Lesson Plan Über Alles

“It’s Not the Fault of the Sandwich Shop: Readers Debate”

“Should Confederate Flags be Banned in the US?”

One. Living in the Shadow Race and Class

Two. Against School

Three. Standardized Testing, John Oliver video

Four. From Degrading to Grading Alfie Kohn

Five. Nikole Hannah Jones

Or Tribalism, Cal Newport, Food Stamps

One and Two. Cal Newport Parts 1 and 2

Three. People Like Us

Four. Prudence Or Cruelty, “Messy Relationship Between Food Stamps and Health”

Five. I Used to be a Human Being, Nosedive, Flight from Conversation, NFL debate with Steve Almond;

“What Facebook Did to American Democracy”; “What Facebook and Google Can Learn from the First Major News Hoax”

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12/31/2017

Death of Expertise Lessons

Death of Expertise Lessons

Lesson One

One. What forces make culture in love with its own ignorance at the expense of expertise?

Narcissism gives us “fragile egos” that don’t want us to be told we’re wrong. We are a self-coddling culture.

Our narcissism is so virulent that we are proud of our ignorance that compels us to never be challenged by facts that contradict our positions.

A second force is the false moral equivalence that says all opinions are alike. You can believe what you want.

Related to this moral equivalence is a third factor, moral relativism, which says you can believe what you want to believe. All opinions are equally valid. Quoting Isaac Asimov, Nichols writes we live in a “Cult of Ignorance” in which “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

A fourth reason: We no longer value “principled, informed” arguments, which are vital to a healthy democracy. We dismiss such informed arguments as “authoritarian” and “elitist.” We’d rather believe the crackpot’s conspiracy theory.

A fifth reason: More and more people dismiss expertise with anger, as if they are entitled to do so. For example, patients will contradict their doctors because these patients feel emboldened by their online sources, however dubious they might be.

Yet another reason is that scandals, such as Watergate, the Iraq War debacle based on “good intel” and other government lies, fiascoes, and incompetencies have made us cynical of so-called authority figures who make a claim of expertise. We see the world, as Henry James wrote, led by “morons and madmen.” We should have “healthy skepticism” toward experts, Tom Nichols writes, but not knee-jerk resentment.

A seventh reason is that there is no dialogue between experts and the general public. The experts too often live in their cocoons while the public gets their intel from the Internet and distinguish between credible evidence and bogus misinformation. Fewer and fewer people read books. Nichols writes that is book is about how the relationship between experts and the general public is collapsing.

An eighth reason is that coddled narcissists don’t want the truth however unpleasant it may be. Rather, narcissists want fake intel that reinforces their ego, promises them the good news that they are right, and promises them easy solutions to complex problems. Feel-good “folk wisdom,” not dispassionate truth and objective reality, is the guiding force.

A ninth reason is confirmation bias, which is our tendency to cherry-pick information that confirms our pre-existing biases.

Two. How is rejecting expertise for fake news or fake intel dangerous?

Nichols gives the example of crackpot Cal Berkeley professor Peter Duesberg, an AIDs denialist, who rejected HIV as a cause of AIDs. His false intel was believed by South African president Thabo Mbeki who rejected AIDs drugs resulting in over 300,000 deaths. Mbeki still believes in the false intel today.

In this age of Internet access, more people than ever are rejecting fundamental rules of evidence and throwing away accumulated knowledge; worse, they are then making decisions, like supporting a war or an invasion, based on their lack of knowledge, like not knowing where Ukraine is on a map.

With people satisfied by their Internet browsing, the line that separates experts from amateurs and crackpots has dissolved.

Our danger is twofold:

One, we can simply be wrong through sheer incompetence and disdain for principles of gathering evidence. He writes people can be determined to avoid gluten and not even know what gluten is.

Nichols points out that stupidity is not the problem. A lot of people who embrace fake news and fake intel are smart enough. The problem is narcissism, an emotional maladaptation defined by people having a grandiose self-image that repels criticism, opposing ideas, and objective reality as a counterbalance to the narcissist’s misguided conclusions.

Two, we can be manipulated by propaganda, people who use the cynical tactics described in George Orwell’s famous essay “Politics and the English Language.”

Three. Nichols asks the question: Haven’t grumpy intellectuals always shaken their fists at the masses to deplore how wrong they are? What’s different about the current situation?

One, fake news can pick up steam faster than ever in Internet Age.

Two, we’ve confused healthy skepticism against authorities with using baseless opinions as a worthy rebuttal.

Three. America fosters a cult of “individual understanding” as part of our democratic ideal. Trusting authorities is simply un-American. There is nothing wrong with not trusting authorities as long as we understand how to examine credible evidence from the bogus.

Four. Privileged people think it’s “hip” to disdain authority and embrace their own pseudo-knowledge. They go on crackpot diets, drink dangerous raw milk, and shun vaccines, thinking their “above it all.”

Four. If the medical establishment was wrong about eggs, should be forever disbelieve them?

No. It’s a faulty equivalent to say an establishment that relies on science and credible evidence is as prone to error as a person or organization that discards rules of science and credible evidence.

We must be careful to not fall into the trap of whataboutism. This fallacy is explained in the Washington Post.

Five. How have our political opinions deteriorated into a tribalist gang mentality?

Nichols observes that disagreement, which should be welcomed as part of a mind-expanding debate, is looked at as a threat, looked at as disrespect, and looked at as an insult: “You simply want me to join your tribe.”

Disturbingly, these passions come with little knowledge on any subject and belong to what Nichols calls the “low-information voter.”

Such voters believe fake news like Obama Care entailing “death panels,” a rumor that was spread by anti-Obama operatives.

Only 5% of Americans know that their taxes for foreign aid are less than 1%. A huge number of Americans, in contrast, think that 20% of their taxes go to foreign aid. This ignorance shows how arrogant people are to have such a strong tribal identity with no information to back it up.

Six. What is an expert?

Experts are those we turn to when we need knowledge. We rely on them for our wellbeing, safety, and protection.

Experts are specialists in their field.

They are people of distinction in their field and belong to an exclusive group.

They possess these characteristics:

Education

Talent

Experience

Peer affirmation

They come from distinguished institutions such as MIT and Georgia Tech.

They are current in their field.

They continue to grow in their field.

They are not complacent in their field. Nichols quotes a Chinese proverb: Beware the craftsman who claims 20 years of experience when in reality he’s only had one year of experience 20 times.

Experts make mistakes but far less so than a layperson (nonspecialist).

Seven. What is the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

The dumber you are, the more confident you are that you’re not dumb. In contrast, I feel dumb all the time, so paradoxically, I’m less dumb than a person who thinks he’s not dumb.

When we suffer the DKE, we are prone to overestimating ourselves.

When we suffer the DKE, we think we’re above average, even though our collective delusion contradicts statistics.

The DKE thrives in an absence of metacognition, the ability to put distance on yourself and assess your behavior with dispassionate analysis.

People who suffer from the DKE cannot recognize expertise so when engaging in a disagreement with an expert they double down and assert their ignorance, and this frustrates the expert. The gap between the DKE person and the expert widens and widens. It’s a vicious cycle.

A DKE person resists education. “I already know what I need to know, so get the hell out.”

A DKE person is more interested in not having his feelings hurt than finding the truth.

Eight. What is confirmation bias?

