Conclusions

Conclusions in Analysis Papers

Introduction: Rhetorical Context

Provide the rhetorical context for the social milieu of your text. In other words, you will want to provide relevant contemporaneous information about the issue/debate the speaker is addressing (e.g, war in Iraq, gun control, dedication of a new monument, etc.). Cite sources to help provide context such as historical events, political climate, or biographical information. You want to explain why your author wrote on this topic at the particular moment (s)he chose to write. Your goal is to provide context for your readers who will know less than you about the text and its contemporary historical moment.

Conclusion: Contemporary Significance

Provide the continuing significance of the issue your paper addresses. In other words, you will want to demonstrate contemporary events that make this something we should still talk about and consider or which make the points less relevant today. You can then evaluate your author’s argument based on whether we should continue to heed his/her warning, dismiss him/her for a certain reason, or pay attention to him/her but not for a good reason (maybe they represent a dangerous or problematic viewpoint on the topic that we should strive to avoid).

Introduction	Conclusion
Rhetorical Context of Your Article	Rhetorical Context of Your Paper
Context of author’s time of writing	Context of your time of writing
Why this issue was important at its publication	Why this issue is important today
Why did your author care then?	Why should we care now?

Places to Look for Sources

-Web search on topic
-Library Search (articles, newspaper, books, etc.): http://library.tulane.edu/
-Encyclopedia: http://www.britannica.com/, use Wikipedia to lead you to more reputable sources
-Google Books for historical sources: http://books.google.com/
-Articles in Various Disciplines: http://scholar.google.com/

Sample Conclusions on Andrew Sullivan's "iPod World"

This article, published 7 years ago, foretold of continued growth in iPod sales and a noticeable change in the social interactions between people. In reality, sales of iPods turned out to be much different than was suggested in 2005. In an article published in 2010 one columnist said, “If sales of Apple’s iPod are any indication, the heyday of the MP3 player is over and done with” citing the continued decline in sales of the device after its peak in 2008 (Bonnington). However, it was not because people decided to rid themselves of such devices and interact in a distraction-free environment as Sullivan suggested, instead Apple has introduced consumers to even more alluring devices such as the iPhone. The predicted popularity of the iPod in 2005 pales in comparison to the actual popularity of the iPhone today with Apple having reported almost 250 million iPhones being sold since its introduction in 2007 (Apple Inc). These increased features over an iPod that the iPhone now offers only further the validity of Sullivan’s argument from 2005. Instead of being limited to music with an iPod, people are now able to talk, text, tweet, message, and video chat from almost anywhere at any time. And Sullivan’s prediction is becoming ever more accurate as Apple incessantly tweaks the device to perfect it for optimal consumption of media, accumulation more distractions every time. With these constant advancements, the points Sullivan brings up are more applicable to current society than when his article was first published and reminds us to always realize that it’s not all bad to have some downtime for the mind.


“IPod World” is funny, witty, and overall truly makes you think about the degrading camaraderie in our society and the value we place on simple human interaction. iPods have become such a large aspect of our culture, when Sullivan wrote his article in 2005, 10 million iPods had been sold—by September 2012 the number has increased to 350 million (Costello). This topic of technological isolation is not just a current debate, but has been talked about since the origin of MP3 players. In 1981, Shuhei Hosokawa wrote an article about the “Walkman effect”. This article was written in response to the recent release of the Walkman in 1980 and its effects on the interactions of others—claiming that these new MP3 players were disconnecting society and causing severe “incommunicability” between people (Hosokawa). Thirty-one years later much has changed. Walkmans have turned into iPods and cassettes have become digital files, but the same problem remains; people’s routine detachment from their environment once deafened by their headphones. Now in 2012, iPods aren’t just MP3 players, they’re movie theaters, books, arcades, and even cell phones. Between iPods and iPhones more and more people are loosing touch with their environment and succumbing to their personal virtual bubble. Sullivan’s article, despite being written seven years ago, is even more pertinent in our current society and makes its reader’s think about what they’re missing when they plug themselves in and tune society out.

