay. It requires 3 sources for your Works Cited to get credit.
Option A
Read Jelani Cobb’s “Black Like Her” and "I Refuse to Rubberneck Rachel Dolezal’s Train Wreck" by Kitanya Harrison and write an essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the contention that it is morally objectionable for white woman Rachel Dolezal to fabricate an identity to pass as being black. Also consult the parody of Rachel Dolezal in the Atlanta episode “B.A.N.” in which Paper Boi discusses “trans-racial” issues with Montague. You can also consult Netflix documentary The Rachel Divide.
Option B
Take yet another topic we haven’t yet covered from Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act and develop an argumentative thesis.
Read David Brooks’ “How We Are Ruining America” and support, refute, or complicate the contention that Brooks has written a misleading, stupid, deceptive, and grossly wrong-minded essay.
Option F
Read Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” and address the claim that Bloom, trying to sell lots of books, is writing a disingenuous argument, relying more on semantics and trickery than substance, to write a sensationalistic, hyped-up thesis.
Option G
Read “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and write an argumentative essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the authors’ claim that a certain type of coddling is destroying young people’s mental health.
Option H
Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay “Giving Up on Preventative Care” and support, refute, or complicate her thesis that we should resist the preventive care of America’s medical establishment.
Option I
Based on the following content, develop an argumentative thesis about the role of technology and social media creating a surveillance state. Read Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
Option J
In the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" and Hasan Minhaj's Netflix 72-minute comedy special "Homecoming King," compare and contrast the chimera of social status as a chimera between a white man, Dexter Green, and a self-described member of the "New Brown America," Hasan Minhaj. What special challenges do immigrants of color face as they try to find belonging, acceptance, and social status in America? How do these immigrants struggle to fit in with their American peers and fit their parents' expectations at the same time? How does this conflict add pressure to their quest to find status and belonging in America?
If we have time, we will see a Hasan Minhaj essay topic such as his comedy special Homecoming King on Netflix. We will examine the case of Rachel Dolezal. We will read Jelani Cobb’s “Black Like Her” and "I Refuse to Rubberneck Rachel Dolezal’s Train Wreck" by Kitanya Harrison. We will watch the Atlanta episode “B.A.N.” that skewers Dolezal for her masquerade. You can consult the documentary on Netflix The Rachel Divide. Is her masquerade cause for serious academic inquiry or a pathetic exhibition of white privilege from a narcissist? Homework #14: Read “The Case Against Gene Editing” by Brendan Foht and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains how gene editing is a liability to society. If time, we will read Jessica McCrory Calarco’s essay “‘Free-Range’ Parenting’s Unfair Double Standard” and support or refute her claim.
5-16 We will watch video “Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever” in the context of Brendan Foht’s “The Case Against Gene Editing.” We will also look at Netflix Explained episode “Designer DNA.” If we have time, we will look at David Brooks’ “How We Are Ruining America” and explain why so many people attacked Brooks for writing a misleading, stupid, deceptive, and grossly wrong-minded essay. Homework #15: Read Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the author’s position.
5-21 We will study Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” and explore the pros and cons of his position. We will look at Bloom’s video “Why Empathy Is Not the Best Way to Care.” Homework #16: Read “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains why they believe a certain type of coddling is destroying young people’s mental health.
5-28 Go over Barbara Ehrenreich’s argument in her essay “Why I’m Giving Up Preventative Care.” Homework #18: Based on the following content, develop an argumentative thesis about the role of technology and social media creating a surveillance state. Read Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook.” You can also consult the video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
5-30 If we have time, we will cover a Hasan Minhaj essay topic. We will cover Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
6-4: Peer Edit
6-6 Essay #5 due on turnitin; Portfolio 2 Grade Check in class
Homework #14: Read “The Case Against Gene Editing” by Brendan Foht and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains how gene editing is a liability to society.
5-16 We will watch video “Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever” in the context of Brendan Foht’s “The Case Against Gene Editing.” We will also look at Netflix Explained episode “Designer DNA.” If we have time, we will look at David Brooks’ “How We Are Ruining America” and explain why so many people attacked Brooks for writing a misleading, stupid, deceptive, and grossly wrong-minded essay. Homework #15: Read Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the author’s position.
One. What will happen to unconditional love when we have expectations of a Super Baby?