Confirmation bias is our tendency to cherry-pick intel that confuses what we already believe. We can counter this type of ignorance through critical thinking: learning how to look at statistics, numbers, risk, and probability, and not relying on anecdotes to come to hasty generalizations.

My fear of flying is not supported by the facts. I should fear driving a car more.

Whether it’s trickle-down economics or the optimum minimum wage, one usually finds studies that conform to one’s pre-existing biases and beliefs.

People exercise confirmation bias to uphold conspiracy theories, such as the 9/11 truthers whose conspiracy theories were debunked by Popular Mechanics, a topic you can use for your essay.

Lesson Two

One. How are colleges failing to make students better critical thinkers?

Colleges have dumbed-down by becoming the following:

Consumer products offering commodities to their clients rather than tough work and STEM courses as a foundation.

Students are treated like customers, not students, because colleges, which are businesses, are competing for an increased customer base. This results in grade inflation and more “joke courses,” easy classes and fads.

Professors are encouraged to pander to students and coddle them so the professors will get good ratings.

Because there is an “insatiable demand for degrees,” all young people are expected to go to college, so there is a glut of instructors and students, and this glut lowers the quality of education.

Colleges perpetuate the myth that there are no experts, that we are all basically the same intelligence.

College is supposed to be uncomfortable and challenging to students to make them stronger, but colleges are too geared to making students feel accommodated and therefore they weaken students by giving students “unfounded self-confidence.”

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12/17/2017

Fall 2018 Books and Essays for English 1C

English 1C

Essay 1

How to Think

Backfire Effect, and “Unfollow”

Essay 2

Death of Expertise

Have students apply fallacies and narcissism in Death of Expertise to vaccines, 9-11 truthers, racist groups, troll-driven political campaigns, global warming deniers, or other conspiracy theorists.

Essay 3: Brooks and Equality, Jon Ronson and Shaming, and Anti-Natalism

Class One. David Brooks sandwich essay

Consider the real reason for educational inequality is not a lack of tests, a smokescreen to the real problem, but the privileges of the top economic tier discussed in David Brooks' essay "How We Are Ruining America."

Slate critique of Brooks' essay.

Slate's Osita Nwanevu writes "David Brooks Almost Gets It" as a response to Brooks' infamous essay.

Classes Two and Three. Defend, refute, or complicate Jon Ronson’s claim that Justine Sacco was unfairly demonized by social media, which creates a failure of critical thinking. See Big Think, Rolling Stone interview with Jon Ronson; Guardian article about how Jon Ronson was targeted and demonized; Washington Post article about how Sacco is “wrong poster child.” See Jon Ronson’s Ted Talk.

Classes Four and Five: Support, refute, or complicate David Benatar’s nihilistic argument for his anti-natalist view of willful extinction. David Benatar’s case against procreation and “The Case for Not Being Born.” See Benatar interview. See critical study PDF. See Reason review of Benatar’s book. See New Yorker article. And see the following: Strange Viral Saga of Keaton Jones as an exercise in failed critical thinking.

Essay 4: Omelas and Built-In Cruelty, Spanking Debate, “Winter Dreams,” “The Other Woman,” and Choosing a School

Class One. Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and John Oliver video about child labor for clothing.

Class Two. Show 5-minute spanking debate video on Steve Harvey. Spanking Debate; see Stacey Patton’s “Stop Beating Black Children.” See “What If Spanking Works?” in the Boston Globe. See “The Debate on Spanking Is Short on Science, High on Emotion.”

Class Three. “Winter Dreams” (and Dombeck’s Emptiness?)

Class Four. “The Other Woman” by Sherwood Anderson

Class Five. Morality and Choosing a School: “Choosing School for My Daughter in a Segregated City”

“Are Private Schools Immoral?”

Essay 5: UBI, Epistocracy, and Genetic Modification

Classes One and Two. UBI

Support, refute, or complicate the argument that radical changes in the job market over the next 20 years due to robots and high-tech will compel country's to provide their citizens with a Universal Basic Income.

Vox argues UBI hurts the elderly.

A brief history of Universal Basic Income in The New Yorker.

Arguments in Support of Universal Basic Income (UBI)

One. 47% of the jobs will be lost in the next 10-20 years. We have a new paradigm that requires a new way of providing a livelihood to our citizens.

Two. UBI, which is a monthly stipend to everyone regardless of income, would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper a year than current welfare system.

Three. UBI would eliminate need for minimum wage. Lower minimum wage would encourage more hiring.

Four. Because UBI doesn't give more money for children, UBI doesn't reward one lifestyle over another.

Five. Citizens would have more time and resources to train and get educated for more career options presuming they used their time and money wisely.

Six. Most stay-at-home parents are women who have not been justly paid for their domestic work over the centuries. UBI would help remedy that injustice.

Seven. UBI gives citizens an escape valve from an abusive job or relationship. Having guaranteed money makes it easier to bail when you have to. "This is jacked up, man. I've got to bail."

Eight. 13K a year isn't so much that you would be content to retire in your house. Most people would want at the very least to supplement their meager income with part-time or full-time work. More enterprising citizens would use their free time and money for education and job re-training.

Nine. UBI would eliminate welfare abuses and welfare fraud because UBI spells the death of welfare as we know it.

Ten. Providing for the citizens with UBI would lessen the risk of the kind of discontent that leads to nationalist nativism, a racist political movement that makes one ethnic tribe hate on immigrants as scapegoats for the country's woes.

Eleven. Addressing the counterargument that not having to work would make us lazy depressed slobs, some would argue that technology is forcing us to change and adapt. Just as coal workers are inevitably going to become extinct in the next century, we must adapt to a new employment landscape. We must either adapt or die. We must not be chained to our "Calvinism hangover," the deeply American notion that work is salvation and unemployment is a sign of sin and depravity.

Twelve. The rich know they have to share their wealth because the throng with torches and pitch forks will be knocking on their doors. In other words, UBI is much needed pacifier, a form of social control that augments the safety of the rich.

Thirteen. The open debate about UBI--the biggest debate--is the philosophical question about the nature of work. Some say UBI will kill work and that without work people will descend into depression and pathology. Others say we will adapt to this new economic landscape. One argument in favor of UBI is that even if we don't know the answer to this question definitively, we HAVE NO CHOICE but to adapt to a world where close to 50% of jobs will be lost.

Fourteen. Technology will change the human animal on a chemical level and we will be able to adapt to the new work environment as evidenced by Elon Musk's exploration into his new neural lace company. Such technologies will make us smarter and more adaptive as human beings.

Fifteen. Even if we concede that not working will turn us into lazy bums, that is the lesser evil of the economic injustice social chaos resulting from not having UBI.

Arguments Against Universal Basic Income (UBI)

One. A dependent society is a dysfunctional society. Dependence, in other words, leads to laziness.

Two. A lack of self-reliance diseases the soul and corrupts society. The dependent will drag down the producers.

Three. Acute dependence leads to totalitarianism and dehumanization. Once you take a government handout, you become vulnerable to the government's control over every part of your life. See The Giver.

Four. Acute dependence breaks down the family unit. Parents aren't responsible for their children; the government is. Why stick to your family, when you don't rely on them?

Five. Being "off the grid" makes one chronically depressed, non-productive, and unemployable. Our identity and sense of wellbeing is tied to having a job.

Six. There is no increment for children. Why not? Because you're not encouraged to have children to get more. Some find this a form of lifestyle control. Others like it.

