Saving for College

I sent my oldest son off to boot camp a couple of weeks ago. He joined the National Guard for the educational benefits he will receive after active duty. One of the dubious benefits of having a child in the military is the bimonthly magazine, National Guard Soldier and Family Foundations. It has the look and feel of a slick insurance newsletter but geared towards soldiers and families. An article caught my eye, "Saving for College How you can afford a brighter future," by June Walbert, USAA Certified Financial Planner.

This article persuades by staying solidly in the stasis of fact. The tone is very business-like but written in language understandable to anyone. The only flaw I found in the article is when Walbert pulls some statistical sleight-of-hand in the first two paragraphs. The first statistic is that a college grad will earn a million dollars more in a lifetime than a high school graduate. The second statistic is that unemployment is about ten percent, "However the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that for people under the age of 24 who had dropped out of high school, the unemployment rate was about 30 % (Walbert, pg 32)." It's completely misleading to compare high school dropouts under the age of 24 to the complex demographics of everyone else, which includes high school and college graduates, as well as people entrenched in their jobs as people under 24 are not.

From there the article walks a straight line and gives some useful background information about government loans, private loans and several savings/investment plans. It's not very specific; you couldn't go about applying for a loan or starting a savings plan with this information. It does set up the last paragraph touting the G.I. Bill:

This Bill provides for a total of 36 months (four school years) of tuition. It also partially covers housing and book expenses. Check it out at GIBill.va.gov (Walbert, pg33).

Of course the G.I. Bill stands out as vastly superior to any of the loans or savings plans. There is no doubt of that but my concern is this: Is this the best we can offer our children?

When I was a young man of military age we had a lottery to decide who went to war. Now we have a volunteer military and who is to say which is better? The business of war has been sanitized in that no one goes that didn't volunteer. Don't mistake my point here. I absolutely believe in the benefits of the G.I. Bill and would never seek to limit it in any way. But there is something wrong when people feel compelled to potentially risk their lives in exchange for educational benefits. It's especially egregious when our national leaders are bemoaning a lack of qualified college graduates. We need to do better for our children.

I submit that the first two years of college should be a matter of public education, that is, an associates degree for anyone that wishes it. This could be vo-tech training or general studies toward a bachelor's degree. We need to consider some alternatives to military service, such as a Youth corps that involves public service, perhaps even paid internships with educational benefits accruing much as they do in the military.

The G.I. Bill, as wonderful as it is, cannot supply our nation with the raw numbers of college graduates we need, especially graduates in the hard sciences and math. We need to fundamentally rethink our positions on higher education and align our policies to serve our priorities.

Works Cited

Walbert, June, "Saving for College How you can afford a brighter future," National Guard Soldier & Family Foundations, Sept/Oct 2010,Volume 2, Issue 3, pg 32-33

A Spiritual Duty

On December 2, 1942, Richard Lieber gave a speech at Turkey Run State Park, Indiana. The event was the 25th anniversary of the Indiana state park system. As would be expected, the speech was epideictic in nature. Lieber managed to do quite a bit more than merely celebrate the occasion. In the midst of the festive atmosphere he was able to promote his vision of a greatly expanded park system and warned his audience against changes in the system.

What really struck me most in this short speech was Lieber's reverent attitude towards the land. He had been highly instrumental in setting up and administering the park system in its formative years. He also spent a great deal of his time after public service campaigning and lobbying for the benefit of the parks. He was clearly driven and his speech betrays his motivation in several key passages. Conservation for Richard Lieber was a spiritual duty. He was not beyond patriotic pleas in his persuasions but it seems that the root of his motivation lay in his spiritual relationship with the land. Lieber was an immigrant, originally from Germany. He was too late to be a pioneer but held a deep respect for those that preceded him. Realizing that in the classic "man against nature" theme, humans had gained the upper hand, he sought to save some of the wildness for its own sake. As he said at one point, "... state parks are a dedication to the soul of the land."

Lieber then pulls a trope from his pocket and says, "They (state parks) will, through their ancient rocks, hills, shores and giant trees continue to preach a silent but mighty sermon to the generations yet unborn, of the struggles, hopes and ambitions of pioneer days." Lieber realized a basic tenet of environmentalism in the closing paragraph of his speech:

It is the land on which we all depend in the last essence. It is the land and the very soil, the trees and water, the dales and hills which we love. Without vision a land will die. Without inspiration we remain disconnected from the immortal order of all things.

Our state parks; let us preserve the sources of our inspiration.