Two. Will we be individuals or the products of our parents' catalog wish-list?
Three. Will economic and social divisions widen between Haves (can afford to be super) and Have-Nots (can't afford to be so super, just bargain babies)?
Four. Have we committed the sin of pride by playing God?
Richard Hayes points out the dilemma of genetically modified humans: On one hand, they will have superior health; on the other hand, a free market of super babies will "undermine the foundations of civil and human rights." There will be a small group of rich Desirables who can afford genetic enhancement and large group of serfs serving at the whims of these Desirables.
Hayes points out the slippery slope: Once we improve one aspect of the human body, where do we stop? A child is no longer a child but a consumer product, an "artifact," a toy.
Hayes observes in the future there could be a "high-tech eugenics arms race" with countries amassing armies of super fighters.
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1
Human ethics usually clash with rapid disruptions of technologies. Gene editing is no exception. Appalled at the notion of super babies, the commodification of human beings, eugenics, genome vandalism, and other moral atrocities, many make the case that we must either halt or significantly regulate genetic editing. But as well-intentioned as these people are, their warning cries are an exercise in futility for several reasons. One, technology cannot be stopped. Even if the United Nations signs an agreement to end genetic testing, rogue entities will advance genetic editing underground, and then they will have the upper hand when it comes to using genetic editing in various types of warfare. Second, to halt genetic editing is to deny medical breakthroughs that are surely a benefit to all of us. Third, genetic editing can be used to alter farm crops in order to stop world-wide famine. While I concede we may kill off the human species by creating some kind of monstrous transhuman race of evil-doers, we at least have a fighting chance of improving our lot through the continued research of genetic editing.
Sample #2
All new technologies present challenges to the human race in terms of job disruption, economic distribution, health, national security, and ethics. We can cry and moan about it like the genetic engineering naysayers, but I say to them, "Welcome to Planet Earth." The survival of our species is not about retreating back into the womb of ignorance. Rather, it is about marching forward with knowledge with open eyes about both the benefits and potential dangers of this new genetic technology.
Sample #3
Granted, we cannot retreat into the womb and embrace ignorance to save ourselves from the ravishes of technology. Nor can we pull the reigns on our technological advancements as rogue states unleash their technological malevolence unchecked. However, with the same ardor and financial commitment, we must create a technology ethics task force so that we don't allow our technological advances in gene editing destroy us through _________________, _______________________, __________________________, and ________________________________.
Sample #4
Just as Harari makes the persuasive case that we cannot stop A.I. from taking over the democratic ideal of free will and the individual, we cannot stop genetic editing from transforming us from humans into transhumananists.
Sample #5
We would be well served to stop drinking Yuval Noah Harari's speculative Kook-Aid regarding the role of technology compromising the freedom of the individual. While Harari is a brilliant historian and story teller, much of his forecastings are rooted in fantastical speculation and science-defying hype.
5-13 Homework #16 due: Read Bryan Caplan’s “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of his claim. Watch Hasan Minhaj defend affirmative action in the context of Asian Americans suing Harvard (Netflix Patriotic Act, first episode). Homework #17 due: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend "A Teacher's Defense of Homework" and explain why giving homework to middle school and high school students is controversial.
5-22 Homework #19: We will cover private school debate, and we will 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. Homework #20: Email me your tentative thesis. I will go over some but not all thesis statements in class. The thesis statements' authors will remain anonymous.
5-27 Holiday
5-29 Do thesis samples in class and provide counterargument samples. Students will show their tentative thesis statements.
6-3 Peer Edit
6-5-18 Essay 5 due. Portfolio due.
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 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.”
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.
Should We Give Homework to Children?
One. What are Karl Taro Greenfeld’s concerns about his daughter Esmee’s homework?
Esmee chants the mantra, “Memorization, not rationalization,” suggesting it is better to saturation the brain the mindless memory rather than learn logic and the process of higher thinking.
So there is a concern for the type of homework.
But secondly, there is a concern for the sheer volume of homework. Esmee is doing three to four hours of homework to pass standardized tests based on core learning requirements that the school is legally bound to perform. In addition to the rigors of 3-4 hours of homework, Esmee, who is 13, is only getting 6.5 hours sleep a night.
Thirdly, Esmee’s pressure to do well in her homework is causing her to fake sleep, get up, and do more homework behind her parents’ backs.
