Pre-Writing Instructions
1. Carefully read the following passage from “Killing the Spirit” by educator Page Smith.
I think it is fair to say that the lecture system is the most inefficient way of transmitting knowledge ever devised....The most conclusive argument against the lecture system is that all true education must involve response. If there is no dialogue, written or spoken, there can be no genuine education. The student must be lured out of his or her instinctive passivity.
While acknowledging that lecturing can sometimes be used innovatively and usefully, Smith maintains that students learn better when they are active learners in dialogue with their instructors. She argues students must take responsibility for their educations and become “an integral part of the learning process.”
2. Consider the following questions.
Have you experienced classrooms with non-lecture as well as lecture formats? Which of these formats prompted you to learn the most? In which format is there greater dialogue? Are there other factors, besides lecture or non-lecture format, that are important to consider in assessing the quality of eduction? Do you agree that dialogue, written and spoken, is the only real form of education? What do you see as the teacher’s responsibility for education? What do you see as the students’ responsibility? For example, as in Page’s quote above, students are often depicted as unmotivated and passive learners. What do you think of such depictions? How would you explain them?
Writing Instructions
Write a brief essay in which you respond to Smith’s views on the limits of the lecture method of teaching. You may confirm, refute, or modify Smith’s views. In any case, support your own position clearly and develop it with explanations, examples or personal experience.
Helpful Hints
•Be sure to have a thesis, and pay attention to your organization.
•Be as specific as possible; you may use examples from your own experience.
•Don’t waste time on a lengthy introduction; get to your point quickly.
Pre-Writing Instructions
1. Carefully read the following passage by Amoja Three Rivers from “Cultural Etiquette: A Guide.”
All people are people. It is ethnocentric to use a generic term such as “people” to refer only to white people and then racially label everyone else. This creates and reinforces the assumption that whites are the norm, the real people, and that all others are aberrations.
“Exotic,” when applied to human beings, is ethnocentric and racist. . . .
Asians are not “mysterious, “fatalistic,” or “inscrutable.”
Native Americans are not stoic, mystical, or vanishing.
Latin people are no more hot-tempered, hot-blooded, or emotional than anyone else. We do not have flashing eyes, teeth, or daggers. We are lovers pretty much like other people. Very few of us deal with any kind of drugs.
Middle Easterners are not fanatics, terrorists, or all oil-rich.
Jewish people are not particularly rich, clannish, or expert in money matters.
Not all African Americans are poor, athletic, or ghetto-dwellers.
Most Asians in the U.S. are not scientiests, mathematicians, geniuses, or wealthy.
Southerners are no less intelligent than anyone else.
Three Rivers attacks many different generalizations and stereotypes--religious, racial, and geographic. She also criticizes “ethnocentricism,” or the preferencing and privileging of a single ethnic group (in Three Rivers’ example, “white people”). The author opposes ethnocentrism; she argues that viewing “white people” as the norm creates the impression that people who are not white are monstrous or abnormal “aberrations.”
2. Consider the following questions.
Which of the stereotypes that the author addresses have you encountered in the media (TV, movies, music, advertising)? Choose one of the groups Three Rivers mentions, or another similar group, and analyze that group’s representations. Do these depictions support or challenge Three Rivers’ claims about how these groups are represented? What, if any, are the effects of these stereotypes?
Writing Instructions
Write a brief essay in which you respond to Three Rivers’ criticisms of ethnocentrism. You may support, refute, or modify Three Rivers’ views. In any case, support your own position clearly and develop it with explanations, examples or personal experience.
Helpful Hints
•Be sure to have a thesis, and pay attention to your organization.
•Be as specific as possible; you may use examples from your own experience.
•Don’t waste time on a lengthy introduction; get to your point quickly.
Pre-Writing Instructions
1. Carefully read the following passage from “English Belongs to Everybody” by Robert MacNeil.
This is a time of widespread anxiety about the English language.... Anxiety, however, may have a perverse side effect: experts who wish to “save” the language may only discourage pleasure in it. Some are good-humored and tolerant of change, others intolerant and snobbish.
Language reinforces feelings of social superiority or inferiority; it creates insiders and outsiders; it is a prop to vanity or a source of anxiety, and on both emotions the language snobs play. Yet the changes and errors that irritate them are no different in kind from those which have shaped our language for centuries.
MacNeil calls those who attempt to regulate the development of English “language snobs,” criticizing their intolerance of language change. He views their intolerance as an attempt to use language to suggest their social superiority. In opposition to these experts, MacNeil finds pleasure in language changes, arguing that “Change is inevitable in a living language and is responsible for much of the vitality of English.”
2. Consider the following questions.
Do you think that the English language needs to be regulated in some way? Why or why not? If so, how should it be controlled, and by whom? Do you agree or disagree with MacNeil that “language reinforces feelings of social superiority or inferiority”? What might be the consequences of a person using language in such a way? Have you ever used language to gain power? Have you had language used against you? What do you think of MacNeil’s depiction of language experts who want greater control of English as “language snobs”? How do you explain his depiction?
Writing Instructions
Write a brief essay in which you respond to MacNeil’s opinions supporting tolerance of natural changes in the language and criticizing official attempts to control language. You may confirm, refute, or modify his views. In any case, support your own position clearly and develop it with explanations, examples or personal experience.
Helpful Hints
•Be sure to have a thesis, and pay attention to your organization.
•Be as specific as possible; you may use examples from your own experience.
•Don’t waste time on a lengthy introduction; get to your point quickly.
Pre-Writing Instructions
1. Carefully read the following passage from “The Haves and the Have-Nots” by LynNell Hancock.
Like it or not, America is a land of inequities. And technology, despite its potential to level the social landscape, is not yet blind to race, wealth and age. The richer the family, the more likely it is to own and use a computer, according to 1993 census data. White families are three times as likely as blacks or Hispanics to have computers at home. Seventy-four percent of Americans making more than $75,000 own at least one terminal, but not even one third of all Americans own computers.
Hancock argues that society sees computers as a democratizing force when in reality many middle- and lower-class Americans, as well as the schools they send their children to, cannot afford them. This inequality in people’s access to computer technology has serious consequences, for example on the job market. As Hancock explains, “To have an edge in America’s job search, it used to be enough to be well educated. Now, say the experts, it’s critical to be digital.” Therefore, people who can afford to own computers will have an advantage over those who cannot.
2. Consider the following questions.
In your experience, does it seem that computer technologies, such as the Internet, are currently available to all Americans equally or that inequalities in access exist due to economic or other factors (such as race and gender)? Is equal access to these technologies important? What consequences will inequality or equality of access to computer technologies have on our society? Do popular media depict computer technologies as positive or negative? For example, some recent television and magazine ads suggest that the Internet will lead to complete social equality, a world where differences in sex, race, age, and physical condition simply don’t matter. What do you think of such depictions? How would you explain them?
Writing Instructions
Write a brief essay in which you respond to Hancock’s opinion that computer technology in America is not yet a democratizing force. You may confirm, refute, or modify her views. In any case, support your own position clearly and develop it with explanations, examples or personal experience.
Helpful Hints
•Be sure to have a thesis, and pay attention to your organization.
•Be as specific as possible; you may use examples from your own experience.
•Don’t waste time on a lengthy introduction; get to your point quickly.