Arizona State University



English 101- Essay Three

Composing Schedule:

Heuristics: (as assigned in class)

First draft for peer review: Wed Nov 6

Second draft for peer review: Fri Nov 8

Polished draft for submission: Wed Nov 7

Assignment

Background

This semester, you have read many articles about education, and already, we have seen a variety of views on what should be taught and we have discussed some different ways of teaching. We have considered many of the following questions posed by Susan Belasco in our Constructing Literacies text: How should students be educated? How do you feel about your own education to this point? How would you describe the major teaching strategies of your secondary education? What assumptions about education underlie the different teaching methods? What does the college (or high school) classroom reveal about the priorities of the school? How are most classrooms arranged? How are students treated? How do teachers conduct classes? How do students interact? What are the purposes of an education? How well do our educational systems meet these purposes? How are curriculum decisions made? You have also reflected on your own experiences and conducted surveys to discover other students’ views of their educational experiences. Now you will continue to build on this knowledge in your next paper, in which you will discuss possible improvements to our educational systems or our classroom teaching methods.

Your Task

In this assignment, you will write an article for high school or college administrators in which you analyze either their education systems the teaching methods that are used to discuss possible improvements to their educational systems or possible improvements to teaching methods. Your article would be used for your high school site improvement committee, your school board, or the Arizona Board of Regents, depending on the context you choose. Therefore, you need to decide whether you will address high school or college committees and administrators. Then you will need to choose your essay’s area of emphasis: educational systems or teaching methods.

Since you are a thoughtful, informed, and involved student, your input has been requested by the committee (of which you are a member). To show your knowledge of the issue, beyond the anecdotal, you will use Freire or Tompkins as a lens. Therefore, you will extract the fundamental principles from their arguments and apply those key principles to your education. You would also need to incorporate the views of other students to add weight to your discussion (for even if they did not attend the same high school as you, you may find that you share common experiences of particular educational systems and teaching methods and common reactions).

Remember that when discussing ways to improve an educational system or method of teaching you can use examples of successful strategies you have experienced. You do not have to focus solely on negative examples.

Your Audience

Your readers are educators, local citizens, and politicians who are concerned about the quality of education. So they are interested in hearing your perspective as a student. They will be especially impressed with your article as you are incorporating the views of a well-known educator (Freire or Tompkins). Since some members of your audience are educators, you should not simply “bash” the current educational systems or teaching methods. Besides being sensitive to audience, we know that educational issues are more complex than “good” and “bad.”

Organization

Like essay # 2, you have many options for how to organize your paper. For this essay, you need to work on topic focus:

1. high school or college

2. larger educational concerns such as curriculum issues or teaching methods.

Once you have made these two basic decisions, then you will generate specific points that you determine to be important, as your essay will guide the committee as they seek to improve student education.

Goals

• To focus on a specific rhetorical purpose and audience (informing a school committee about aspects of education that could be improved or that are successful and need further incorporation and development)

• To incorporate a theoretical lens (Freire or Tompkins)

• To inform your writing with complex ideas from college-level prose

• To substantiate your views with experiences of other students (your survey data)

• To organize materials logically into a coherent, thoughtful paper

• To use appropriate conventions of format, structure, and language as is appropriate for your audience

Format

• typed, double spaced, readable font in 11 or 12 point

• at least four minimum pages plus the Works Cited page

• a title for your essay

• your name, my name and class time on each page

• numbered pages

Submission of Polished Draft

Your polished paper should be submitted in a manila folder 8 ½ by 11 on which you have written your name. Include the following working from top to bottom:

✓ Reflection on your writing (written in class on the day the polished draft is due)

✓ Final Draft

✓ Early drafts and peer review sheets

✓ Heuristics and other invention work

Heuristics for Assignment Three

1. Write a reading response entry for Paulo Freire’s article “The Banking Concept of Education.” There are 3 parts to this essay: in the first part he defines the banking concept of education that makes students passive listening objects and the teacher the primary agent; in the second part he shows how this type of education is used by oppressive governments; finally, in the third part, he suggests a different method of education. In your summary, make sure that you address all three parts. Then in your response section, consider when you have been exposed to the banking concept of education and when you have been exposed to problem-posing (see question 4 in “Questions for Writing” on page 349).

2. Write a reading response entry for Jane Tompkins’ article “The Cloister and the Heart.” In this article, Tompkins begins by examining her experiences as a student in college. Then she examines her undergraduates today and the ways they choose the schools they attend. She presents a series of examples to show how traditional classrooms that promote rote learning can constrict a person’s horizons. She concludes that higher education should be less concerned with training for a career and more concerned with training for life. In your summary, make sure that you address her main purpose, which is to discuss the nature of the college classroom. In your response, apply Tompkins’ criticisms of traditional education to your own experiences. Give some examples of when the rote learning of traditional classrooms have affected you.

3. Explain which article you have decided to use as a lens for your essay and whether you have decided to focus on educational systems or teaching methods. Explain why you have made this choice. Then, summarize the core beliefs that you can extract from the article you have chosen (make sure that you reread the article and your reading response before you do this).

4. Now make a chart and on one side identify the core beliefs of the writer, and on the other side say what example from your experience would illustrate this core belief.

|Core beliefs or fundamental principles |Example from my experience |

5. Now as you look at heuristic 4, you should see areas where it would be nice to have quotations from your peers that would add further proof to your ideas. So now devise a questionnaire that will give you answers you can use to add more proof to your experiences.

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