Would you be happy if you had received an A in your class? Do you feel that you truly learned enough to deserve that perfect A? Students who are in either high school or college are forgetting the true meaning of having knowledge and being able to learn. People think that how well they perform in the classroom will justify how well the teacher teaches their students but necessary that might not always be that way. In Brent Staples piece, “Why Colleges Shower their Students with A’s”, he argues that there must be an end to the grade Inflation and continues by examining for a possible solution by using language techniques to emphasize the main point. He mentions, “Some departments shower students with A’s to fill poorly attended courses that might otherwise be canceled” (Staples 1065). Staples piece comes across as formal, but also has a purpose of the making both a precise idea and credible point to his readers that they might be effected as well as colleges that the essay refers to. Staple focuses …show more content…
She says, “…in an overcrowded and unhappy home, it’s incredibly easy for any child to slip away. The high levels of frustration, depression and anger in my house made my brother and me invisible” (Barry 857). Barry describes how throughout her early life she learned how to cope with her situation of being neglected by her own parents. She mentions that she would always go to school a couple of hours earlier to play on the playground and talk with the janitor at the school. For Barry, school was where she would feel secure and it would help her escape from all that she went through at home. Opposite from Staples essay, Barry essays explains how people who come from a family who struggles with financial issues appreciate what they have and those who are have a higher income are just desperate for
The Game of School: Why We All Play It, How It Hurts Kids, and What It Will Take to Change It by Robert L. Fried is a great tool for identifying challenges in school systems and planning school reform. This book explains in great depth the problems faced by students and educators in schools today and ends with a call to action for solving these problems. Some major concepts that arise frequently throughout the book are time being wasted, students feeling powerless and the prioritization of test scores over authentic learning. Time is wasted by everyone in school and is wasted in various ways, for example students are given busy work and teachers rush through a curriculum while students learn nothing. Students, while they are the most important stakeholders, feel as though they have no control over their education.
Recently, many have begun to attack and degrade higher education in the United States. In the book How College Works, authors Daniel Chambliss and Christopher Takacs claim, “As state support has eroded, and as more students attend college in an increasingly desperate attempt to find viable jobs, the price to students of attending an institution of higher education has gone up, especially at more selective institutions” (172). So is college even worth it? Caroline Bird’s excerpt from her book Case Against College “Where College Fails Us” is an adequately written article that agrees with those who question whether college is a good investment. Bird argues that although some students would benefit from college and succeed, many fall short, wasting
Summary on Kurt Wiesenfeld’s “Making the Grade” In the Essay “Making the Grade” written by Kurt Wiesenfeld, He tells us all about his experience with students coming to him after grades have been posted wanting their grades changed or asking how to get a better grade. In this essay he argues about how students wait or just plain out don’t do their work and then what a better grade which they have not earned. He also, argues that student now days are set in an era where everyone wins.
In modern society, as Americans we often take money for granted. However, as stated both directly and indirectly in this work, there is much more to life than economics. We are fortunate enough to live in a community that does not discriminate based on financial standing to the extent that it once did. Nonetheless, it does not matter what your current financial standing is as long as you have people that care about you. The Youngers in A Raisin in the Sun always attempted to help each other whether they were in financial prosperity or turmoil.
Many wealthy Americans believe that the millions of people who don’t reach their definition of success simply aren’t trying hard enough. Kristof emphasizes in his New York Times article, ‘Is a Hard Life Inherited?’ the advantage that those same wealthy Americans have over the people they judge because they were born into better families. A family that, “loved them, read stories to them, and nurtured them with Little League sports, library cards and music lessons” (1). He makes his beliefs clear when he chooses to focus on the topic of the working poor of America, highlighting the experiences of his hometown friend, Rick Goff.
Brent Staple’s essay "Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A's" had various elements that helped provided evidence and persuade the readers. The first thing I noticed when reading this essay was the comparison between the marketplace and college. This comparison helps to develop Staple’s argument because it explains something that is unfamiliar by comparing it to something that is more familiar. I can assume that the target readers were business men and women. Since I am unfamiliar with some business terms, I found that this essay explained something that was unfamiliar with something else that was unfamiliar.