Seven. The estimated 13K a year isn't enough though some say that still puts people in the top 12% of all global earners.

Eight. Unless all countries had equal UBI, the more desirable UBI countries would be a magnet for people of other countries who'd swarm into "healthy UBI" countries to bilk their system.

Nine. UBI is giving 15% of average national income. This would require tax revenue of 15% of national income. That is too much tax, some say, for such a small income.

Consult the following:

Universal Basic Income: Side Effect of the Tech Revolution?

The Progressive Case for Replacing the Welfare State with Basic Income

We can afford UBI, but is it a good idea?

Why Universal Basic Income Is a Terrible Idea

A Primer or Introduction to Universal Basic Income

Economist gives us an introduction to UBI.

Psychology Change Needed for Universal Basic Income

Arguments for Universal Basic Income

3 Reasons for Universal Basic Income from Brookings Institute

Pro-Work Argument for UBI

Washington Post article that argues UBI won't make America great again.

Challenging the American Work Ethic

There is a notion in America, from the beginning of its European history, that being a hard worker means being noble, virtuous, and successful.

The contrary is also assumed: If you're poor and unemployed, your life is evidence that you are a member of the damned. You are morally depraved and bankrupt.

This notion comes from a form of Protestantism called Calvinism. John Calvin said evidence of being a member of God's elect was being a hard worker. German philosopher Max Weber said this became the "Protestant Work Ethic," the fuel of American capitalism.

Read "The Protestant Work Ethic Is Real"

Perhaps the American Work Ethic is Based on Unexamined Opinions

Inherited opinions: These are opinions that are imprinted on us during our childhood. Robert Atwan writes they come from “family, culture, traditions, customs, regions, social institutions, or religion.”

Involuntary opinions: These are the opinions that result from direct indoctrination and inculcation (learning through repetition). If we grow up in a family that teaches us that eating pork is evil, then we won’t eat at other people’s homes that serve that porcine dish.

Considered opinions. Atwan writes, “These are opinions we have formed as a result of firsthand experience, reading, discussion and debate, or independent thinking and reasoning. These opinions are formed from direct knowledge and often from exposure and considering other opinions.”

Some questions to consider about the work ethic for your UBI paper:

Should we really have a work ethic for menial, repetitive jobs that reduce us to human routers?

Don't jobs prevent us from spending time on our real interests and passions?

Have we been brainwashed by the Protestant Work Ethic so that we are contented "rabbit workers" for our employers?

Big Think video (7 minutes)

The Nation asks if UBI could work

538 analysis

Arguments For and Against in Futurist

Case for and against in Vox

Maslow Argument

UBI rejected in the Federalist

Dissent calls UBI a false promise

Argument That UBI would increase poverty

Washington Post refutation of UBI

Guardian defends UBI with reference to Finland

“Why Don’t We Have Universal Basic Income?” in New Yorker

“Is Free Money the Answer?” in the NYT

“Future of Not Working” in NYT magazine

“Why Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Is Not Working”

LA Times argument for UBI

“Free Money at the Edge of the Tech Boom” in Atlantic

Universal Basic Income: Side Effect of the Tech Revolution?

The Progressive Case for Replacing the Welfare State with Basic Income

Why Universal Basic Income Is a Terrible Idea

Arguments Against Universal Basic Income (UBI)

One. A dependent society is a dysfunctional society.

Two. A lack of self-reliance diseases the soul and corrupts society.

Three. Acute dependence leads to totalitarianism and dehumanization. See The Giver.

Four. Acute dependence breaks down the family unit. Parents aren't responsible for their children; the government is.

Five. Being "off the grid" makes one chronically depressed, non-productive, and unemployable.

Classes 3 and 4: Against Democracy

Class 5 Genetic Modification and film Gattaca. See “Case Against Human Gene Editing”; Pro and Con

“It’s Not the Fault of the Sandwich Shop: Readers Debate”

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12/08/2017

English 1C Fall 2018 Books and Essays

English 1C

Essay 1 How to Think, Backfire Effect, and “Unfollow”

Essay 2

One. David Brooks sandwich essay

Slate critique of Brooks' essay.

Slate's Osita Nwanevu writes "David Brooks Almost Gets It" as a response to Brooks' infamous essay.

Two. David Benatar’s case against procreation

Three. David Benatar’s “The Case for Not Being Born”

Four. UBI

Five. Empathy

Essay 3

One. Vaccines

Two. Against Democracy

Three. Genetic Modification and film Gattaca. See “Case Against Human Gene Editing”; Pro and Con

How Teens in Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters with Fake News

Four. “Winter Dreams” and Dombeck’s Emptiness

Five. “The Other Woman” by Sherwood Anderson

Essay 4

One. Five. What Facebook Did to American Democracy

Social Media Is Making Democracy Less Democratic

Economist: Social Media Nemesis to Democracy

Two. The Great White Way and Get Out, Kleptocracy

Three. Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and John Oliver video about child labor for clothing.

Four. “Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner” or compare to John Cheever’s “The Swimmer”

Five. “Choosing School for My Daughter in a Segregated City”

Three. Essay 5: The Sunshine State

Dwight Garner review is helpful

Blood at the Root and this NYT review

Rules for Writers

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12/07/2017

English 1A Fall 2018 Books and Essay Assignments

English 1A Fall 2018 Books and Essay Assignments

Essay 1: Cooked and Arthur C. Brooks

Cooked and Arthur Brooks essay

Essay 2: Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad and Ta Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations”

Essay 3

One. Cal Newport and Passion Hypothesis (full week)

Two. “People Like Us” and tribalism argument

Three. “Prudence Or Cruelty,” and food stamps debate

Four. NFL and Steve Almond

Five. Bariatric surgery debate as seen in Vox

Immigration debate with Sweet Home Alabama video from Vice News

Essay 4

One. “The Caging of America” and The New Jim Crow (full week)

Two. Confederate Flag Debate (full week) : “Remembering History As Fable”

Jamelle Bouie’s essay “White Americans Have to Make a Choice,” on Confederacy and “I Used to Lead Tours at a Plantation”

Dickerson’s “The Great White Way,” Coates’ essay on reparations and kleptocracy and Get Out

Compare “The Case for Reparations” with Netflix documentary The Thirteenth

Three. Smartphones Ruin a Generation and Coddling of America (full week)

Essay 5

Two Bell Hooks Essays

From Degrading to De-grading

Standardized Testing

FP Colleges should be abolished

“The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone”

Why College Rankings Are a Joke, Shut Up About Harvard

Miscellaneous

Why It Pays to be a Jerk and “Emptiness”; The Bet, Omelas, child labor,

One. Caging of America: Is mass incarceration the New Jim Crow?

Two and Three. Coates and Thirteenth: Is racism a relic of the past or an ongoing humanitarian crisis?

Four. Reparations debate.

Five. Confederate flag.

“What This Cruel War Was Over” Coates

“Should Confederate Flags be Banned in the US?”

