Summary Of School's Out For Summer By Anna Quindlen

Structure and Proofreading are Important

Hungry children, humiliated parents, and confused focus groups; all things involved in Anna Quindlen’s essay “School’s Out for Summer,” but how do these things tie in? In her essay, Quindlen effectively uses evidence to support her claim that hunger is a significant problem in America, particularly with children during the summer, yet she fails to make a cohesive argument with her eclectic evidence and fails to acknowledge and refute any noteworthy counterclaim. First and foremost, her argument is most definitely towards persuading people that child hunger is a problem that needs to be recognized and changed, not only in poor countries, but in the heart of the west; the United States. She starts out with giving the example that focus groups unanimously thought that child hunger would not happen here; “not in America.” Quindlen’s introduction gives many opposing views, yet fails to refute them, or acknowledge them at any other part. Additionally, her introduction is four paragraphs long, and leaves a reader searching deeply for a thesis.

For example, she states that “fifteen million students get free or cut-rate lunches at school … only three million children are getting lunches through the federal summer lunch program,” but doesn’t give any source. This leaves one to wonder if this was government research, scientific research, or estimations from someone likely outside of any calculations on this matter. The origin of radical data such as this is important, because wrong ideas can spread easily. Additionally, Quindlen uses evidence that is irrelevant to her claim, such as mentioning the number of turkeys given away in a food bank in Connecticut on