In Carl Singleton’s article, “What Our Education System Needs is More F’s,” he argues that students aren’t receiving the failing grades they deserve. School systems are to blame for the lack of quality in America’s education. No other recommendation for improvement will succeed. The only way to fix the American education system is to fail more students. According to Singleton, the real root of the issue is with the parents.
He utilizes tools such as rhetorical situations and rhetorical appeals to persuade his audience. Overall, Rojstaczer is effective in utilizing rhetorical situations, ethos, and pathos in his article. However, he is ineffective in using logos to persuade his audience on why grade inflation is wrong and is need of their participation to initiate change. The main topic of the article is how grade inflation is not helping students and is a detriment to their future.
A recent study released by Pearson that questioned over 400,000 students in grades 6-12 shows that only “48% of students think their teachers care about them…and only 45% of students think teachers care if they are absent from school” (Hare, 2015). This shocking statistic demonstrates what American students think about their teachers. Most students are under the impression that their teachers don’t care about them. When teachers don’t care about their students and allow them to fail, many students with unrealized potential give up on education. Mike Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average” describes his journey through high school on the vocational track after the results of his “tests got confused with those of another student named Rose” (Rose, 1989, p. 2).
Elona Kalaja Professor Eleni Saltourides ENG 101 Critical Analysis Paper February 21, 2018 Flunking vs Students In the article, “In Praise of the F Word” Mary Sherry argues that flunking students is a method that has been effective in the past and is still effective todays day, and anyone needs to see is as a positive teaching tool. Sherry indicates that flunking students is a method that motivates students to study more and to be more responsible for what is their responsibility. Students challenge is not to get an A or B, but to succeed or to fail.
In Kurt Wiesenfeld’s article “Making the Grade”, he address the issue that students want a higher grade than they deserve. He goes on to prove this be by giving examples of previous students that he has had and what can happen when students get the grades that they want and not what they deserve. In Wiesenfeld’s article he states that about ten percent of students that take his class do not care about their grades until final grades are over. “You might groan and moan, but you accepted it as the outcome of your efforts or lack thereof,” Wiesenfeld stated.
Seika McKee Dickens ENGL 1113 1 OCT. 2015 The Hidden Education in the Poor Perhaps one of the most valuable opportunities in life is education. In a conversation between Adam Howard, associate professor of education at Antioch College, and Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University, in “Where Are The Poor Students,” some subjects at hand are the availability or unavailability of opportunities, the missed value of education, and the irrelevant comparison of test scores directed towards the poor students.
The essay “In Praise of the ‘F’ Word” by Mary Sherry explains some flaws Sherry has noticed in our education system. These observations are from her teaching perspective, and from her son’s own experience in high school. Sherry claims that some students that have earned a high school degree should not have because they are “semi literate.” She starts out her essay by stating this bluntly, but further explains herself as it goes on. Sherry is an adult literacy grammar teacher, and often faces students that wish they could have had a more beneficial experience in high school.
Therefore, if school was to cancel this activity, many children that are like Barry would have nothing to relieve and relied on. School had always been known to help and educated children’s of all ages, but when it comes to certain situation, school is like another home for children. It provided a new life for children’s and help them regain and improve on their mental stress. For example, Barry ran away from home at night to come to school because it the only place she feels content after her parent argument that night. Without even recognizing that she is gone like any other family do, Barry feel happy because she had more time to spend on school every morning just to paint and draw.
Although there a few modern examples of people with a ‘rags to riches’ story, namely Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs, the masses of people born into lower income households don’t commonly rise to the middle class. A recent study by Pew Charitable Trust signifies how important family wealth is, as the “median family wealth of those who made it to middle class was $94,586, while the median wealth of those stuck at the bottom was just $8,892” (Hargreaves 1). The higher a family’s financial capital is, the easier it is to invest in opportunities such as education, which increases income. Winston in 1984 observes how the proles are intelligent in their daily tasks, stating how "even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory” (Orwell 72).