One. Living in the Shadow Race and Class

Two. Against School

Three. Standardized Testing, John Oliver video

Four. From Degrading to Grading Alfie Kohn

Five. Nikole Hannah Jones

Or Tribalism, Cal Newport, Food Stamps

One and Two. Cal Newport Parts 1 and 2

Three. People Like Us

Four. Prudence Or Cruelty, “Messy Relationship Between Food Stamps and Health”

Five. I Used to be a Human Being, Nosedive, Flight from Conversation, NFL debate with Steve Almond;

“What Facebook Did to American Democracy”; “What Facebook and Google Can Learn from the First Major News Hoax”

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11/29/2017

English 1C Book and Essay Bank

English 1C

Essay 1 How to Think, Backfire Effect, and “Unfollow”

Essay 2 So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed

Essay 3

One. UBI

Two. Vaccines

Three. Against Democracy

Four. Genetic Modification and film Gattaca. See “Case Against Human Gene Editing”; Pro and Con

“It’s Not the Fault of the Sandwich Shop: Readers Debate”

Essay 4

One. “Winter Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dombeck’s Emptiness

Two. Why It Pays to be a Jerk and “Emptiness”; The Bet, Omelas, child labor, The Other Women, Greenleaf

Three. Consider the real reason for educational inequality is not a lack of tests, a smokescreen to the real problem, but the privileges of the top economic tier discussed in David Brooks' essay "How We Are Ruining America."

Slate critique of Brooks' essay.

Slate's Osita Nwanevu writes "David Brooks Almost Gets It" as a response to Brooks' infamous essay.

David Brooks Slammed for Sandwich Shop Elitism

“The Real Problem with David Brooks’ Sandwich Column”

Four. Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

Five. “Case for Not Being Born”

Five. Immigrant Debate; wages, and Vice Video: Sweet Home Alabama

Five. Confederate flag.

Jamelle Bouie’s essay “White Americans Have to Make a Choice,” on Confederacy and “I Used to Lead Tours at a Plantation”

Dickerson’s “The Great White Way,” Coates’ essay on reparations and kleptocracy and Get Out

Compare “The Case for Reparations” with Netflix documentary The Thirteenth

“What This Cruel War Was Over” Coates

How becoming a Nazi shows failure of critical thinking:

Making of a Nazi

Essay 5: Man’s Search for Meaning

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11/24/2017

Fast Food Nation Lessons

Fast Food Nation Lessons

Lesson One

Essay Assignment

Schlosser aims to show that the domination of the fast food business in American society is a predatory agency that results in exploitation, dehumanization, a cultural dumbing-down, dysfunctional, overly-business-friendly government, urban sprawl, and poor physical health. Is he convincing in his damning portrayal of the American fast food enterprise? Or is he a left-leaning ideologue writing a far-left screed to impose his preconceived political beliefs on his readers? Support your argument in a 1,200-word essay. Be sure to include a counterargument-rebuttal section, and an MLA format Works Cited page. You need 5 sources.

One. What is Schlosser’s purpose in juxtaposing fast food relics with a nuclear bomb shelter?

He is driving the point that fast food is more than a business; it is a sort of predator and/or parasite that has become part of the very fiber of our being, and we accept it as normal when in fact this fast food influence is pathological and reflects our entire existence: cultural, economical, domestic, and, of course, gastronomic.

Schlosser writes on page 3 that “buying fast food has become so routine, so thoroughly unexceptional and mundane, that it is now taken for granted, like brushing your teeth or stopping for a red light.”

But this “mundane” lifestyle defines our culture as other cultures have been defined by the way they eat: “The early Roman Republic was fed by its citizen-farmers; the Roman Empire, by its slaves. A nation’s diet can be more revealing than its art or literature. On any given day in the United States about one-quarter of the adult population visits a fast food restaurant. During a relatively brief period of time, the fast food industry has helped to transform not only the American diet, but also our landscape, economy, workforce, and popular culture.

Two. How has fast food industry been a negative force in our society?

No even addressing health concerns for a moment, the economic decline of our country corresponds to our economic decline. Since 1973, American real wages, adjusted for inflation, have steadily gone downward (4).

As these real wages have gone down, more mothers have had to join the workforce. This means less time for home cooking. “Today about half of the money used to buy food is spent at restaurants--mainly at fast food restaurants (4).

“The McDonald’s Corporation is largest owner of retail property in the world.”

96% of schoolchildren are familiar with Ronald McDonald.

Fast food is part of a growing trend for franchises, a chain everything.

A chain, which values uniformity and conformity, is the opposite of independent owned.

Fast food introduces new innovations and is a showcase for capitalism; but it is also part of the growing chasm between the rich and the poor.

3.5 million fast food workers get minimum wage.

Rural life serves the fast food industry: slaughterhouses, cattle ranching, agriculture, all corporate.

Independent farmers are dying out: “The United States now has more prison inmates than full-time farmers.”

Three. What free market delusion fuels the American West’s fast food fantasy?

We see on page 7 that fast food arises from a “political philosophy that now prevails in so much of the West--with its demand for lower taxes, smaller government, an unbridled free market” and this philosophy “stands in total contradiction to the region’s true economic underpinnings. No other region of the United States has been so dependent on government subsidies for so long . . . “

The fast food industry is hypocritical: “While publicly espousing support for the free market, the fast food chains have quietly pursued and greatly benefited from a wide variety of government subsidies.”

Four. How is the fast food industry a predatory agency of children?

“Fast food is heavily marketed to children and prepared by people who are barely older than children. This is an industry that both feeds and feeds off the young.”

Fast food is made to be addictive in a top-secret chemical factory in New Jersey.

Fast food uses toys to entice children.

Fast food employs teens to sell its wares to kids.

Five. Why was Southern California the birthplace of fast food?

A sprawling city, Los Angeles requires long-distance travel by car. Between 1920 and 1940, when cars were affordable, traffic lent itself to a place to stop and get a “quick bite.”

Los Angeles had the first drive-through bank and motel.

Car culture exists in a symbiotic relationship with fast food culture. The irony is that the “free-market” minimum-wage philosophy of fast food depends on the government-subsidy of roads.

Los Angeles was the birthplace of the carhop, where waitresses, wearing alluring costumes, carried trays to the food patrons in parked cars. These waitresses received no hourly wages; they relied on tips.

Fast food was a big hit with Southern California youth culture who wanted to stay up late.

To this day, fast food is a hit with youth, including cannabis smokers, according to this Forbes article.

We read that “fast food targets stoners.”

Six. How did McDonald’s revolutionize the fast food business?

The brothers got sick of dealing with teenagers, so they created a “Speedee Service System” to get patrons out of restaurant as quickly as possible. This system got rid of carhops, waitresses, dishwashers, busboys, and made the system self-service.

At first, customers were testy with the no-service policy, but the cheaper price of burgers won their hearts, and McDonald’s grew like weeds.

Another factor: This cheaper price made it so working-class families could afford to feed their entire families. This was a game-changer.

At this time, San Bernardino had the happy face McDonald’s side of American culture and the darker Hell’s Angels side (21).

We read: “Entrepreneurs from all over the country went to San Bernardino, visited the new McDonald's, and built imitations of the restaurant in their hometown” (22).

Seven. What is the comparison between McDonald’s and Disneyland?

Both offer a fantasy of American cleanness and innocence.

Both offer a lifestyle of conformity, control, and uniformity.

Both were master salesmen to children.

Both relied on federal funds to elevate their businesses while both asserted a conservative political philosophy that discourages public funding for everyone else (38).

Both champion science and technology to make elevate their business model.

Disney and McDonald’s champion cartoon characters that became children’s obsessions.

Both champion “synergy” in which you have tie-ins like the movie Sing with Sing character toys give with Happy Meals (40).

