Homework Sucks!

My daughter does not love "English" homework (well, they still call it "Reading" homework and "Writing" homework in 2nd grade). She does all of the math and science homework before she will touch the writing.

However, today I asked her to write a thank you note to her "Auntie Tina" (really a family friend) who recently set her a set of Jibbitz for her Crocs. I was hoping to get her to eke out a few sentences. After the requisite "thank you" sentence, I figured she'd give one more detail and sign off. Instead, she asked, "Can I make this a thank you note AND a letter?" Shocked, I said, "Sure!" She wrote and wrote -- she had 8 full sentences about her life, her friends, her pet mouse, etc.

Naturally, as an English professor I want to know why she wrote with abandon in the Auntie Tina thank you note, yet resists writing any more than the bare minimum for her homework. Then the $10 word I learned in grad school hit me: pseudotransactionality.

Students know that homework is not transactional -- much assigned writing goes into a teacher's file cabinet. Most homework does not address an actual rhetorical situation, with an audience who reads it to learn more or to solve a problem. My daughter senses this as young as 2nd grade!

Yes, there is value in practice, so homework certainly serves a purpose. But I try as much as I can to make my homework--the "practice" I assign--as transactional as possible. I'm asking my advanced comp students to post their daily writing homework to a blog so that it can (potentially) go to a larger public audience that could respond (instead of piling up in my bottom drawer). In my professional writing class, which is really all about practicing the genres of professional writing, my students are "practicing" with real, live people. They all have local agencies and organizations that need professional writing projects completed this fall. They know they are getting students, and they are willing to take that chance. My students know that agency directors and all of their clients will read their writing. So they are working! It's practice, but it's transactional.

Going Back to Cali(‘s Prop 87)

Back to my investigation into Prop 87. I want to know something about it as a voter, and I am asking my students to focus on Fall 2006 campaign news in my Advanced Comp class.

NOTE TO STUDENTS: What I am doing here on my blog is NOT what I am asking you to do for homework. It is similar, but not quite the same.

Anyhow, I posted my thoughts about the main “No on 87” site, so now I will take a look at the main “Yes on 87” site.

Let me make one overall observation about the initial look of the two sites (this is something that MY STUDENTS will do when they compare news source sites). The No campaign has a more staid, more professional look, with more photos of real people. The Yes campaign site employs more flash (in the technical and metaphorical sense). Instead of photos, this site has a lot of images and graphics. The font is also much larger on the yes site. For example, the link “get involved” is very prominent on the Yes site and harder to find on the No site.

When I pulled up the Yes site, the first thing I noticed was a box with multiple images fading in and out. The images mix graphics and large font text. The first few images that appeared noted how much big oil companies make and how they deserve to pay their fair share.

After three of those appeared, a new min-theme of images faded in and out of the box. This next series told me how much other states like Alaska, Louisiana, and (even) Texas tax oil production. These four messages use the classic “Bandwagon” appeal: if those people are doing it, we should to.” This is known as one of the logical fallacies. In other words, there is no sound reasoning to back up the idea that if that guy is doing it, you should too. A smart person needs more than that to be convinced to vote for something.

I should point out that I am almost surely going to vote “Yes” on 87, but that does not stop me from laying their rhetorical techniques bare.

For example, when I googled “Proposition 87 California,” the first link that came up was “Yeson87.” The text below noted that the Wall Street Journal “fires up debate on California Energy debate.” Skimming that (as we all tend to do online – we tend to skim rather than read) I read “Wall Street Journal” and thought that they were endorsing the Yes side, which would certainly be a coup for the “yes” side because of the Wall Street Journal’s prestige. With that idea in my head, I started to read the “article” that was posted on the main page about prestigious people (a former Clinton staffer, a UCLA professor) who do endorse 87.

However, there was not a readily available link to the Wall Street Journal article. Upon rereading the Google text, I wonder if the WSJ article was not really a pro-87 text. I’m not sure if that was an intentional slight of hand, but I must say that it worked on me, and I am a pretty savvy reader . . .

Tune in next time as I investigate what the Wall Street Journal really said and how they said it.

Mapping Justice

I was driving to campus today, listening to my beloved National Public Radio. They reported on a dude who goes by the curious--almost humorous--name of E. Forbes Smiley. According to the story, he is one of "the nation's foremost experts on ancient maps."
Well, it turns out that he has been visiting libraries and stealing ancient maps and selling them on the black market. They caught him and gave him 10 years in prison.

When I heard about justice being served to this map thief, I thought of the "justice" that had been "served" to the mastermind of the Enron billion dollar rip off. I could not believe that Andrew Fastow got his 10-year plea bargain sentence reduced to just 6 years, with the possibility of being released in 4 years for good behavior.

He cooked the books and got boucoup bucks in personal kickbacks while regular old middle-class Enron employees got their entire pensions wiped out. You remember those tapes they played at his trial about "screwing over the grandmothers in California" with Enron price spikes for energy?

