In a selection from the book “Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America,” the author Diana Kendall analyzes the different social classes in America, including the way they are formed, and how they continue to be formed.
Kendall examines how television shows such as “The Simple Life,” with Paris Hilton, reinforce the class system by displaying the working class and their daily lives as degrading. The spoiled heiress, Hilton, reduces herself to jobs such as working in fast food restaurants, or on farms etc. The people in the show are not actors. While watching this type of show you can see how Hilton does everything she can to make it be known that she is not of this class.
The main issue with Kendall’s rhetoric, and that of many from the progressive movement, is that they do not adequately describe solutions to the problems. Certainly many enormous and valid issues are brought to the readers attention, however, very few if any quantitative solutions can be found. To make this type of rhetoric far more successful, the author must demand action. Michael Moore’s style is a great example of a “how to” manual in demanding action.
There will always be a social class division in the world. As long as there is greed, there will be those who want the treasure, those who have the treasure, and those who just want more of the treasure they already have too much of.
In a fascinating excerpt titled “Serving in Florida,” by Barbara Enrenreich, the author sets out on an experiment where she submerges herself into the world of the minimum wage worker. Enrenreich works as a server at a low-end restaurant, and as a housekeeper at a local motel. Her results are sobering to say the least.
In her experiment, Enrenreich was attempting to learn what the low-income class of Americans experience on a day-to-day basis. She wonders how it is possible to live by making only $6.10 per hour. Enrenreich forges minor relationships with coworkers at the places of her employment. She relays to the reader the way these people deal with life, e.g. the lack of proper health maintenance due to lack of health insurance, the borderline homelessness, and hunger they face.
This real life documentary style of writing is very effective. Enrenreich has a gifted way of presenting logos, pathos, and ethos throughout the text. In one of her many vivid descriptions of Jerry’s restaurant, where she waiters for $2.10/hour plus tips, she writes how the smell is wretched (referred to "citris fart"), the sanity is nonexistent, the management has little respect for the employees, and the customer nearly becomes "the enemy." The visual images of her environment are brilliantly illustrated.
Enrenreich portrays how many people get trapped in this rat race for the rest of their lives. Lack of advanced education, and the ability to achieve it, binds people to a life of wage-slave labor. The only hope for many of these low-income wage-slaves is some sort of government support to give them a jump-start. Otherwise, it is nearly impossible to save enough money, or find enough time, for them to break the cycle.
In active voice sentences, the verb expresses the action in the sentence, the subject performs the action, and the object is the recipient of the action. Active sentences follow the pattern: subject-verb-object.
Jill kicked Jack.
In a passive voice sentence, the subject and object flip-flop. The subject becomes the passive recipient of the action.
Jack was kicked by Jill.
My issue was I put "has" "had" "were" in several of my sentences. One of my sentences was "What has caused this massive collapse..." I deleted has and it sounds much better. "What caused this massive collapse..." Sounds much better, right?
Michael
In the selection “The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue” by Deborah Tannen, the author invites the reader to examine the assumed necessity of debate in our lives. She makes persuasive arguments about how the effect of negative debate and criticism can lead a researcher, student, and/or a critic to all find frustration in the end. Her research suggests that even in grammar school we learn to have a “tendency to value formal, objective knowledge over relational, intuitive knowledge” which trains the child to “talk in a focused, explicit way,” or in other words, the beginning of our debate yearning minds.
Tannen suggests that we most move beyond this argument culture by not looking at all issues as polar opposites. One example Tannen points out where Mary Catherine Bateson, a teacher at George Mason University, has her class compare three cultures instead of two. She suggests that by only using two cultures the students are “inclined to polarize them” however if they use three cultures “they are more likely to think about each on its own terms.” Not everything has to be an argument. There usually isn’t just two sides to an issue, and we should consider “all sides.” Broadening our scope on ideas will lead to more knowledge gained.
Tannen has a strong grasp on her rhetoric. As a superior writer, Tannen uses ethos appeal throughout the selection, as the reader may find themselves looking up every other word in a dictionary in order to fully appreciate the wording she uses. Further, her descriptions of how a graduate student felt after being told her research methods were that of detritus (organic waste), sure can make one feel the pathos. The author sums it up with point that we should use “our imaginations and ingenuity to find different ways to seek truth and gain knowledge. The overall message was delivered with consistency and logos. The intended audience in this piece is that of students, researchers, and critics.
In the story I Just Wanna Be Average by Mike Rose, the author introduces the reader to an educational system where students find being mediocre easier than trying to excel. Rose attends a school for underprivileged children in Los Angeles where most teachers had “little training” in their subjects. Rose explains how an ambitious young teacher basically saved him and “gave [him] a way to feel special about using [his] mind”.
Reading the introduction, and the use of strong vocabulary throughout the story, shows Rose furthered his education beyond this vocational school. This creates a good amount of ethos for the reader. Pathos appeal comes about when he describes how teachers “had no idea of how to engage the imaginations of us kids who were scuttling along at the bottom of the pond”. Someone who has attended a public school might be able to relate to how that might have felt to Rose. In contrast Rose introduces his best teacher who would “teach his heart out”.
The writing uses a combination of casual and formal writing. He uses “big words” throughout the story, but also uses slang and “new wave shibboleths” or trendy phrases or jargon to make his points clear.
In the selection Against School by John Taylor Gatto, the author aims to convince readers that the public school system has major flaws caused by a conspiracy to keep children obedient and subservient. He shares the idea that the school system dulls down creativity, genius, and creates boredom and conformity. Gatto effectively uses pathos, logos, and ethos to deliver his message clearly and persuasively.
The essay begins by Gatto using ethos by describing his background and authority on the issue. Teaching for 30 years he claims to have become an “expert in boredom” as he watched students and teachers drudge through their days at school. Teachers would sit in the break rooms “whining” with “dispirited attitudes”.
Using historical characters like, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, Gatto shows how the lack of formal education has little, or nothing, to do with the ability to create amazing results in the real world. How much more powerful of logos can you use than introducing the reader to the educational backgrounds of men like that.
Gatto uses pathos several times as well throughout his work. Comments and statements like “boredom”, “trapped inside structures” and “childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty” can dig at the reader and produce images of our own past experience in the “mandatory public education system”. Some readers may be able to relate to a grandfather similar to the authors. One day in front of his grandfather he mentioned the word “bored”. His grandfather quickly “battered [him] hard on the head” and told him never to say that again.
The motivation in this selection is to convince readers to “teach your own to think critically and independently”. He also says, “…urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material”.