There was a time when only a few companies targeted children with their products (42); however, Disney and McDonald’s, because of their success, influenced hordes of other companies to follow their child-targeting ways. We read: “Hoping that nostalgic childhood memories of a brand will lead to a lifetime of purchases, companies now plan ‘cradle-to-grave’ advertising strategies. They have come to believe what Ray Kroc and Walt Disney realized long ago--a person’s ‘brand loyalty’ may begin as early as the age of two. Indeed, market research has found that children often recognize a brand logo before they can recognize their own name” (43).

Eight. Why are children an effective target for marketing products?

Children stay loyal to the product when they get sucked in at an early age.

Children nag their parents to the point they wear their parents down.

On page 44, we read there are many types of nags children use:

Pleading
Persistent
Forceful
Demonstrative (tantrums)
Sugar-coated
Threatening
Pity

Lesson Two: Chapter 3 Behind the Counter and Chapter 4 Success

One. What is Schlosser’s objective in connecting fast food to the sprouting of tract homes on page 60?

He’s talking about the homogenization of American life and how this homogenization is dehumanizing.

Two. What have been the results of low taxation in Colorado Springs described on pages 63-65?

The lack in education, infrastructure. We need to discuss urban sprawl. See these YouTube videos:

“Rethinking Suburbia and Urban Sprawl”

“Urban Sprawl”

“America’s Biggest Problem”

“How Cities Make Us Sick”

Three. What does Schlosser say about the fast food industry’s reliance on adolescent labor on pages 68-88.

See the owed money, “strict regimentation,” double injury rate, and assembly line systems.

Posted at 09:31 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/21/2017

McMahon 2018 Spring English 1A Syllabus Revised with 4th Edition of Acting Out Culture

McMahon 2018 Spring English 1A Syllabus

Office H121P; Phone Extension: 5673

Office Hours: Mon and Wed: 2:30-3:45; Tues and Thurs: 12:15-1 and 3:30-4:15

Email: [email protected]

Books and Materials You Need to Buy for This Class

Cooked by Jeff Henderson

Acting Out Culture, 4^rd Edition, edited by James Miller

Rules for Writers, 8^th Edition by Diana Hacker

1 Blue Book for in-class final writing exam

1 pocketed, flat folder for your Homework Portfolio

Work You Must Do in This Class

One. You will write 5 typed, 1,200-word essays in MLA format. The fifth essay, your capstone essay, will need 5 sources for your Works Cited. These essays will be uploaded on turnitin. Late essays are accepted for a week after deadline and are marked down a full grade.

Two. 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. Classes will typically start with a 20-minute discussion about the reading response while I mark them with a teacher’s stamp. The mini essay will be stamped with either an excellent top-grade mark or a middling mediocre mark. An unacceptable essay won’t be marked. You will keep these essays in a flat, pocketed folder, which I will grade twice a semester. Each grading period is referred to as Portfolio 1 and Portfolio 2. You cannot make-up missing mini essays. You should be motivated to show up to every class.

Three. Before the 1,200-word typed essays are due on turnitin, there is a peer edit session. 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.

Four. During the last week of the semester, you will write an in-class Blue Book Final exam essay of 500 words.

Grading Based on 1,000 Points and 13,500 Words Written Over the Semester (about 110 words a day).

One. First four 1,200-word essays are 125 points each.

Two. Final Capstone Essay with 5 sources: 1,200-word essay is 250 points.

Three. Two Homework Portfolios include all your mini essays and peer edit drafts (kept in flat pocketed folders) 100 points each, for 200 points

Four. In-Class Final Blue Book Exam is 500 words for 50 points.

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 with 2 sources (Brooks and Henderson) Due 2-5-18

One. Apply the wisdom of Arthur C. Brooks’ essay “Love People, Not Pleasure” to develop a thesis that analyzes the personal transformation of Jeff Henderson rendered in his memoir Cooked.

Suggested Outline:

Paragraph 1: Summarize Brooks’ essay.

Paragraph 2: Summarize Henderson’s memoir.

Paragraph 3: Your thesis that shows how Henderson’s transformation illustrated Brooks’ ideas.

Paragraphs 4-8 will support your thesis.

Paragraph 9, your conclusion, will restate your thesis in dramatic form.

1,200-word total

Sources and Signal Phrases

You need only two sources, Henderson’s book and Brooks’ essay, but you must use at least 6 different signal phrases for using in-text citations in the form of quotations, paraphrase and summary.

Two. A wise man once said that when we think we're rising in life, we're really falling and when we think we're falling, we're really rising. In a 6-page essay, apply this wisdom, in all of its psychological complexity, to Jeff Henderson's journey and compare to someone from a personal interview. Use blog, book, and personal interview for your sixth page, your Works Cited page.

Suggested Outline:

Paragraph 1: Write a narrative of someone who thought he or she was rising but was actually falling.

Paragraph 2: Summarize Henderson’s memoir.

Paragraph 3: Your thesis analyzes how Henderson’s memoir is an illustration of the wise man’s adage with 5 mapping components.

Paragraphs 4-8 will support your thesis.

Conclusion, a dramatic restatement of your thesis.

1,200 words

Sources and Signal Phrases:

You need only one source, Henderson’s book, but you must use at least 6 different signal phrases for using in-text citations in the form of quotations, paraphrase and summary.

Essay #2 Options with Signal Phrases and Works Cited Due 2-26-18

One. In an essay of appropriate length, defend, refute, or complicate Cal Newport’s argument from his book excerpt (available online) from So Good They Can't Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset.

Suggested Essay Structure:

Paragraph 1: Summarize Newport's argument.

Paragraph 2: Explain how you've been pursuing your career goals before reading Newport's book. Then explain how his book affects the way you might re-think your strategy and approach to your career plans.

Paragraph 3: Your thesis: Example: "Cal Newport's argument that should should shun the Passion Hypothesis and replace it with a craftsman's mindset is convincing (is not convincing) because ______________, ______________, _________________, and ______________________.

Paragraphs 4-7 are your supporting paragraphs

Paragraph 8: Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraph in which you anticipate how your opponents will oppose your thesis and your rebuttal to their counterargument.

Paragraph 9: Conclusion: Dramatic reiteration of your thesis.

1,200 words

Sources and Signal Phrases

You must use at least 2 sources and 6 signal phrases for your essay.

Two. Defend, refute, or complicate Kristof’s defense of food stamps as he posits his case in “Prudence Or Cruelty?”

In paragraph 1, summarize the debate of food stamps.

In paragraph 2, write your thesis.

Paragraphs 3-6: Support your thesis with these body paragraphs.

Paragraph 7: Anticipate how your opponents would disagree with you (counterargument) and show why your opponents are wrong (rebuttal).

Typical counterargument goes like this: "My opponents claim that I am wrong because of _________; however, their claim fails to address ___________." Or, "My opponents will take issue with __________; however, their opposition is clearly misguided when we consider _______________."

Paragraph 8: Conclusion, a restatement of your thesis with powerful emotion (pathos).

You must use at least 2 sources and 6 signal phrases for your essay.

Three. Support, refute, or complicate the primary argument in Nathanael Johnson’s “Is There a Moral Case for Eating Meat?” (189)

Four. Develop a thesis that compares Francine Prose’s “The Wages of Sin”(197) with Harriet Brown’s “How My Life Changed with One Sentence” (204).