This scoundrel ruined the lives of hundred while lining his pockets, and he has to serve a MAX of 6 years in the slammer. The map thief will serve almost twice as long. I am not condoning map theft, but it does not seem nearly as serious as the massive Enron rip off. If I had stolen that much money from a bank, I'd be in for life. But if I were a rich white guy like Fastow, I'd be out before my kids graduate from high school.

Ugh . . .

You Smoke, Right?

My friend Michael used to be a student teacher. He was talking to a fellow student teacher one day; the conversation went like this:

Student Teacher: I've had a break through with one of my students!
Michael: Really? That's great! What happened?
ST: Well, I had this one girl who kept failing her spelling tests. So I said to her, "You smoke, right?" The girl hesitated. So, I said, "It's okay; I can smell it on your breath. Here's what I want you to do. Get in a comfortable place, like in your bed or something. Look over your spelling words one by one. Then close your eyes and try to visualize the words in your mind. Quiz yourself, and--if you get them all right, reward yourself with a cigarette!"
Michael: So not only are you encouraging a minor to smoke, you're encouraging her to smoke in bed!?!?!?!"

When I came across this news gem, I realized that the student teacher must have graduated, moved to Pennsylvania, and had a son!

From officer.com:

A Conewago Township woman told police she smokes marijuana every day with her 13-year-old son as a reward for completing his homework, according to court documents. . . The boy said when he gets off the school bus, he is required to do his homework first, then is allowed to smoke marijuana, police said.

The Rhetoric of NO!

I typed in: www.noon87.org, and, presto, a site came up explaining everything that is wrong with Prop 87.

The No on 87site lists the following points and seems to tie them together, rhetorically:

higher gas prices will result from a $4 billion tax on oil produced here in California
increased dependence on foreign oil will result


Here is what I got on the No on 87 website:
“Economists report that higher taxes on instate oil production would reduce instate oil production and increase our dependence on foreign oil. Oil from the Middle East and other countries costs more to get here and more to refine once here. That means higher fuel costs for consumers.
But the proponents say Prop 87 prohibits the tax from being passed on to consumers?Despite the promises, the reality is that Prop 87’s $4 billion oil tax increase will lead to higher fuel prices for all Californians. And, higher fuel prices hurt everyone. Drivers will have to pay more at the pump. Businesses will have to pay more to transport their goods via trucks and airplanes, which comes back again to consumers in the form of higher prices.”
Mini Rhetorical Analysis:
The second paragraph is full on non sequitors—well-written, effectively scary non-sequitors. What is the relationship between the sentences? It strikes me that the authors are very careful not to make any claims of causality or even correlation. They simply string together a series of scary ideas in the same paragraph with the words “prop 87” and hope that readers will unconsciously connect the ideas in the paragraph.

It is my understanding that California gas stations buy most of their oil from California producers. If the tax cannot be passed on, why would the gas stations buy oil outside of California and risk getting hit with shipping charges? The claims here just do not add up.

Even if we do end up buying non-California oil, we will not automatically buy “foreign oil,” (the words “foreign oil” conjure up images of us supporting regimes such as Iran or Venezuela). We could simply buy oil from Texas (although that didn’t work out so great when we bought energy from Texas if you all remember the Enron guys plotting to “screw over the little old ladies in California.”), or from Montana, etc.

The website also states: “There’s no question we need to advance energy alternatives, but Proposition 87 is not the way to get there.”

While that statement looks good at first blush, it strikes me as an empty promise. The first part of the sentence appeals to pathos very well: the sympathetic reach out to the poor reader who is getting reamed at the pump every week. Yes, Regular Voter Guy, we do know that we’ve got to find some alternative energy – we surely can’t keep going down this path.

They claim that Prop 87 is the wrong way to “advance energy alternatives,” but they do not provide an alternate plan. They have no suggestions whatsoever for how to reduce pollution, reduce dependence on fossil fuel by researching other forms of energy, etc.

In past elections, we have actually had two different propositions that attempt to solve the same problem. Not so here. All we have is a plan and a group saying the plan is bad. We’ve got no better ideas, but the plan is bad. Now, that position is not always a bad position (In fact I’m sure I’ve taken that position with my husband many a time in an argument), but if they do not have an inkling of an alternative, I’m inclined to say better to do something rather than nothing. In my years, I’ve come to realize that there are usually no perfect plans, but there may be a compromise or an imperfect solution that will work (note: “will work” and “perfect” are not synonyms!).

Next post: tackling the rhetoric of the pro-87 camp!

Young Americans

At my undergraduate alma mater Bethany College, I wrote my senior project on
“The Poetry of Rock.” I have since shifted my attention to studying composition and rhetoric and writing studies. But every once in a while, I like to look back at song lyrics and have a go at them!