Fourth, when Esmee tries to do his daughter’s homework, he finds it a daunting task. One night is 79 pages of a memoir, a Life Science assignment, and Algebra.
Fifth, the textbooks, such as the one in Life Science, are written in overwrought, crappy academic style that makes them unreadable for anyone, let alone a 13-year-old child.
Sixth, without doing any research, American schools are trying to play catch-up with other countries that are crushing us, especially in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), but our solution may be worse than the problem.
Seven, When a parent such as Greenfeld, approaches a teacher with concern about his daughter’s lack of sleep and overall burnout, the teacher threatens to demote child to remedial class.
Eight, Greenfeld compares parent-teacher conferences to speed dating.
Nine, at times Greenfeld wonders if they have brainwashed his daughter into accepting overwork as natural work since she feels assured she is battle-tested for high school. In a broader problem, we seem to be a culture acclimated to a term coined by Derek Thompson, “Workism,” as he expounds in an essay.
Thompson writes:
What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.
Homo industrious is not new to the American landscape. The American dream—that hoary mythology that hard work always guarantees upward mobility—has for more than a century made the U.S. obsessed with material success and the exhaustive striving required to earn it.
No large country in the world as productive as the United States averages more hours of work a year. And the gap between the U.S. and other countries is growing. Between 1950 and 2012, annual hours worked per employee fell by about 40 percent in Germany and the Netherlands—but by only 10 percent in the United States. Americans “work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less in unemployment, disability, and retirement benefits, and retire later, than people in comparably rich societies,” wrote Samuel P. Huntington in his 2005 book Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity.
There is nothing wrong with work, when work must be done. And there is no question that an elite obsession with meaningful work will produce a handful of winners who hit the workist lottery: busy, rich, and deeply fulfilled. But a culture that funnels its dreams of self-actualization into salaried jobs is setting itself up for collective anxiety, mass disappointment, and inevitable burnout.
In the past century, the American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings—from necessity to status to meaning. In an agrarian or early-manufacturing economy, where tens of millions of people perform similar routinized tasks, there are no delusions about the higher purpose of, say, planting corn or screwing bolts: It’s just a job.
“We’ve created this idea that the meaning of life should be found in work,” says Oren Cass, the author of the book The Once and Future Worker. “We tell young people that their work should be their passion. ‘Don’t give up until you find a job that you love!’ we say. ‘You should be changing the world!’ we tell them. That is the message in commencement addresses, in pop culture, and frankly, in media, including The Atlantic.”
But our desks were never meant to be our altars. The modern labor force evolved to serve the needs of consumers and capitalists, not to satisfy tens of millions of people seeking transcendence at the office. It’s hard to self-actualize on the job if you’re a cashier—one of the most common occupations in the U.S.—and even the best white-collar roles have long periods of stasis, boredom, or busywork. This mismatch between expectations and reality is a recipe for severe disappointment, if not outright misery, and it might explain why rates of depression and anxiety in the U.S. are “substantially higher” than they were in the 1980s, according to a 2014 study.
One of the benefits of being an observant Christian, Muslim, or Zoroastrian is that these God-fearing worshippers put their faith in an intangible and unfalsifiable force of goodness. But work is tangible, and success is often falsified. To make either the centerpiece of one’s life is to place one’s esteem in the mercurial hands of the market. To be a workist is to worship a god with firing power.
As Anne Helen Petersen wrote in a viral essay on “Millennial burnout” for BuzzFeed News—building on ideas Malcolm Harris addressed in his book, Kids These Days—Millennials were honed in these decades into machines of self-optimization. They passed through a childhood of extracurricular overachievement and checked every box of the success sequence, only to have the economy blow up their dreams.
While it’s inadvisable to paint 85 million people with the same brush, it’s fair to say that American Millennials have been collectively defined by two external traumas. The first is student debt. Millennials are the most educated generation ever, a distinction that should have made them rich and secure. But rising educational attainment has come at a steep price. Since 2007, outstanding student debt has grown by almost $1 trillion, roughly tripling in just 12 years. And since the economy cratered in 2008, average wages for young graduates have stagnated—making it even harder to pay off loans.