Political Cartoons

Political Cartoon Terminology

Political Cartoon Website

One of the best websites to find political cartoons to analyze is Daryl Cagle's PoliticalCartoons.com.

Intertextuality

Lesson 1: Reading as an Intertexual Practice

Compose a narrative version of the “story” told through a series of checks, published without comment as “Ordeal by Cheque” in a 1932 issue of Vanity Fair. Consider these questions: How many people use the checkbook? How does handwriting affect your reading? Who is Tony Spagoni? As you go through the checks, just hit what you think are major events instead of getting caught up in all the little details.

We will discuss the exercise in class and I will explain how it relates to a concept called intertextuality.

Lesson 2: Writing as an Intertextual Practice

Lecture: We define intertextuality through the examples and analogies below, and I also break down the term "intertext" into its etymological parts: inter meaning between or among and text meaning anything that communicates or that can be read for meaning (spoken words, articles, pictures, clothing, smiles, etc.)

Lesson 3: In-Class Writing Using Intertextuality

In one application of intertextuality, authors use a cultural touchstone or allusion to hit a note of familiarity with their audiences and to make dry material more interesting. Students can use an allusion to relate to their audience and to create a useful context for their points. For example, one might invoke a TV show, movie quote, song or popular music group, poem, play, literary work, speech, political event, or news story. I encourage you to research pop culture online to make connections.

Examples:

"In 1964, just as the Beatles were launching their invasion of America’s airwaves, Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man."

--Nicolas Carr, The Shallows

"Around the time that women were being penciled in to the equal employment act and Sandra Day O’Conner was being sworn into the Supreme Court, women across the Western world decided that they had the right to pain relief during childbirth." Newly included in women’s healthcare options was the epidural, an anesthesiologist administered placement of a catheter into the epidural space of a laboring woman’s spine where pain blocking anesthesia is injected into her body.

--Caranina Palomino, Tulane Award-Winning Student Essay "The Anti-Epidural Movement: Mommy-Bullying and Women’s Rights to Pain Management" 

However, it wasn’t until 1990, the same year that the movie Home Alone became a top seller, that cell phones became all the rage across America. Little did America know, twenty-two years down the road cell phones would literally and metaphorically make us “home alone.”

--Millie Blumka, Fall 2012 English Student

I have spent the last few years of my life teaching kids to swim. While Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps were winning medals across the pond in the 2012 London Olympics, it seemed that all of my students were striving to improve a little more each lesson.  My day was coming to an end and I only had one 6-year-old girl left who was actually a pretty talented swimmer for her age.  When I asked her to float on her back, she simply looked back at me and asked if she could get out to go play with her iPad. 

--Ethan Ader, Fall 2012 English Student

Multimedia for Intertextuality

The Day the Music Died - Don McLean on Buddy Holly's Crash

"Curating the GOP Cultural Library" The Rachel Maddow Show, Nov. 17, 2011

Rhetorical Appeals: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

Basics of Ethos, Pathos, Logos

"The Rhetorical Triangle: Understanding and Using Ethos, Pathos, Logos": a quick 2 page read

Introduction to Ethos, Pathos, Logos: a short video

Ethos, Pathos, Logos Overlap

Ethos, pathos, logos are not discrete non-overlapping elements. All communication tells us something about the author and so includes ethos.  Authors and audiences always possess emotion, even if striving for "neutral" emotion, and so pathos is involved. And all communication evidences a judgment or claim, thereby drawing on logos.

If these appeals overlap so much, what is the point of seeing them as distinct? The appeals help us understand three dominant ways through which people persuade and three common ways that rhetorical critics talk about texts. They give us places to focus. The appeals ask you to use a certain lens, to concentrate on one particular element and to dissect how it works in a given text.  If you can't first name and identify these effects, then you would have a hard time explaining how they overlap or how the pathos of a line might succeed while its logos fails. It strengthens analysis to show how any one of the appeals may become stronger or dominant in a given moment as well as to demonstrate how they are interrelated.