Essay #3 Options with 3 Sources Due 3-23-18

One. Develop a thesis that analyzes the human inclination for staying within the tribe of sameness as explained in David Brooks’ “People Like Us” (very popular with students).

Two. Develop a thesis that compares “People Like Us” (525) and J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” (531).

Three. Based on your reading of Harriet McBryde Johnson’s “Unspeakable Conversations (93),” write an argument that addresses Peter Singer’s philosophy of euthanasia.

Four. Defend, refute, or complicate Steve Almond’s thesis from his essay “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” (125)

Five. Develop a thesis that compares Barbara Ehrenreich’s “How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty” (364) and Linda Tirado’s “You Get What You Pay For” (370).

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

One. Support, refute, or complicate Debra J. Dickerson's argument that race in America is more of a social fantasy than a reflection of objective reality.

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

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

Four. Develop a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow.” Consult Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America.”

Five. Develop an argument that addresses the notion that Tom Jacob’s essay (78) is a feeble solution to the problem of global warming in the context of Naomi Klein’s essay (70).

Six. Develop a thesis that examines how cultural tastes are part of our public personality in the context of Tom Vanderbilt’s “How Predictable Is Our Taste” (142), Kevin Fallon’s “Why We Binge-Watch Television” (156), and David Brooks’ “People Like Us” (525).

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

One. Support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion from “Degrading to De-grading” that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon. In other words, will students benefit from an accountability-free education? Why? Explain.

Two. Support, refute, or complicate the inferred lesson from bell hooks’ essay, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” that upward mobility requires a betrayal of one’s economic class and even family. To rub shoulders with the privileged, do we have to "sell out," to conform to their snobbish ways, and in doing so, are we betraying our core values and turning our backs on our roots?

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

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

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

Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:

This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.

You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.

You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.

At least one source must be from an ECC library database.

At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.

At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.

The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.

This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.

You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.

You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.

You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Your paper must be logically organized and focused.

Late papers reduced a full grade. No late papers accepted a week past due date.

Peer Edit

You must do a peer edit. You must show up to class on peer edit day with a completed typed draft for 20 points.

You Can’t “Ride” the Class

If you’re “riding” the class, that is missing more than 10% of classes and not keeping up with assignments, you can’t fulfill the Student Learning Outcomes, and you will be dropped.

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 smart phone and I see you, you get a warning the first time. Second time, you must leave the class and lose 25 points. Third time, you must leave the class and lose 50 points. The above also applies to talking and doing homework from other classes.

Tardies: It’s reasonable to be late a couple of times a semester, but some students consistently show up late to class, and this distraction compromises the learning environment significantly. Therefore, starting on the fourth tardy, 50 points must be deducted from total grade and another 25 points must be deducted for every tardy after that.

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

Deductions of 50 for more than 4 absences (two tardies equal one absence). Repeated use of smart phone in class or leaving class repeatedly to "take a call" counts as a tardy.

More than 5 absences is a loss of 100 points. These rules are designed so that we will be compliant with Title 5 Contact Hour Laws prescribed by the State of California.

Tardies:

It’s reasonable to be late a couple of times a semester, but some students consistently show up late to class, and this distraction compromises the learning environment significantly. Therefore, starting on the fourth tardy, 50 points must be deducted from total grade and another 25 points must be deducted for every tardy after that. Being on your smartphone in class is equivalent to being tardy.

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, 2^nd floor)
The LRC Tutorial Program offers free drop-in tutoring. For the tutoring schedule, go to www.elcamino.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.

Reading and Writing Schedule Includes Homework for Your Two Portfolios

February 12 Introduction, Syllabus, Portfolio, and Signal Phrases; find a team of 3 or 4 for your beginning class activity that will start our classes throughout the semester.

February 14 Cooked, read 1-50, comma splices; homework #1 due: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word typed essay that explains 3 ways Henderson’s childhood shaped his personality. Use at least 3 signal phrases in citing the memoir.

February 19 Holiday

February 21 Cooked, read 51-150, signal phrases, fragments; homework #2 due: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that analyzes the causes of Jeff Henderson’s initial self-pity in prison. Use at least 3 signal phrases in citing the memoir.

February 26 Cooked, read 151-end, parallelism, MLA format; homework #3 due: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that gives 3 reasons Henderson’s post-prison struggles were more difficult that his stay in prison. Use at least 3 signals phrases to cite the memoir.

February 28 First Typed Draft of Cooked Essay for Peer Edit Due

March 5 Essay 1 Due, So Good They Can’t Ignore You excerpt

March 7 Cal Newport continued, dangling modifiers; homework #4: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that explains 3 ways Newport’s thesis is relevant to your own career quest. Use at least 3 signal phrases to cite Newport’s excerpt.

March 12 “Prudence Or Cruelty” 525, writing introductions; homework #5: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that analyzes 3 supports Kristof uses to support his defense of food stamps. Use at least 3 signal phrases.

March 14 “Is There a Moral Case for Eating Meat? 189, homework #6: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that offers 3 defenses for killing animals. How convincing are these defenses offered in Johnson’s essay? Use 3 signal phrases.

March 19 “The Wages of Sin” (197), “How My Life Changed in One Sentence” (204); signal phrase review; homework #7: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that explains 3 reasons for “our cultural obsession with thinness,” according to Harriet Brown (204).

March 21 Peer Edit, bring completed typed first draft to class

March 26 Essay 2 Due, “People Like Us” (525), homework #8: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that explains why people stick to their tribe as David Brooks presents us in his essay. Use at least 3 signal phrases.

March 28 “Hillbilly Elegy” (531); in class, we will compare “Hillbilly Elegy” to “People Like Us.”

April 2 “Unspeakable Conversations” 93; homework #9: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that explains how Harriet McBryde Johnson has to deal with stereotypes and how these stereotypes feed into Peter Singer’s morally-bankrupt philosophy. Use at least 3 signal phrases.

April 4 “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” 125; counterargument templates: homework #10: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that explains Almond’s objection to football. Use no fewer than 3 signal phrases citing Almond’s essay.

April 16 “How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty” 364, “You Get What You Pay For” 370: homework #11: write a 350-word essay that analyzes 3 reasons, according to Linda Tirado, why she doesn’t feel invested in her job. Use at least 3 signal phrases. Your peer edit draft and Homework Portfolio 1 are due in 2 days.

April 18 Peer Edit, bring completed typed first draft to class; Homework Portfolio 1 Due. Bring to class.

April 23 Essay 3 Due, “The Great White Way”; homework #12: write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that analyzes why race would be impossible to explain to aliens, as Dickerson posits. Use no fewer than 3 signal phrases to cite the essay. Should we ban all Confederacy iconography and limit it to museums? Consult the following: Jamelle Bouie’s “White Americans Have to Make a Choice,” Aisha Harris’ “Spring Time for the Confederacy,” Margaret Biser’s “I Used to Lead Tours at a Plantation,” John Oliver’s Confederacy commentary, Coates’ “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?”

April 25 Read online essay, Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America.” homework #13: write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that explains why Adam Gopnik declares that mass incarceration is a scandal. Use at least 3 signal phrases.

April 30 “One Way Or Another, Everything Changes 70, “It’s Not Easy Being Green--And Manly” 78; homework #14: write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that addresses the Klein’s claim that we need to make dramatic changes in order to save our planet from climate change. Use at least 3 signal phrases citing

May 2 “How Predictable Is Our Taste 142, “Why We Binge-Watch Television 156; homework #15: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that explains, according to Tom Vanderbilt, the forces that influence our tastes for popular culture. Use at least 3 signal phrases to cite Vanderbilt’s text.