The second external trauma of the Millennial generation has been the disturbance of social media, which has amplified the pressure to craft an image of success—for oneself, for one’s friends and colleagues, and even for one’s parents. But literally visualizing career success can be difficult in a services and information economy. Blue-collar jobs produce tangible products, like coal, steel rods, and houses. The output of white-collar work—algorithms, consulting projects, programmatic advertising campaigns—is more shapeless and often quite invisible. It’s not glib to say that the whiter the collar, the more invisible the product.
Since the physical world leaves few traces of achievement, today’s workers turn to social media to make manifest their accomplishments. Many of them spend hours crafting a separate reality of stress-free smiles, postcard vistas, and Edison-lightbulbed working spaces. “The social media feed [is] evidence of the fruits of hard, rewarding labor and the labor itself,” Petersen writes.
Among Millennial workers, it seems, overwork and “burnout” are outwardly celebrated (even if, one suspects, they’re inwardly mourned). In a recent New York Times essay, “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?,” the reporter Erin Griffith pays a visit to the co-working space WeWork, where the pillows urge do what you love, and the neon signs implore workers to hustle harder. These dicta resonate with young workers. Asseveral studiesshow, Millennials are meaning junkies at work. “Like all employees,” one Gallupsurvey concluded, “millennials care about their income. But for this generation, a job is about more than a paycheck, it’s about a purpose.”
The problem with this gospel—Your dream job is out there, so never stop hustling—is that it’s a blueprint for spiritual and physical exhaustion. Long hours don’t make anybody more productive or creative; they make people stressed, tired and bitter. But the overwork myths survive “because they justify the extreme wealth created for a small group of elite techies,” Griffith writes.
There is something slyly dystopian about an economic system that has convinced the most indebted generation in American history to put purpose over paycheck. Indeed, if you were designing a Black Mirror labor force that encouraged overwork without higher wages, what might you do? Perhaps you’d persuade educated young people that income comes second; that no job is just a job; and that the only real reward from work is the ineffable glow of purpose. It is a diabolical game that creates a prize so tantalizing yet rare that almost nobody wins, but everybody feels obligated to play forever.
Is America Making Burnout the New Normal?
My students are burned out.
Here are 7 takeaways from my college students:
One. Most of my students are decent people trying to play by society’s rules so they can climb the economic ladder.
Two. Most of my students show up to class with a chronic sleep deficit.
Three. Most of my students don’t have big chunks of time to study and contemplate the joys of education for its own sake. Rather, my students grit their teeth and squeeze in college with the rest of their frantic schedule.
Four. Most of my students live in a state of constant financial insecurity.
Five. Most of my students are playing academic catch-up to make up for wasted time in high school.
Six. The cumulative effect of the above pressure points makes most of my students feel constantly stressed and exhausted, a condition they face with a mix of stoicism and depression.
Seven. The state of affairs described above has gotten progressively worse since I started teaching college in the 1980s.
In Contrast:
My wife’s school district where she teaches sixth grade give limits based on grade: 10 minutes per grade level.
For example, a third-grader gets 30 minutes, a sixth grader gets 60 minutes, and so on.
Also, anything more than 2 hours is considered counterproductive, according to major Stanford Study. In addition, Psychology Today draws from several studies to recommend only one hour of homework a night.
Townsend writes that she is obliged to prepare her students for college. She writes:
I teach biology at the Charles School, a five-year early-college high school in Columbus, Ohio. I believe that my job is to prepare my students for college. In order to do that, I teach a wide variety of topics including cells, genetics, evolution, and ecology, using the National Science Standards. I teach each topic in depth so that the students understand and appreciate the information. I teach them about the scientific method, lab procedures, and scientific writing, all skills they will need in college. It’s a lot to fit into one short year, and my class requires a lot of effort from my students.
Townsend wish she could have students do more in-class work to reduce homework load, but the students aren’t efficient with their time. As she writes:
Unfortunately, many kids choose to socialize when I give them time to work on their own. The students always say, “I’ll just do this for homework” and neglect to get much, if any, of the assignment done in class. Then, they come home with a pile of homework, which many parents assume the teachers assigned at the end of class.
Townsend goes on to say that homework may be difficult, but it trains kids for adulthood:
A few times a year, I require students to write a scientific paper. We spend a significant amount of time on these assignments at school, but effort outside of class is required as well. And I think that’s great. Schoolwork prepares students for work-related tasks, financial planning, and any project that ends with the feeling of a job well done. Long-term planning, projects, and deadlines are a key part of adulthood.
