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G102/Low Assignment 2 As I wrote when I posted Assignment 1, your second full, graded essay for this course will be similar in style and structure to your first graded essay, where you wrote an argumentative essay with research components. I am not saying that you should merely repeat the form of your first essay, but I am trying to stress the point that most informative and argumentative research essays that are brief make and support their claims in similar ways. Once again, before I present the specific options for this assignment, let me remind you of the following guidelines and advice for the paper, with which by now you should be fairly familiar. Argumentative essays differ from narrative, expository, or analytical essays fundamentally in that you're writing to take a stand, to persuade your audience to accept a particular position, to convince your audience of a particular argument. Although in other essay genres (which you likely encountered in ENG 101 and elsewhere) you're also making a point, the emphasis in argumentative essays is to make and prove an argument with convincing evidence and sound, logical reasoning. Content An argument essentially contains a central claim (your thesis) backed up by several supporting claims, which are further supported by concrete evidence--examples, other people's opinions, etc. This argumentative essay not only will involve sound, logical reasoning but may also include some of the other techniques you've learned in other courses or schools, including narration, description, and certainly analysis. One thing to keep in mind is that since you're making an argument on a controversial issue, there's always another side. It's vitally important that you address the other side if you want to present a fair and convincing argument. Organization While there are always multiple ways to organize any kind of essay, the one that's something of a textbook approach goes this way: introduction, claim, evidence, support, and conclusion. You’ll see more specificity if you search The Owl at Purdue or other websites, but it’s important to resist developing a rubric for writing an essay that’s a straightjacket. Give yourself enough room to move about as you draft your essay, but make sure you have a clear sense of its organization when it reaches its final form. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos A good argumentative essay requires a somewhat balanced use of ethos, pathos, and logos. Without ethos, your essay will not carry credibility; without pathos, it won't have effective emotional affect; and without logos, your essay will lack the logic and reason that’s a necessary component of every argument. As you look at the essays and videos that provide many of the sources for this assignment, consider how their writers and speakers shapes their arguments with these approaches. Review these definitions posted under Unit 2.

Sources Using other people's arguments, especially those from reputable sources, to support your own argument is often an effective and necessary means of argumentation. Therefore, for this essay, you're expected to include at least four sources, three from our set of essays and videos, or two from our set of essays and videos along with a relevant case study from your own experience. The fourth source must come from research you conduct online or in the library. As you know by now, the theme for this essay is education. Note that this, of course, is in not entirely unrelated to our first theme, social media, and if you wish to make connections between any essay we’ve read to this point, you should feel free to do so. Also recognize that a lot of time is spent on social media by students in high school and college. How might this shape/affect their education? I offer you two options below, with a bonus third one if you wish to pursue it.

Option 1: The Case Study Option One way of focusing a short research paper is by selecting a main source among those you reference. This source then becomes a kind of touchstone for your other research materials—you may refer to this main source more than any other. An effective way to do this is through the use of a case study. While we have fewer case studies to work with for this Assignment, given the readings for it, you can still use your own experience as a case study, or the experiences of any of the students in “Dropout Nation.” (You could also consult the experience of Mike Rose in our timed essay topic, “I Just Wanna Be Average.) Each of these options presents the opportunity to tell a story as a case study for how education sometimes works for students in schools, and sometimes works against students in schools. It’s important to note that many of the case studies we encounter in this unit are defined by social class— many of the students who struggle do not come from middle class or upper class backgrounds. Whatever your claim ultimately becomes regarding education for this essay, it’s likely going to allude to some of the hardships confronted by students who are from backgrounds where the challenges make schooling more difficult. In anticipation of the use of this case study, you will write an introduction and make a claim about education that you will then use your case study to develop. Many different claims could be written for this option. You could write a claim how a challenging family or social class environment can be overcome by effective teachers or guidance counselors, or you could write a claim about how schools pass students on from grade to grade when they haven’t assimilated the necessary skills, or you could write a claim about how the need to work and provide for family is a leading cause for students dropping out of college. Whatever that claim may be, you then use your case study, supplemented by texts written by writers like Christakis, Levy, Clynes, Crosta, and the report in US News to support and develop your claim. Do not neglect this bold-faced requirement. Again, you