May 7 “Higher Ground” 58, “Restoration of Faith” 65; homework #16: In 3 paragraphs, explain the cultural norms about crime and punishment that, according to Bryan Stevenson, need to be questioned. Be sure to have at least 3 signal phrases.

May 9 Peer Edit; bring your completed, typed first draft to class.

May 14 Essay 4 Due, “From Degrading to De-Grading” (238); homework #17: write a 3-paragraph, 350-word essay that gives 3 counterarguments to Kohn’s claim. Use at least 3 signal phrases citing Kohn’s essay.

May 16 “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” (287), “Against School” (271); homework #18: write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the bell hooks’ struggle with race and social class as she tries to climb the education ladder. Use at least 3 signal phrases citing hooks’ text.

May 21 “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong” (252), online homework#19: In the context of Kristina Rizga’s essay (253), write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the claim that standardized testing improves education. Use at least 3 signal phrases citing Rizga’s essay. "Why Poor Schools Can't Win at Standardized Testing"; John Oliver video

May 23 “The Trigger Warning Myth”(309), “Welcome to the ‘New World’” (317), “Why College Ratings Are a Joke” (296), “Shut Up About Harvard” (301) homework #20: Write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that analyzes why Frank Bruni rejects the validity of college ratings (296). Use at least 3 signal phrases.

May 28 Holiday

May 30 Peer Edit; bring first typed draft to class.

June 4 Blue Book Exam

June 6 Essay 5 Due, Portfolio2 Due in Class

Sample Signal Phrases:

From ThoughtCo:

Sample Signal Phrases:

Maya Angelou said, "Start loving yourself before you ask someone else to love you."
"Start loving yourself before you ask someone else to love you," Maya Angelou said.
"Start loving yourself," Maya Angelou said, "before you ask someone else to love you."
As Mark Twain observed, "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions."
According to Frito-Lay research, women snack only 14 percent . . .
The candidate insisted that the tariff must be reduced to a "competitive basis" and taxes . . .
Undernourished children have long been India’s scourge--“a national shame,” in the words of its prime minister . . ..

From GMU Writing Center:

Below are some guidelines and tips for using signal phrases.

Signal phrases usually include the author’s name but can also include the author’s job title or background (“reporter for Washington Post,” “researcher,” “senator,” “scholar,” and so on) and/or the title of the source.
Signal phrases usually come at the beginning of a sentence before the source material, but they can also occur in the middle of a source or at the end.
To avoid monotony and repetition, try to vary both the language and placement of your signal phrases.
According to Maxwell & Hanson, Some scholars have shown... In the words of researchers Smith and Johnson, “...” As legal scholar Terrence Roberts has noted, “....” “...,” attorney Smith claims. Smith and Robert offer a persuasive argument: “....”
Choose a verb that is appropriate to the way you are using your source. Below is a list of verbs that can be used in signal phrases:
acknowledges adds admits affirms agrees answers argues asserts claims comments concedes confirms contends counters counterattacks declares defines denies disputes echoes endorses estimates finds grants illustrates implies insists mentions notes observes predicts proposes reasons recognizes recommends refutes rejects reports responds reveals speculates states suggests surmises warns writes

Peer Edit for Typed Essay (First Draft)

First Page

Do you have a salient, distinctive title that is relevant to your topic and thesis?
Do you have your name, instructor’s name, the course, and date (in that order) at the top left?

Format

Are you using 12-point font with Times New Roman?
Are your lines double-spaced with black font color?
Do you make sure there are no extra spaces between paragraphs (some students erroneously use 4 spaces between paragraphs)
Do you use 1-inch margins?
Do you use block format for quotes of 4 or more lines in which you indent another inch from the left margin?

Introduction

Does your introduction have a compelling hook using an anecdote, a troubling current event, a startling statistic, etc.?
Do you avoid pat phrases or clichés? For example, “In today’s society . . .” or “In today’s modern world . . .” or “Since the Dawn of Man . . .”

Thesis

Do you have a thesis that articulates your main purpose in clear, specific language?
Is your thesis sophisticated in that it makes an assertion that goes beyond the obvious and self-evident?
Is your thesis debatable?
Do you address your opponents with a concession clause? (While opponents of my proposal to raise the minimum wage to $22 an hour make some compelling points, their argument collapses when we consider _____________, _______________, __________________, and ________________. )
Does your thesis have explicit or implicit mapping components that outline the body paragraphs of your essay?

Questions from Your Reader (write on a separate page so you’ll have more room to write)

One. What’s most compelling about the essay so far?

Two. What is most needed for improvement so far?

Three. Something I would like the writer to explain more is . . .

Four. One last comment would be . . .

Five. What is the writer’s thesis?

Six. On a scale of 1-10, how compelling is the thesis and what could make it more compelling?

Seven. On a scale of 1-10, how effective is the title? Could it be improved? How?

Eight. Does the writer have well developed paragraphs with clear topic sentences?

Nine. Does the writer use a diversity of paragraph transitions?

Ten. Does the writer use diverse and appropriate signal phrases?

Posted at 10:52 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/14/2017

Against Football Writing Assignments with Lesson 1

Against Football

Lesson One

Essay Options

Support, refute, or complicate the argument that football is a necessary evil, including the brain sacrifice of many of the players, for providing escape to working-class Americans for whom football is their lifeblood, and to be denied this lifeblood would be to make the fans’ lives unbearable.

Support, refute, or complicate the argument that football is not merely an escape for Americans whose lives would be unbearable without football, but that football is the very essence of America, and therefore that to lose football would be to lose America as we know it.

Support, refute, or complicate the argument that football, which allows men to marvel at miracles on the field and to live vicariously through their heroes, is a salve for men’s wounded masculinity and their sense of irrelevance and worthlessness.

Support, refute, or complicate Almond’s claim that “allegiance to football legitimizes and even fosters within us a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia.”

Study Questions for Lesson 1

One. Contemplating his love of football and his ironic detachment to it, Almond writes he had an epiphany: “Something was wrong with me.” Explain what this something is.

Almond has acclimated to an evil of violence and of sacrificing young men for the entertainment of hungry fans and in doing so he is enabling an evil enterprise. Because this evil became his normal, he lived for so long without seeing the moral bankruptcy of football.

Two. In many ways, this book is about the broader problem we have of the synapses that fire in the brain and the conscience that says, “Shame on you.” Explain this duality in the context of the book.

Almond feels a visceral, reflexive connection to football. It is his addiction. On the other hand, his moral conscience tells him it is morally bankrupt.

The same is true of wanting to be a vegan but then salivating upon smelling barbecued meats.

Just as one questions the suffering of the animal one eats, one may consider the brain damage and other problems a football player suffers in order to provide the Everyman some delicious entertainment.

Moreover, this sport was a form of warfare, in which the goal was to march into enemy territory. The military aspects of football are connected, Almond believes, to nationalism and the military industrial complex. His conscience objects to football’s complicity in the military prison complex.

Three. How is football a salve for men’s wounded masculinity?

Football combines grace with physical prowess and a sense of combat. In the industrial age where many men have desk jobs, they lose their primal connection to physical force and brutality, so they need to live vicariously through football.