Townsend also argues that homework is necessary to compete on the world stage:
Nevertheless, some parents think their kids are getting too much work. One argument, which Greenfeld uses, is to compare American students with those in other countries. In his article, Greenfeld cites the fact that students in many overseas countries are scoring higher than American children, while being assigned less homework. He uses Japan as an example. In 2011, Japan was ranked fourth in science scores in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. But according to a study cited in Greenfeld’s article, Japanese students are actually assigned less homework by their teachers. Why, then, do they achieve more? The answer comes when you look at the differences in our cultures and our views on education. Japanese teachers may not be assigning much homework, but it turns out that Japanese kids are doing plenty of homework anyway.
I spoke with Chris Spackman, who is the English as a Second Language coordinator at my school. Chris taught for 13 years in Japan, and served on the Board of Education in the city of Kanazawa. I asked him why Japanese kids are scoring so high on achievement tests despite having relatively little homework. “Because Japanese kids go to juku,” he answered. He went on to explain that juku is a common after-school program that prepares Japanese kids for achievement testing. In Japan, senior high school is not required or guaranteed. Instead, students compete for spots at prestigious high schools by scoring high on achievement tests. “Some schools are for art, or college prep,” says Chris. “You have to study hard in junior high to get into the high school that you want.” In high school, Japanese kids continue to go to juku so that they can get into the college they want as well. So, Japanese kids do academic work outside of school, just not necessarily work assigned by their classroom teacher.
Townsend finishes her essay by arguing that a compromise should be made and for parents to realize that teachers are fighting for their kids’ best interests:
There is room for compromise on the homework debate. In their book Reforming Homework, Richard Walker and Mike Horsley state that while homework isn’t very beneficial for younger kids, it’s still beneficial for older students. I agree. I’ve learned, while preparing my students to start college early, that study skills become much more important than they were in primary school. It’s also important for teachers to assign work that’s high in quality, instead of quantity. The vast majority of teachers I know are careful to only assign work that’s important for student success. Remember, teachers have to grade all of these assignments – we wouldn’t want to spend extra time grading papers that have no value.
In the comments on Greenfeld’s article, some readers assume that teachers don’t have our students’ best interests at heart. But usually, teachers who aren’t incredibly devoted to their students don’t last in the profession. The teachers who do stay are committed to giving the best education to their students. We wouldn’t be assigning that homework, giving that test, or reading that book if we didn’t truly believe it was worthwhile. All we ask is that you trust us, just a little.
Example of an Essay That Never Uses First, Second, Third, Fourth, Etc., for Transitions, But Relies on "Paragraph Links"
Stupid Reasons for Getting Married
People should get married because they are ready to do so, meaning they're mature and truly love one another, and most importantly are prepared to make the compromises and sacrifices a healthy marriage entails. However, most people get married for the wrong reasons, that is, for stupid, lame, and asinine reasons.
Alas, needy narcissists, hardly candidates for successful marriage, glom onto the most disastrous reasons for getting married and those reasons make it certain that their marriage will quickly terminate or waddle precariously along in an interminable domestic hell.
A common and compelling reason that fuels the needy into a misguided marriage is when these fragmented souls see that everyone their age has already married—their friends, brothers, sisters, and, yes, even their enemies. Overcome by what is known today as "FOMO," they feel compelled to “get with the program" so that they may not miss out on the lavish gifts bestowed upon bride and groom. Thus, the needy are rankled by envy and greed and allow their base impulses to be the driving motivation behind their marriage.
When greed is not impelling them to tie the knot, they are also chafed by a sense of being short-changed when they see their recently-married dunce of a co-worker promoted above them for presumably the added credibility that marriage afforded them. As singles, they know they will never be taken seriously at work.
If it's not a lame stab at credibility that's motivating them to get married, it's the fear that they as the years tick by they are becoming less and less attractive and their looks will no longer obscure their woeful character deficiencies as age scrunches them up into little pinch-faced, leathery imps.
A more egregious reason for marrying is to end the tormented, off-on again-off-on again relationship, which needs the official imprimatur of marriage, followed by divorce, to officially terminate the relationship. I spoke to a marriage counselor once who told me that some couples were so desperate to break-up for good that they actually got married, then divorced, for this purpose.