Healthy Change or Decline: You Decide

For this post I've considered "Forum: Is There a Decline in literacy?" as sustainable public discourse according to its form (Winterowd, "Dispositio")
This article is a debate on whether literacy has declined. J.T. Ledbetter takes the view that literacy has declined while Harvey Daniels argues that "Breast beating expostulations about the imminent collapse of our Mother Tongue are as common a part of world history as are wars, and almost as regular" (pg 17)
This debate is organized as classical oration but without reprehensio. That is,the structure of the debate is exordium, narratio, confirmatio and peroratio.
Ledbetter argues that literacy has declined and blames the educational system. He relates that "I've had teachers tell me they could do a good job with just about any reading program if only they would be left alone with the program for a few years..." (pg 16) Ledbetter also notes a decline in familiarity with literature. Rather than being exposed to good literature students have "instead been bombarded with insipid, inane educational expertise designed to chart and define rather than stimulate and ennoble" (pg18).
Daniels, on the other hand, finds justification to take the current literary crisis lightly. He concentrates on a historical approach and shows a recurring pattern of concern for literacy. "But our response to the contemporary language crisis should be based on the understanding that what some people like to call degeneration is almost certainly change, a process which is an inevitable and healthy element of any living language" (pg 20)
The debate as a whole functions as sustainable public discourse in that rather than settling the issue it brings it into a public sphere to provoke thought and further the debate. This was published in The English Journal and so one would expect the readers to have their own opinions and respond. In that respect the article seeks to polarize its audience.

Works cited

Ledbetter, J.T., and Harvey (Smokey) Daniels. "Forum: Is There a Decline in Literacy?" The English Journal 65.5 (Sep1976): 16-20

Winterowd, W. Ross. "Dispositio: The Concept of Form in Discourse." College Composition and Communication 22.1 (Feb 1971): 39-45

An issue I would like to persue in my historical-causal analysis is that while cell phones and social networking have made it possible to communicate instantly and constantly with our "friends", it has also contributed to the decline in the quality of personal interactions. The new technology intrudes itself on face to face interactions and has spawned a new etiquette.
In considering genre selection, the classical oration pattern comes to mind as possibly effective in exploring this issue. To be maximally effective the genre needs to be persuasive that a new etiquette does in fact exist among the younger generation. Furthermore, that younger generation is the people to be to be convinced.

Levels of Conflict

Question 1:

I once had a wife. She became unhappy in the marriage and began making demands for change in the relationship. We negotiated various 4th level compromises. Nothing seemed to relieve her dissatisfaction until we realized her conflicts were global in nature. There were no solutions on that level so we got divorced and lived happily ever after.

Question 2:

Mario Savio began his speech with the analogy that Sproul Hall was to student rights what circa 1964 Mississippi was to civil rights. The analogy and allusion to Brave New World worked well to imply much more sinister motives to the university bureaucracy, willful suppression of students' rights rather than mere apathy towards them. Savio argues many times from a global perspective, even mentioning twice that their ideals were worth dying for. That seems to be exaggerated but consistent with global values

Question 3:

Dr. Bullard argues primarily from the stasis of fact/conjecture. This leaves several loose ends for me, points that could be argued as unproven. For instance, the Brentwood post office was not handled the same as the senate building when anthrax was discovered. That is a fact but its unclear to me how that fact proves racism. I could find any number of alternatives to explain the fact without resorting to the draconian specter of racism. It would be just as easily argued that the discrimination is against poor people of whatever race. If Dr. Bullard argued with cause statements he might make a more convincing case.

Parallel Induction

"Living in a Landscape of Fear" by Cristina Eisenberg was published in the August 13 issue of Scientific American. In her article Ms Eisenberg weaves a tapestry of anecdote and eco-history to persuade her readers that fear is a necessary part of natural landscapes. This text serves as an example of Baconian induction as described by Alan Gross in The Rhetoric of Science. Her anecdotes illustrate the principles she seeks to establish to "lead directly from sensory experience to reliable knowledge about the natural world."

I would also argue that her paper conforms to the general arrangement of stases as described by Jeanne Fahenstock and Marie Secor in "The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument."

