I Agree, But...I Disagree.."

In “I Agree, But…” James McDonald describes citizenship, as “individuals become citizens by discursively- and thus rhetorically-engaging one another in the public sphere. “ Its a way for people to share their viewpoints or concerns for an issue with people that may disagree with them.  He also describes public deliberation, as “citizens who have opposing views on issues can explain the foundations of their beliefs.” He doesn’t stop there though. He uses public deliberation as a way to discuss an issue and come up with new ways to solve a problem by allowing the two parties discussing the issue to understand each other’s ideas more and come up with a new solution that maybe isn’t so black and white.  McDonald uses the Le Suroit case to describe his versions of deliberation and citizenship because it was a case study that showed them pretty brilliantly. Le Suroit is a sociotechnical controversy in Canada revolving around whether or not they should allow The Suroit natural gas-fired electrical plant to be constructed.

McDonald shows how the pro-Suroit supporters and the anti-Suroit supporters used rhetorical situations in their arguments to get their adversaries to understand where they are coming from and to keep them from knocking down their major points.  He explains that the best way to approach a situation in an argument is to accept some of the opinions of your opponent while still making it clear that you disagree overall on the situation. This helps to come up with an overall solution knowing that both parties can agree on something and it also keeps your opponent from going on and on about their ideas.  For example, in the Le Suroit controversy, when discussing alternatives, the pro-Suroit supporters made it a point to say that they were already supporters of wind energy but that it was an unreliable source, which in turn made the anti-Suroit supporters in need of a new argument.

David Kaufer has own way to deliberate public policy. He first mentions stock issues and that they, “aid invention by helping speakers single out from the list of stock issues those obtaining in the immediate case; aid organization by insure speakers against omitting information; aid adaptation of speech to audiences by guiding speakers to include points the audiences expect them to address.”  He has created five different hierarchical levels of policy conflict: level one, one of us misunderstands the intended sense or reference of certain statements; level two, we misunderstand each other’s intended frame of reference in making certain statements; level three, we each give decisive weight to different evidence; level four, we hold conflicting local values (values people hold about specific topics); and level five, we hold conflicting global values (values people hold systematically across topics and contexts). He explains that you start with level one and work your way up to five until you have fully resolved the issue at hand.

Kaufer uses the example of the drinking age (18 vs 21). Usually people have equally worthy points and since those points will never override one or the other, he uses a similar idea to McDonald. Kaufer uses a similar idea to teen drinking being a responsibility like driving and makes them both into a positive. He also shows the negative point and compares the teen drinking to drag races.

Kaufer combines his stock issues with his new five level theory of policy conflict to teach students the most efficient way to argue a situation. The five level theory gives the students the opportunity to create a more creative solution to the problem by having to work through a few levels to see the most beneficial outcome to a problem. The stock issues alone don’t do that. Just as Kaufer has his five level theory, McDonald uses his rhetorical practice to of agreeing to key opinions to show people how efficiently that works. He shows that just saying “you’re wrong,” doesn’t have the same affect as saying “I understand your point, but…” or “I understand my flaws, but…” because those two statements will stop the opponent from pointing our your flaws if you do so yourself already. Then, your opponents will need to come up with a new strategy to make your argument weaker. McDonald’s “accepting key ideas” is similar to Kaufer’s level 5 of his levels of policy conflict. They both agree to disagree and know that one wont win over the other necessarily but they find a new way to come up with a solution that they may both agree on partially.

Is Technology Helping or Hurting the Minds of America's Youth?

People have discussed for ages the benefits of using longhand versus laptops in a classroom. Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer have done studies to try to the answer the question of, what is better? In The Pen is Mightier Than The Keyboard Mueller and Oppenheimer conduct three different studies that all conclude that in conceptual tests, people who have taken notes longhand have done significantly better than people who have taken notes on their laptops.

The question has always been, what is the more efficient way to take notes in order for students to do the best they can on a test? Longhand or on laptops? The real question is, how is technology affecting the students’ education? Is it helping or hurting the minds of our nation’s youth.

Some high school teachers feel as if technology is ruining the education system and the creativity of the students. Valerie Strauss, a writer for The Washington Post, shared a resignation letter that a tenured teacher, Gerald Conti, wrote to the superintendent of Westhill High school in Syracuse, NY. Conti had been teaching at Weshtill for over twenty years before he decided to resign. He felt that the education system was relying way too much on technology and that the Board of Education for Westhill has “distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations. “ Not only does Conti feel mistrusted to do his job he also feels like the creativity of the students is being limited by online classes and work. “This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the classroom. “

If Mueller and Oppenheimer’s results show that students perform significantly worse while using computers to take notes and Gerald Conti says that computers “smother critical thinking,” is it possibly that using a laptop in educational settings may not be as beneficial as educations had originally thought that it would be? There ideas together seem to answer the initial question of is technology helping or hurting the minds of our nation’s youth. Students don’t seem to perform as well with the media aspects in school probably because they are testing it on a generation that grew up learning off a blackboard or a dry erase board instead of a computer.  Online classes aren’t as common in high school but they are starting to take tests and do more things online that weren’t done before. Even though the results don’t seem to be where researchers want them, is it necessary for teachers to start using more computers based classes in high school to prepare their students for online college courses?