Other pathological reasons to marry are to find a loathsome spouse in order to spite one’s parents or to set a wedding date in order to hire a personal trainer and finally lose those thirty pounds one has been carrying for too long.
Envy, avarice, spite, and vanity fuel both needy men and women alike. However, there is a certain type of needy man, whom we'll call the Man-Child, who finds that it is easier to marry his girlfriend than it is to have to listen to her constant nagging about their need to get married. His girlfriend’s constant harping about the fact their relationship hasn’t taken the “next logical step” presents a burden so great that marriage in comparison seems benign. Even if the Man-Child has not developed the maturity to marry, even if he isn’t sure if he’s truly in love, even if he is still inextricably linked to some former girlfriend that his current girlfriend does not know about, even if he knows in his heart of hearts that he is not hard-wired for marriage, even if he harbors a secret defect that renders him a liability to any woman, he will dismiss all of these factors and rush into a marriage in order to alleviate his current source of anxiety and suffering, which is the incessant barrage of his girlfriend’s grievances about them not being married.
Indeed, some of needy man’s worst decisions have been made in order to quell a discontented woman. The Man-Child's eagerness to quiet a woman’s discontent points to a larger defect, namely, his spinelessness, which, if left unchecked, turns him into the Go-With-the-Flow-Guy. As the name suggests, this type of man offers no resistance, even in large-scale decisions that affect his destiny. Put this man in a situation where his girlfriend, his friends, and his family are all telling him that “it’s time to get married,” and he will, as his name suggests, simply “go with the flow.” He will allow everyone else to make the wedding plans, he’ll let someone fit him for a wedding suit, he’ll allow his mother to pick out the ring, he’ll allow his fiancé to pick out the look and flavor of the wedding cake and then on the day of the wedding, he simply “shows up” with all the passion of a turnip.
The Man-Child's turnip-like passivity and his aversion to argument ensure marital longevity. However, there are drawbacks. Most notably, he will over time become so silent that his wife won’t even be able to get a word out of him. Over the course of their fifty-year marriage, he’ll go with her to restaurants with a newspaper and read it, ignoring her. His impassivity is so great that she could tell him about the “other man” she is seeing and he wouldn’t blink an eye. At home he is equally reticent, watching TV or reading with an inexpressive, dull-eyed demeanor suggestive of a half-dead lizard.
Whatever this reptilian man lacks as a social animal is made up by the fact that he is docile and is therefore non-threatening, a condition that everyone, including his wife, prefers to the passionate male beast whose strong, irreverent opinions will invariably rock the boat and deem that individual a troublemaker. The Go-With-the-Flow-Guy, on the other hand, is reliably safe and as such makes for controlling women a very good catch in spite of his tendency to be as charismatic and flavorful as a cardboard wafer.
A desperate marriage motivation exclusively owned by needy, immature men is the belief that since they have pissed off just about every other woman on the planet, they need to find refuge by marrying the only woman whom they haven’t yet thoroughly alienated—their current girlfriend. According to sportswriter Rick Reilly, baseball slugger Barry Bonds’ short-lived reality show was a disgrace in part because for Reilly the reality show is “the last bastion of the scoundrel.” Likewise, for many men who have offended over 99% of the female race with their pestilent existence, marriage is the last sanctuary for the despised male who has stepped on so many women’s toes that he is, understandably, a marked man.
Therefore, these men aren’t so much getting married as much as they are enlisting in a “witness protection program.” They are after all despised and targeted by their past female enemies for all their lies and betrayals and running out of allies they see that marriage makes a good cover as they try to blend in with mainstream society and take on a role that is antithetical to their single days as lying, predatory scoundrels.
The analogy between marriage and a witness protection program is further developed when we see that for many men marriage is their final stab at earning public respectability because they are, as married men, proclaiming to the world that they have voluntarily shackled themselves with the chains of domesticity in order that they may be spared greater punishments, the bulk of which will be exacted upon by the women whom they used and manipulated for so many years.
Because it is assumed that their wives will keep them in check, their wives become, in a way, equivalent to the ankle bracelet transmitters worn by parolees who are only allowed to travel within certain parameters. Marriage anchors man close to the home and, combined with the wife’s reliable issuing of house chores and other domestic duties, the shackled man is rendered safely tethered to his “home base” where his wife can observe him sharply to make sure he doesn’t backslide into the abhorrent behavior of his past single life.