Group Work 

To learn how to use these terms, identify ethos, pathos, and logos in the following passages. You could use Word’s Comment feature under the “Review Tab” to select text and label it. I encourage you to break down the different parts of the text instead of using one term for each selection.


Mark Clayton “A Whole Lot of Cheatin’ Going On,” Christian Science Monitor, 1999
The Center for Academic Integrity in Nashville studied 7,000 students on 26 small-to-medium-size college campuses in 1990, 1992, and 1995. Those studies have found that nearly 80 percent admitted to cheating at least once. “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the more-explicit forms of cheating” and illegitimate “collaborating,” says Donald McCabe, associate provost at Rutgers University in Newark . . . He and others blame poor role models and lack of parental guidance for the growing acceptance of cheating in colleges . . . Add to that a pervasive change in societal values, and students can easily be snared if they lack a strong moral compass.

Franklin Roosevelt, “Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation,” 1941
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. . . .

Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Ronald Reagan, “The Space Shuttle ‘Challenger’ Tragedy Address,” 1986

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers. . . . And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them. . . . The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

Andrew Cuomo, Democratic National Convention keynote Address, 1984
Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families, and their futures. The President said that he didn't understand that fear. He said, "Why, this country is a shining city on a hill." And the President is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill. But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate. In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.

Christopher Lasch, “The Lost Art of Political Argument” Harper's, 1990
Let us begin with a simple proposition: What democracy requires is public debate, not information. Of course it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can be generated only by vigorous popular debate. We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our ideas about the world to the test of public controversy. Information, usually seen as the precondition of debate, is better understood as its by product. When we get into arguments that focus and fully engage our attention, we become avid seekers of relevant information. Otherwise, we take in information passively--if we take it in at all.











Ellie Wiesel, “The Perils of Indifference,” 1999
Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again. Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.
. . .
And so, once again, I think of the young Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. He has accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle. And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope.

Andrew Sullivan “iPod World,” New York Times Magazine, 2005
I was visiting New York City last week and noticed something I'd never thought I'd say about the big city. Yes, nightlife is pretty much dead (and I'm in no way the first to notice that). But daylife - that insane mishmash of yells, chatter, clatter, hustle and chutzpah that makes New York the urban equivalent of methamphetamine - was also a little different. It was just a little quieter. Yes, the suburbanization of Manhattan is now far-gone, its downtown a Disney-like string of malls, riverside parks, and pretty upper-middle-class villages. But there was something else as well. And as I looked across the throngs on the pavements, I began to see why. There were little white wires hanging down from their ears, tucked into pockets or purses or jackets. The eyes were a little vacant. Each was in his or her own little musical world, walking to their own soundtrack, stars in their own music video, almost oblivious to the world around them. These are the iPod people.

Ashley Davis Bush “Grief Intelligence: A Primer”
For the last 25 years, I have worked with thousands of griever. I have sat with widows and widowers, the young and the old. I have offered tissues to bereaved parents in their inconsolable grief. I have normalized, educated, listened to and championed those grievers who, through tremendous pain, still engaged with life.

D.T. Max “End of the Book” (1994)
The quiet hum of the room, the bright white lighting, the clean, flat antiseptic surfaces, give the impression of an aspirin commercial. "It was clear to us that no reader was going to read a book off any of the current screens for more than ten minutes," says Malcolm Thompson, the chief technologist. "We hoped to change that." A large annotated poster on the wall illustrates point for point the screen's superiority to paper, as in an old-fashioned magazine ad. This flat panel display is indeed better than commercial screens, but it is neither as flexible nor as mobile as a book, and it still depends on fickle battery power. A twentysomething software marketer who began as an editorial assistant in book publishing points out, "A book requires one good eye, one good light source, and one good finger."

The Rhetoric of Maps

The Basics on Maps

Great reading on Maps & Rhetoric: "Writing with Maps."