In David Bowie’s song “Young American” the word “American” is at the center of the song, yet “American” is othered in the song. Instead of an American being the unuttered norm, the American is named and in effect othered, pointed out as one among many. What I mean is that the song (a song) could also be about a Young Brit or a Young Chinese or a Young Iranian. Often “an American” is the assumed universal protagonist of the pop tune – at least in my perception due to my socialization as a (former : ) young American!

I tended to imagine an American person at the center of every love song I crooned to on the radio. I never imagined a person from Ghana or Germany as I played videos in my mind (before the age of actual videos – yes I am that far from being a young American). David Bowie points out the plurality of possible protagonists by naming an “American” in a way that Bruce Springsteen does not in his Born in the USA (even thought that cannot be read as a blindly patriotic song); Bowie can only sing about a young American is as outsider, whereas Springsteen can sing about the USA as an American himself. As such, they position “the American” differently (all of this brings to mind now-dim memories of Henry James’s The American . . . ).

In my undergraduate days (my Young American days) this would be a great first draft for a paper explicating song lyrics, but now my scholarship has a different focus so I can use my blog as a sort of “essay germ” depository. This is fun!

Soon I'll be asking my Advanced Comp students to track a couple of online news sources as they cover the 2006 US elections. They can look at national races, state races, local races, and ballot initiatives in any state.

I've been watching too much of the boob tube lately, so I've been bombarded by ads about California's Proposition 87. In the spirit of "do what you teach," I'm going to start looking at this issue on my blog.

First, I need to just get a handle on this issue itself, then I'll start unpacking the rhetoric and figuring out who the stakeholders are and how their positions are (or are not) being represented.

This post, then, is a summary of my first steps into the murky waters of Prop 87.

I'll start with the State of California Voter Guide . They give the basic outline of the Proposition as follows:
* a tax on oil drilling and production in California
* a stipulation that the tax cannot be passed on to consumers in the form of higher gas prices
* a new agency that would oversee the spending of the revenue from this tax
* the revenue has to be spent on several things, like: education about alternative transportation energy, research on alternative energy, infrastructure that would support alternative energy, and administrative costs.
* the tax revenue could not be put into the state's General Fund, but would have to be used for the earmarked research and development of alternative transportation energy.
*the possibility of new jobs being created in California for the new R&D
*the possibility that gas stations would buy their oil from outside of California

I have not yet delved into the pro and con sites (although the Voter Guide has a pro and con section), but I'll put out an initial reaction.

This sounds good, as I have an article from the Sacramento News and Review lurking in my mind about how much we rely on oil (WAY too much) and how desperately we need to find ways to cut back on oil consumption/dependence. Prop 87 estimates that the research produced could lead to reducing oil consumption by 25%.

This prop sounds like it could help the electric car rise from its ashes (or its "smashes," I should say, as Chris Paine documents in "Who Killed the Electric Car." ) I know that it might be used to explore ethanol (the only alternative transportation energy source mentioned by name in the Voter Guide), or perhaps hydrogen fuel cells (the part about building new infrastructure makes me think that the money could be used to build hydrogen fueling stations). I'm pretty convinced that hydrogen fuel cells are a crock of you-know-what (based mostly on my viewing of the Electric Car movie, so I will have to do more research). What I'd really like to see some of this money used on is public transportation!!!! I'm unclear as to whether the money could go for that or not.

Thus far in my investigation, I'm pro-87.

Items for future posts:
Who are the stakeholders?
What positive results could come out of the research and development?
What kind of rhetoric is getting used in this debate?

The broken TV on the sidewalk

So I was walking down the street with my daughter the other day and we saw a broken TV set smashed on the sidewalk. (Note: this is not the actual TV we saw; this is an image from http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?section=business&id=2955)

She asked how it got there.

"I don't know," I said. "Can you think of any ways it could have gotten here?"

Being 7 years old and loving guessing games, my daughter immediately launched into a plethora of hypotheses about what could have happened to the TV:
. . . it could have been thrown from a car
. . . a "bad guy" could have been chasing a "regular guy" who dropped the TV
. . . a robber could have been running away with the TV, lost his shoe, and dropped the TV on the sidewalk (there was, in fact, an abandoned shoe in the bushes right next to the TV in question).


Spotting the shoe prompted my daughter to look for more clues (or clews, as George Bernard Shaw and John Dewey would spell it). About half a block later, we found a post-it with random numbers on it -- she suspected that it had something to do with the TV fiasco, but what? Longitude and latitude of the house that the TV was stolen from? The weight of the TV set in pounds and kilograms? The license plate of the getaway vehicle?

About three blocks further, my daughter spotted a footprint in the dirty gutter. She was convinced that next to the shoe print was an indentation mark made by a bare toe -- more evidence for the one-shoed burglar theory.

We arrived home, crime unsolved . . . what is your theory?