Many men will see the above analysis of marriage as proof that their fear of marriage as a prison was right all along, but what they should learn from the analogy between marriage and prison is that they are more productive, more socialized, more softened around his hard edges, and more protected, both from the outside world and from themselves by being shackled to their domestic duties. With these improvements in their lives, they have actually, within limits, attained a freedom they could never find in single life.
5-22 Homework #19: We will cover private school debate, and we will 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. Homework #20: Email me your tentative thesis. I will go over some but not all thesis statements in class. The thesis statements' authors will remain anonymous.
5-27 Holiday
5-29 Do thesis samples in class and provide counterargument samples. Students will show their tentative thesis statements.
One. There is a disconnect between "college curricula and the job market." In other words, the subject matter is too often irrelevant to the labor market.
Two. Students don't retain knowledge.
Three. Students are "philistines," which means they are soulless materialists who care only about money and status.
Four. We have "credential inflation," which results in a lot of worthless credentials.
Five. The dogma that we must go to college makes us neglect vocational training.
5-8 Homework #15 due: Read Bell Hooks’ “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the conflict Bell Hooks has about how her education gave her privilege on one hand and challenged her not to be a sellout on the other. Also look at Bell Hooks’ “keeping close to home.” Homework #16 due: Read Cryan Caplan’s “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of his claim.
5-13 Homework #16 due: Read Bryan Caplan’s “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of his claim. Watch Hasan Minhaj defend affirmative action in the context of Asian Americans suing Harvard (Netflix Patriotic Act, first episode). Homework #17 due: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend “A Teacher’s Defense of Homework” and explain why giving homework to middle school and high school students is controversial.
5-22 Homework #19: We will cover private school debate, and we will 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. Homework #20: Email me your tentative thesis. I will go over some but not all thesis statements in class. The thesis statements' authors will remain anonymous.
5-27 Holiday
5-29 Do thesis samples in class and provide counterargument samples. Students will show their tentative thesis statements.
6-3 Peer Edit
6-5-18 Essay 5 due. Portfolio due.
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 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.”
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.
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 powerlifter 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.
Example of an Essay That Never Uses First, Second, Third, Fourth, Etc., for Transitions, But Relies on "Paragraph Links"
Stupid Reasons for Getting Married
People should get married because they are ready to do so, meaning they're mature and truly love one another, and most importantly are prepared to make the compromises and sacrifices a healthy marriage entails. However, most people get married for the wrong reasons, that is, for stupid, lame, and asinine reasons.
Alas, needy narcissists, hardly candidates for successful marriage, glom onto the most disastrous reasons for getting married and those reasons make it certain that their marriage will quickly terminate or waddle precariously along in an interminable domestic hell.
A common and compelling reason that fuels the needy into a misguided marriage is when these fragmented souls see that everyone their age has already married—their friends, brothers, sisters, and, yes, even their enemies. Overcome by what is known today as "FOMO," they feel compelled to “get with the program" so that they may not miss out on the lavish gifts bestowed upon bride and groom. Thus, the needy are rankled by envy and greed and allow their base impulses to be the driving motivation behind their marriage.
When greed is not impelling them to tie the knot, they are also chafed by a sense of being short-changed when they see their recently-married dunce of a co-worker promoted above them for presumably the added credibility that marriage afforded them. As singles, they know they will never be taken seriously at work.
If it's not a lame stab at credibility that's motivating them to get married, it's the fear that they as the years tick by they are becoming less and less attractive and their looks will no longer obscure their woeful character deficiencies as age scrunches them up into little pinch-faced, leathery imps.
A more egregious reason for marrying is to end the tormented, off-on again-off-on again relationship, which needs the official imprimatur of marriage, followed by divorce, to officially terminate the relationship. I spoke to a marriage counselor once who told me that some couples were so desperate to break-up for good that they actually got married, then divorced, for this purpose.
Other pathological reasons to marry are to find a loathsome spouse in order to spite one’s parents or to set a wedding date in order to hire a personal trainer and finally lose those thirty pounds one has been carrying for too long.