Maps are metaphors. Maps are not the actual land features, rather they are representations of these features. As representations, they are always created from a position of culture, bias, and values. In short, maps (and all types of logos) are rhetorical.

Even maps that strive for accuracy of say Africa, can never be Africa itself. One could never take in the whole of Africa in a single moment; a view from land is only of a specific place from a specific direction; a view from the air obscures the people, formations, plants, and animals below. As Samuel Ichiye Hawayaka says succinctly in Language in Thought and Action, “The first of the principles governing symbols is this: The symbol is not the thing symbolized; the word is not the thing; the map is not the territory it stands for” (19). While people can strive for objectivity and accurate descriptions of reality and experience, these descriptions can never be complete, universal, or divorced from the sign systems within which they work.

Group Work

To learn how to recognize the underlying message and values of maps, analyze the following New Orleans maps. What do you notice about each? What is prominent? What is hidden or deemphasized? Who do you think the target audience for the map is? What purpose do you think the map is used for?

In-Class Writing

At the end of class, students write on the following topic for about 10 minutes: Which map of New Orleans do you think is the "best"? You can define "best" in any way you choose: clearest, most useful for a certain activity, most encompassing, most representative, etc. You may also choose to compare the "best" map to the "worst" map in your mind. What makes one stronger than the other?

More Unique Maps

A Sample of Geopolitical Anomalies: This map draws attention to the way that maps encourage students to think of space (often wrongly) as isolated nations.
40 Maps that Will Help You Make Sense of the World: Includes unique cultural maps such as McDonalds Across the World and Paid Maternity Leave Across the World
Geography of Hate: Geotagged Hateful Tweets in the United States: The map tracks the use of certain slur terms for homosexuals, racial minorities, and individuals with disabilities.

Metaphors for the Mind

Directions: First, name the metaphor in the following quotes: the mind equals what? Next, analyze and critique the metaphors. What does the metaphor usefully tell us about the mind? What does it problematically imply about the mind?

At the end, consider all the metaphors as a type of set, a conceptual metaphor as George Lakoff calls them. More generally, what two things are compared in all of these examples. What is the A = B for the overall set? Now, think about these metaphors in their historical context, what do you notice about each individual metaphor and the context in which it was created? In other words, why these particular metaphors at these particular times? Can you make a larger statement or argument about how people create metaphors of the mind?

1. Galen, physician and scientist during Roman Empire, 200 A.D. (quote from  Rebecca Schwarzlose "Modernity, Madness, and the History of Neuroscience")

“pneuma fills the brain cavities called ventricles and circulates through pathways in the brain and nerves in the body just as water flows through a tube”

2. Julien Ofray de La Mettrie, L’Homme Machine, 1747

On the human brain and body: “a machine that winds its own springs—the living image of perpetual motion . . . man is an assemblage of springs that are activated reciprocally by one another”

3. Metaphor popular during the Industrial Revolution, usually dated as approximately 1760-1820; quote from Nicholas Carr The Shallows

There was a “metaphor that represented the brain as a mechanical contraption. Like a steam engine or an electric dynamo, the nervous system was made up of many parts, and each had a specific and set purpose that contributed in some essential way to the successful operation of the whole.”

4. Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and John C. Shaw “Empirical Explorations of the Logic Theory Machine” (352), 1964

They describe a “functional equivalence between brains and computers . . . Our theory is a theory of the information processes involved in problem-solving and not a theory of neural or electronic mechanisms.”

5. Christiane Paul, “Neural Networks vs. Computer-Networked Environments” 2002

The neural network of the brain exhibits the same fundamental structure as that of social or computer networks. The brain can be understood as an assembly of distinct modules, each of them responsible for different tasks, such as speech, language, vision. In neuroscience labs, magnetic resonance imaging techniques — which use radio waves to probe the pattern of blood flow in the brain, revealing how much oxygen its various parts are using at any moment — are used to see these modules in action. This process reflects the level of neural activity.

Punctuation is Rhetorical

Punctuation does more than adorn words; it tells us how to read words. At the end of this exercise, I hope you will be able to think more critically about punctuation in all its various roles: creating meaning, controlling tempo, and conveying emotion.