It appears men thrive on controlled violence as a part of venting aggression and as a part of male bonding.

Additionally, many men are maladapted to domestic life, feel incompetent and irrelevant in the family, and find escape and bonding with their tribe on football weekends.

In many ways, football, with its constant commentary and controversy before and after games, is the first Reality Show.

Four. In many ways football harkens to the past of duels and gladiator fights. Why are such bloody spectacles appealing to men?

Like the novel Fight Club, people in the real world become numb, alienated, and depressed over living in a synthetic universe where everything we do is the result of an elaborate mechanism.

Decent, hard-working men conform to life's script, go to college, get a job, have a family, live in the suburbs, pay their bills on time, have an excellent credit rating, yet they feel empty, hollow, humiliated, emasculated, and irrelevant. Adorning themselves in the consumer trappings of suburban life has proved useless.

Fighting is an attempt to strip ourselves of these consumer trappings and confront our manhood face to face, bare-knuckled, so to speak.

Fighting is a way to give honor to courage and survival of the fittest. We read in The Professor in the Cage by Jonathan gottschall that such rituals are pagan. Paganism values honor, strength, and courage in contrast to Christianity, which emphasizes compassion for the weak and forgiveness of others, and turning the other cheek.

Gottschall observes that duels fill the imagination. One famous duel is that of the son of Alexander Hamilton, Philip, and his opponent. Three years later, Alexander Hamilton died in a duel himself. His death agony lasted 38 hours. His son’s was about 24 hours.

These duels were reactions over insult exchanges. Calling someone a liar or something similar resulted in a duel in early 19th Century America.

Hamilton entered the duel knowing he’d saddle his family with debts and that dueling was against his Christian faith. However, he was compelled by the code of manly honor. We read that, “Throughout the five-hundred-year history of Euro-American dueling culture aristocratic men were generally prepared to kill each other at the drop of a hat.”

Honor was a premium in duel culture. Honor “represented the entirety of a man’s social wealth,” Gottschall writes.

Five. How does honor culture exist in football and what is honor culture’s appeal to men?

This notion of “social wealth” has today been transferred to what Jonathan Gottschall calls “muscular cultures.” We see muscular cultures in prison, sports, and warfare. They bring out the “roots of masculine aggression.”

We further read that , “Prisons are the most extreme honor cultures currently in existence. The harder the prison, the harder the culture of honor.”

In prison, they don’t call this social capital honor. They call it respect.

A world of honor or respect is a world of “reciprocation. A man of honor builds a reputation for payback. In a tit-for-tat fashion he returns favors and retaliates against slights.”

We read an example of disrespect, even stealing someone’s banana or cutting in line at prison, can result in death because disrespect is the ultimate sin in a prison environment. We read, “By failing to retaliate, the new guy fails the heart test . . .”

Failing to have heart and losing respect will make someone a prison slave. “Not fighting over a banana or a book is the same as declaring I am a rabbit. I am food.”

In duel culture, to refuse to duel was the equivalent to suicide, a form of “social annihilation.” To be a “duel dodger was, in many ways, a fate worse than death.”

Conclusion:

No matter how successful in the material world, men are not happy unless they enjoy "social wealth," the esteem of others and themselves for having the kind of honor that is born of courage and masculine power. Lacking esteem in their own world, they seek to live vicariously through their football heroes.

Television is able to capture the football “mayhem” in glorious close-up to make a hyper-real universe that is more “real” than their own lives.

Six. How does football use war mythology to appeal to its viewers?

Myth is a huge part of football. NFL Films captures all of its history with Darth Vader music and Captain Kirk themes. Slow motion archival films with military music is America’s Anthem.

These films are so glorious one would think they were capturing battles that defined America’s greatness in history.

To add to the mythical power, when a team wins the Super Bowl, the winning quarterback receives a phone call from The President.

George Carlin is famous for his description of football as a simulation of war.

As part of the mythology, football is perceived as “intellectual” to give respectability to primal violence and aggression. This aggression is connected to American aggression: big business, the Establishment’s desire to achieve its purposes unfettered.

Seven. How is football America’s national obsession?

Americans just don’t watch football. They consume the entire football industry: TV, radio, fantasy leagues, blogs, video commentaries, scouting and draft reports, sports talk, Twitter, Periscope, other social media. Football is all-consuming. It gives meaning to people’s otherwise meaningless lives.

Football is in love with its own sense of grandeur and significance. It is a pompous enterprise. It takes itself too seriously. But Americans buy into the myth and the obsession. Why? In part because they don’t have options.

Almond mentions that people go to church, but these same church goers spend more time thinking about football than they do God. If religion is what you do with your spare time, then for many football is their religion--or addiction.

We have to come to grips with football as our Nation’s Addiction. Do you know people who are addicted to football or sports in general? You probably do.

Eight. What was the gateway drug for football fandom for Almond?

He bonded with his father. This is common. This includes myself. Many families bond over football. This supports the thesis that “football is America.”

Once you take in this drug, “wins and losses become personal.” Football becomes your life.

Nine. Almond points out that at least 30% of football players end up with terminal brain damage. Is this a worthy sacrifice for the entertainment and “meaning” so many Americans derive from football?

What if one makes the argument that for many, for whom football is a tradition passed down from family members, football is all they know; it is the only life they know, and that to take away football with all of its grand significance, self-identity, community, and family bonding, would be to take away everything. They would find their lives unbearable. Is football, which kills and maims its players, a noble sacrifice for the resut of us?

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11/11/2017

Updated Books and Essays for 2018 1A and 1C

English 1A

Cooked

Shrill by Lindy West or Between World and Me

Fast Food Nation

Rules for Writers

Essay 1:

Cooked and Arthur Brooks essay

Essay 2: Race

One. Caging of America: Is mass incarceration the New Jim Crow?

Two and Three. Coates and Thirteenth: Is racism a relic of the past or an ongoing humanitarian crisis?

Four. Reparations debate.

Five. Confederate flag.

Jamelle Bouie’s essay “White Americans Have to Make a Choice,” on Confederacy and “I Used to Lead Tours at a Plantation”

Dickerson’s “The Great White Way,” Coates’ essay on reparations and kleptocracy and Get Out

Compare “The Case for Reparations” with Netflix documentary The Thirteenth

“What This Cruel War Was Over” Coates

“Should Confederate Flags be Banned in the US?”

Essay 3: Education

One. Living in the Shadow Race and Class

Two. Against School

Three. Standardized Testing, John Oliver video

Four. From Degrading to Grading Alfie Kohn

Five. Nikole Hannah Jones

Essay 4: Or Unintended Consequences in Jon Ronson’s book about Shame

Or Tribalism, Cal Newport, Food Stamps

One and Two. Cal Newport Parts 1 and 2

Three. People Like Us

Four. Prudence Or Cruelty, “Messy Relationship Between Food Stamps and Health”

Five. I Used to be a Human Being, Nosedive, Flight from Conversation, NFL debate with Steve Almond; “What Facebook Did to American Democracy”; “What Facebook and Google Can Learn from the First Major News Hoax”

Essay 5: Fast Food Nation

English 1C

Essay 1 How to Think and “Unfollow”

Essay 2 Bunk by Kevin Young

Essay 3

One. UBI

Two. Vaccines

Three. Against Democracy

Four. Genetic Modification and film Gattaca. See “Case Against Human Gene Editing”; Pro and Con