use the case study as the centerpiece of your essay, but quotations from the authors listed above, or from “Dropout Nation, along with the two sources you research, will help you verify and substantiate the claim you make in your essay. Remember, use a minimum of four sources for this paper, one of which may be your personal experience as case study. Option 2: The Analytical Option For this option, you will use the essays by Christakis, Levy, Clynes, Crosta, and the report in US News as the centerpiece for your essay, rather than a case study. Each of these essays deals with a specific issue surrounding education—Kristakis claims schools are better than we think, Levy interviews former Secretary of Eduation Arne Duncan, who speaks extensively about problems in schools, Clynes writes about how dropping out of college can be a beneficial choice, while Crosta presents data on why students leave community colleges, and the US News article presents data on financial burdens that lead students to drop out. For this essay, you will begin with a brief overview of one of these articles, and then establish a claim that emerges from that overview. Again, you could make many different kind of claims. You could argue, as many do, that dropping out of college is a greater problem today than dropping out of high school. You could look more deeply at how social class (and race) shapes educational (and thus employment) destinies. You could examine contemporary research to assess whether the problems traditionally cited with regard to public education (in the Christakis essay, for example) are overstated. Or you could look at the issue of high teen dropout rates examined in “Dropout Nation,” and make a claim about why this is such a problem in many schools. (What is it about our educational system that allows so many students to struggle so much?) Having introduced the essay of your choice, and having established a claim, you will then move on to your supporting evidence to verify that claim. You should feel free to use, for example, one of the students quoted in the Clynes essay or one of the students in the film, as brief examples of how students struggle or overcome challenges in the educational system, but they should only be brief examples, and not case studies. You can feel free to generate similar examples from your research on the internet, but I would recommend, in the case of this analytical approach, that you work with data and information that you can find from a couple of articles in magazines, newspapers, and online. Data is always persuasive. For instance, one possible approach for this assignment would be to look at Peter Crosta’s claim that community college students who drop out tend to be older, since the pressures of family, work, and other commitments get in the way of attending class. Remember, the more specific the focus, the better your essay will be. OPTION 3 We are learning online this semester, as this was a dedicated online course before the onset of COVID 19. But the impact of the disease on education and higher education in general can’t be overstated. In the article in Bloomberg.com, Stephen Mihm writes this:

When students shell out $50,000 a year to attend a school that admits a majority of applicants, they’re paying for a lot more than professors. [Dorm life, facilities, student friendships, etc.]…. But when education moves online, all of that disappears. Instead, you’re left with a haggard-looking professor on Zoom. That’s worth something, sure, but it isn’t worth paying anything close to full freight. Parents who confront this reality come fall semester are going to quickly conclude that their children will need to settle for something more practical, like some online courses offered by a local branch of the state university. Does this accurately represent your point of view, your parents’ point of view, or others’ point of view? Is a pricey university education simply not worth it if that education is offered online? And what other kinds of impacts has the virus had on education? How effective has online learning been? What is lost in online learning that isn’t lost in faceto-face learning? Are your professors able to fairly evaluate you in these circumstances? What about the global recession that has come as a result? Has this discouraged your pursuit of education, or encouraged it? And finally, is it possible that this crisis might be a good thing for students going to universities in colleges if it forces them to lower tuition and other costs? (Don’t try to answer all these questions!!! One of them might make for a good research question for your entire paper.) Remember, too, that you don’t HAVE to write about college when it comes to the virus. When you look at the students in “Dropout Nation,” and other students who might be at risk because their parents must work too much or because they live in poverty, how do they become more vulnerable during a pandemic? Do differences in social class get amplified in a time like this one, and does this affect one’s access to education? For your sources for this assignment, you can use your own experience, the article from Bloomberg, and the other articles we have read or those you’ve researched on your own. Obviousy, there are dozens and dozens out there on the virus’s impact on education— we’re all participating in this experiment right now. For any choice, make good decisions about whether you intend to write in the first person or third person. In an analytical essay, you should likely not resort to using “I.” But in essay that works with personal case studies, using “I” would likely enhance your writing. Word Count for Assignment 2: 1750+. (It’s okay to exceed the word count, but not okay to fall short of it.)...