Group Work

To learn how to analyze punctuation deeply, summarize the message of the text and explain how the punctuation contributes to that message. What does the significant punctuation usually tell us in any sentence? You might describe the role/"rule" of each mark, which you are welcome to Google. What effect does the mark have on the content?


1. Examine the effects of the punctuation in these titles:

Attention. Deficit. Disorder.

Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing



2. Examine the differences between the following statements, created solely by punctuation. Why does one of the versions produce a more humorous effect than the other?

Say ‘NO’ to Drugs. From the NMB Police D.A.R.E Officers.	Say ‘NO’ to Drugs from the NMB Police D.A.R.E Officers.
A woman without her man is nothing.	A woman: without her, man is nothing.
He eats shoots and leaves.	He eats, shoots, and leaves.
Let’s eat, mother.	Let’s eat mother.
Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me be yours?	Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

3. Examine the effects of the parentheses & italics.

From “Let American be America Again”
-Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.



4. Analyze the effects of the ellipsis, present in one textual variant. 

From Percy Bysshe Shelley "Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

5. Analyze the following rhetorical questions. How does the fact that the sentences are questions affect their meaning? How do they work on an audience?

Will we be better off if more Americans get a better education? Will we better off if we depend less on foreign oil and more on our own ingenuity? Will we be better off if we start doing some nation-building at home? Will we be better off if we bring down our deficits in a balanced, responsible way without gutting the very things that we need to grow? When we look back four years from now, or ten years from now, or twenty years from now, won’t we be better off if we have the courage to keep moving forward?
--President Barack Obama, "Remarks" 

Can't Get Enough Punctuation?

Kathryn Schulz, "The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature"
John Dawkin, "Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool"
Jennifer Schuessler, "If Only Thomas Jefferson Could Settle the Issue: A Period is Questioned in the Declaration of Independence"
Anne-Marie Womack "Punctuation Matters" in The Pocket Instructor: Literature, edited by Diana Fuss and Bill Gleason for Princeton University Press.

Statistics and Rhetoric

The Basics on Numbers and Rhetoric

Joanna Wolfe's "Rhetorical Numbers: A Case for Quantitative Writing in the Composition Classroom" published in CCC (2010). For my students, a 6.5 page version is available on our class website.


Often students assume that argument does not function within fields that strive toward objectivity like math Famed statistician Nate Silver, though, writes, “The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. We speak for them. We imbue them with meaning” (9). Numbers, while "true," have little value until they are brought into the world—until the minus sign means a withdrawal from your checking account, until three equals the number of pizza slices you have for lunch, or until the flu virus spreads exponentially in your city. Raw data must be interpreted and that interpreting always requires a person who is situated, biased, flawed, and emotional. These are the types of problems that students can evaluate with rhetoric.

Even with a closed-system like math, the rules are not created in a neutral vacuum. For example, our base 10 system groups items based on increments of ten—it takes ten ones to push a number over into the tens column and ten groups of ten to overflow into the next column to the left, the hundreds. There are symbols available for 1-9, but after that a single column can contain no more. Doesn't it “naturally” make sense: grade school children counting on their ten little fingers? In reality this system of numerical organization is dependent on culture and is not a universal. The Mayans in fourth century AD used a base 20 system (Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World 28); California’s Yuki tribe had base 4 and base 8 numbering systems. Some scholars believe the Mayans counted on their fingers and their toes; the Yuki counted the spaces between the fingers (When Languages Die 173-175). Not to be limited to body digits, ancient Iraq used various systems including base 120 and base 60 (Mathematics Across Cultures 103). Mixing things up even more, the Dozenal Society of America has promoted since World War II the use of a duodecimal system, in other words, learning to count in base 12. Among the benefits: alignment with systems of measurement (12 inches to a foot, 12 donuts in a dozen) and fractional simplicity—1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 of 12 all create nice whole numbers. All of these systems of numbers, from the way we count them up to the way they take on meaning, depend on culture and context, on the rhetorical situation.