Many college courses are available online. Students take them because they generally seem easier to pass but are they learning from them or just receiving an A in the class? Bernard Schweizer is a tenured professor at Duke University. He enrolled in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). In Confessions of an Unreconstructed MOOC(h)her he describes how the class works. He states that 60,000 kids can take this course and that they readings and video lectures are optional for the students. That shows that it isn’t all about learning, its all about how well you can do an assignment with putting in as little work as possible.  The class is graded by peer reviews, which doesn’t give the student the satisfaction of hearing back from a teacher why they did or didn’t pass an assignment. Online classes like MOOC make the possibility of cheating or plagiarism jump as well since students can work next to each other on their computers to complete assignments and test.

Mueller and Oppenheimer’s proved that laptop use to take notes isn’t incredibly affective so if that is put with Schweizer’s perspective of an online MOOC class with unlimited participation based on peer reviews, how is that an affective learning environment for college students? Student-teacher interaction is a big deal for many students whether they realize it or not; it makes the learning process more engaging and sitting through a class versus taking a class online could help improve test scores since people aren’t skipping around just to find answers to questions.

Without a doubt, the technology that has been brought into the classrooms with computers is absolutely mind-blowing but the question still stands, is technology helping or hurting the youth of our nation?

http://jordyherbst.blogspot.com/p/jordan-herbst-enc4404-september-252014.html

The Importance of Written Communication in the Workforce

In a report by The National Commission on Writing it was state that “Writing is a ‘threshold skill’ for salaried employment and promotion” (Bob Kerrey). People don’t keep into consideration the importance of writing in our everyday lives. Even if you are in a math or science field you still have to be able to write up reports or emails to your supervisor or employees.  It isn’t just employees on a salary that writing is a big deal but it is also commonly used in hourly employees. Why is writing such a big deal? How does it affect our future?

Most communication in the workforce is through writing since people are often too busy to have a meeting or if they do have a meeting or an oral presentation is it generally accompanied by a visual presentation (PowerPoint) that involves writing in some way. Without the ability to write how does one report back to their boss or express their ideas for many people to see?

In Jeanne Fahnestock’s article Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific facts, we see that writing is important in every aspect of life. Without people having writing skills we wouldn’t be able to read the words of Einstein or read past scientific documents to help us improve as much as we have in the past 15 years in science.  “A teleological argument claims that something has value because it leads to further benefits” (Jeanne Fahnestock).  Without the abilitity to write their findings, a scientists work wouldn’t matter because people wouldn’t be able to look back on it to use it in future studies.

In M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer's journal Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental politics in America they mention that "A third group of writings is called "articles"; these are written by noted specialists in the field..." It is obviously important that the science specialists can write their findings down because if they trusted someone else to do their writing for them, there could end up being a mistake in their article which would give future researchers false information to go off of.

Written communication is a skill that everyone should possess, not just people in the science field. It is important for a person's ideas to be shared and read by many in order for history to be made or things like advancements in science to be made.

Rhetorical Situation of The Future of Reading

Rhetorical Situation of The Future of Reading

Jonah Lehrer’s concern that he states in The Future of Reading is that eventually the future of books will be digital and that we wont have a need for paperback books anymore. He even states that with codices going away people will not be as challenged in their reading levels because of the ease of reading on a computer screen or an e-reader.  Lehrer explains how our brain begins to scan the words on the page when the pages become clearer and clearer. We focus more as readers on what we are reading when there are imperfections on a page that require more focus to understand. With e-readers we will begin scanning difficult texts and we will not fully understand them.

Porter defines intertextuality in Intertextuality and the Discourse Community as “All texts are interdependent: We understand a text only insofar as we understand its precursors” (34).  With Porter’s definition we can say that e-readers might not survive without codices and vice versa. Look at pdf files, professors send pdf files to their students for class readings, which most students read on the computer but if the professor didn’t have their printed copy with their highlighted words and annotations on the side, which would later get scanned and sent out, would it be as beneficial to the students? Most eBooks would also not exist had it not have been a preexisting written copy of a book. We wouldn’t have Shakespeare on an e-reader if he hadn’t already written his text in a printed copy and that goes for any writer that was around before the invention of the computer, tablet or e-readers.

Grant-Davie discusses constraints in his article Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents.  Constraints defined by Grant-Davie are “factors in the situation’s context that may affect the achievement of the rhetorical objectives” (272).  A constraint with an e-reader is the difficulty the reader will have fully understanding a text when they just scan over the text instead of concentrating to understand the full meaning. Does that mean that people will have to “dumb down” their texts for people to fuller understand their meanings? Or, will the writer just give in and write the way they please knowing that they might not fully be understood by their audience? If the audience doesn’t understand what the text is saying then the rhetor did not accomplish their job well enough.