Envy, avarice, spite, and vanity fuel both needy men and women alike. However, there is a certain type of needy man, whom we'll call the Man-Child, who finds that it is easier to marry his girlfriend than it is to have to listen to her constant nagging about their need to get married. His girlfriend’s constant harping about the fact their relationship hasn’t taken the “next logical step” presents a burden so great that marriage in comparison seems benign. Even if the Man-Child has not developed the maturity to marry, even if he isn’t sure if he’s truly in love, even if he is still inextricably linked to some former girlfriend that his current girlfriend does not know about, even if he knows in his heart of hearts that he is not hard-wired for marriage, even if he harbors a secret defect that renders him a liability to any woman, he will dismiss all of these factors and rush into a marriage in order to alleviate his current source of anxiety and suffering, which is the incessant barrage of his girlfriend’s grievances about them not being married.
Indeed, some of needy man’s worst decisions have been made in order to quell a discontented woman. The Man-Child's eagerness to quiet a woman’s discontent points to a larger defect, namely, his spinelessness, which, if left unchecked, turns him into the Go-With-the-Flow-Guy. As the name suggests, this type of man offers no resistance, even in large-scale decisions that affect his destiny. Put this man in a situation where his girlfriend, his friends, and his family are all telling him that “it’s time to get married,” and he will, as his name suggests, simply “go with the flow.” He will allow everyone else to make the wedding plans, he’ll let someone fit him for a wedding suit, he’ll allow his mother to pick out the ring, he’ll allow his fiancé to pick out the look and flavor of the wedding cake and then on the day of the wedding, he simply “shows up” with all the passion of a turnip.
The Man-Child's turnip-like passivity and his aversion to argument ensure marital longevity. However, there are drawbacks. Most notably, he will over time become so silent that his wife won’t even be able to get a word out of him. Over the course of their fifty-year marriage, he’ll go with her to restaurants with a newspaper and read it, ignoring her. His impassivity is so great that she could tell him about the “other man” she is seeing and he wouldn’t blink an eye. At home he is equally reticent, watching TV or reading with an inexpressive, dull-eyed demeanor suggestive of a half-dead lizard.
Whatever this reptilian man lacks as a social animal is made up by the fact that he is docile and is therefore non-threatening, a condition that everyone, including his wife, prefers to the passionate male beast whose strong, irreverent opinions will invariably rock the boat and deem that individual a troublemaker. The Go-With-the-Flow-Guy, on the other hand, is reliably safe and as such makes for controlling women a very good catch in spite of his tendency to be as charismatic and flavorful as a cardboard wafer.
A desperate marriage motivation exclusively owned by needy, immature men is the belief that since they have pissed off just about every other woman on the planet, they need to find refuge by marrying the only woman whom they haven’t yet thoroughly alienated—their current girlfriend. According to sportswriter Rick Reilly, baseball slugger Barry Bonds’ short-lived reality show was a disgrace in part because for Reilly the reality show is “the last bastion of the scoundrel.” Likewise, for many men who have offended over 99% of the female race with their pestilent existence, marriage is the last sanctuary for the despised male who has stepped on so many women’s toes that he is, understandably, a marked man.
Therefore, these men aren’t so much getting married as much as they are enlisting in a “witness protection program.” They are after all despised and targeted by their past female enemies for all their lies and betrayals and running out of allies they see that marriage makes a good cover as they try to blend in with mainstream society and take on a role that is antithetical to their single days as lying, predatory scoundrels.
The analogy between marriage and a witness protection program is further developed when we see that for many men marriage is their final stab at earning public respectability because they are, as married men, proclaiming to the world that they have voluntarily shackled themselves with the chains of domesticity in order that they may be spared greater punishments, the bulk of which will be exacted upon by the women whom they used and manipulated for so many years.
Because it is assumed that their wives will keep them in check, their wives become, in a way, equivalent to the ankle bracelet transmitters worn by parolees who are only allowed to travel within certain parameters. Marriage anchors man close to the home and, combined with the wife’s reliable issuing of house chores and other domestic duties, the shackled man is rendered safely tethered to his “home base” where his wife can observe him sharply to make sure he doesn’t backslide into the abhorrent behavior of his past single life.
Many men will see the above analysis of marriage as proof that their fear of marriage as a prison was right all along, but what they should learn from the analogy between marriage and prison is that they are more productive, more socialized, more softened around his hard edges, and more protected, both from the outside world and from themselves by being shackled to their domestic duties. With these improvements in their lives, they have actually, within limits, attained a freedom they could never find in single life.
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