My first claim is complicated by the introduction of several parallel lines of experience which ultimately coalesce as an inevitable conclusion - that predators shape the landscape through fear and by removing apex predators the landscape and biodiversity suffer. The experiences that form the basis of her argument are direct observations of the natural world. The eco-history forms the connecting link that ties the observations to conclusions of cause and effect. This is not a linear progression however as each piece is only a small part of the overall induction. To attempt a linear treatment of the subject would fragment her work. Instead she introduces various lines of evidence, withholding the final conclusions until the last two pages of the article. In that sense Eisenberg moves gracefully from one stasis to another but always in the pattern of fact and conclusion. There can be no linear treatment of the subject as in the case of the simple lab report. (introduction, methods, results, discussion, Gross pgs. 86-88) Eisinberg has constructed a meta-analysis from a great number of smaller, independent studies and experiments. Each of these compliments the others by showing how particular instances of predator removal show a general principle in the natural world. Together these principles unite in a grand hypothesis, the Green World Hypothesis, introduced early in the article. Each of the various principles support the greater work, such as the keystone species concept, top-down versus bottom-up and the ecology of fear. These smaller themes constitute the methods of the induction, always working from the observed to the supposed cause.

Ms Eisenberg demonstrates how a scientific paper can be at once readable and thorough. I assume that in her book from which this was excerpted, citations were given that did not appear in the online article. That would be my only criticism of this as a scientific paper.

Alan Gross, The Rhetoric of Science,Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press,1990

Fahenstock and Secor,"The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument" Written Communication, Vol5 No 4, October 1988, 427-443

Catharsis

"One Day, Now Broken In Two", by Anna Quindlen, is a reflective piece that seeks to understand how the events of 9-11 have affected the American psyche.

Quindlen's principal aim seems to be an expression of her own feelings projected upon the fabric of American society. Her article asks several times, "Who are we?", and then attempts to answer. In that sense the article is "referential" and "exploratory." The boundaries are blurred with the "expressive" as she rocks back and forth between personal anecdotes and her perception of how Americans have dealt with the tragedy. In large part these anecdotes are a way of reaching out to grasp her audience. She invites her audience to identify with her and then uses that identity to speak for the American people. She constructs her audience through that empathy, an audience of anyone touched by the events of 9-11. In that respect, the text's aim relies heavily on audience construction. Only those people that care about 9-11 will care about the article.

This text complicates the principal divisions James Kinneavy sets out in "The Basic Aims of Discourse" as noted above. The significance of this lies in the nuances of purpose contained in the article. There seems to be a catharsis for Quindlen in the writing of the article. It's something personal to her that only peripherally touches her larger audience. In that sense she is her own audience. There is also the aspect of the exploratory. This includes the larger audience in the realization that there can be no real resolution of the issue. Quindlen uses terms such as bifurcated, split, of two minds and others to describe the American psyche post 9-11. She explores the ramifications of such a split and offers up suggestions for living with the unresolved conflict of being. In that sense the article is persuasive. Quindlen urges her readers to make September 11 something different from 9-11. As she says, "life goes on."

The Real Reasons Professors Can't Teach Writing

"The Real Reason Students Can't Write" by Laurence Musgrove considers a number of reasons students do not write well. He deliberates the issue in a sly way by introducing problems with students but ultimately placing the blame on the educational system. Indeed, Musgrove states clearly that,"students really do know how to write."

The audience for this article is primarily college professors and administrators. Musgrove runs a risk of alienating his audience in pointing out that that the educational system is largely at fault. He avoids this by proposing a draconian system of "writing tickets" to enforce good writing. What appears to be a punishment for poor writing ends up being an exhortation to college professors to do their jobs.

Musgrove moves his audience through a series of thoughts designed to stimulate positive action. He begins the article by introducing his credentials as an educator (ethos) and some proposals for a change in curriculum. He then defends the ability of students to write well, given some help and reasons to care about their writing. The author next aligns himself with his audience. He "sympathizes" with his "frustrated" colleagues and strengthens his authority by recounting his professional experience in teaching. He also lists some reasons students fail to produce good writing. Overall this contributes to a feeling of comraderie with his audience as having shared the same experiences. This eases the the condemnation in the next paragraph where he states, "Most college professors would prefer to complain about poor writing than simply refuse to accept it."

The author next proposes his scheme for writing tickets and the consequences of adopting such a system. This is where Musgrove introduces the logos of his article. He makes a number of suggestions but what is interesting is that he focuses on what professors can and should do rather than what students need to do. He maintains his connection with the audience by the liberal use of "we" and what "we" should be doing.

Musgrove ends his piece by stating that a lot of tickets would have to be written but only until students learn good writing skills. He then gives his audience permission to act by simply ending the article with, "Here's your badge."

I found this article interesting in the way Musgrove approaches his audience, empathizes with them and ultimately empowers them to take action.