Cold Open Video to Begin Class

Pros and Cons of Public Opinion Polls (listed on my Cold Open Videos Post)

Lecture

Class Work

Even though all statistics are rhetorical and biased, not all statistics are created equally. Like all rhetorical moves, statistics can be stronger or weaker, and people can employ statistical methods in better or worse ways. Let's identify some ways that statistics commonly go wrong.

Videos to Discuss

"Did You Know?"

"Wealth Inequality in America"

Captain America "Statistics Song"

More on Statistics

Some Examples of Misleading Statistics

Tim Wise Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity  (93-96): In this section, Wise compiles analyses of faulty statistics that have been used by racism skeptics. These skeptics claim that the success of Asian Americans in the United States disproves racial inequality. The numbers more accurately suggest that when all other things are equal in education, location, and skills, Asian Americans are paid less than white Americans because of discrimination.

Metaphors for the Student

Metaphors influence public policy. In Texas over the last 5 years, for example, politicians have used metaphors describing the student as a customer to change evaluation procedures for faculty, changes which received national attention. Student evaluations became more important, and for a while the university awarded money to professors with high ratings (Student Recognition Awards for Teaching Excellence). Now job postings for the A&M system include "The Texas A&M University system requires excellent customer service skills of all applicants."

Class Work

1. What metaphors for viewing students does each author embrace?

2. What metaphors does each author reject?

3. Analyze the implications of these metaphors—think deeply. What are the connotations and associations with each metaphor for the student?

4. What are the benefits of each metaphor? What are the problems? Do you think any of these metaphors are false analogies? Why or why not? Which metaphors seems most appropriate?

1. Truma, Mary “Small MBA program in Austin Pioneers‘ Students as Customers'” Approach to Higher Ed” Oct 2011 American Independent.

Founded seven years ago, an intensive MBA program in Austin pioneered the customer satisfaction philosophy that is driving facets of education reform at other Texas public universities today. The Acton School of Business, a nonprofit institution taught by non-academics in the entrepreneurial field, was born from the collective idea of four former University of Texas at Austin professors. Since its inception, the one-year program has rewarded its instructors with financial bonuses based on weekly student evaluation reviews. The questionnaires ask students to rate their professor and course experience on a five-point scale. High professor ratings can lead to a $30,000 bonus, while low ratings nudge professors out at semester’s end. A forced curve system is said to circumvent bias from students based on grades.

“We are very focused on students as customers,” said co-founder Jeff Sandefer, an oil and gas entrepreneur. Ranked by BusinessWeek as one of the top 10 entrepreneurship professors in the country, Sandefer likened the classroom to a free market. “We break the idea that promotes ‘teacher as parent’ and ‘teacher as approver.’ We let classes set their own level which is always further ahead than ours.”

2. Fish, Stanley “Deep in the Heart of Texas” June 21, 2010 New York Times.

A number of responses to my column about my high school education rehearsed a story of late-flowering gratitude after an earlier period of frustration and resentment. “I had a college experience like yours,” the poster typically said, “and I hated it and complained all the time about the homework, the demands and the discipline; but now I am so pleased that I stayed the course and acquired skills that have served me well throughout my entire life.”        

Now suppose those who wrote in to me had been asked when they were young if they were satisfied with the instruction they were receiving? Were they getting their money’s worth? Would they recommend the renewal of their teachers’ contracts? I suspect the answers would have been “no,” “no” and “no,” and if their answers had been taken seriously and the curriculum they felt oppressed by had been altered accordingly, they would not have had the rich intellectual lives they now happily report, or acquired some of the skills that have stood them in good stead all these years.

The relationship between present action and the judgment of value is different in other contexts. If a waiter asks me, “Was everything to your taste, sir?”, I am in a position to answer him authoritatively (if I choose to). When I pick up my shirt from the dry cleaner, I immediately know whether the offending spot has been removed. But when, as a student, I exit from a class or even from an entire course, it may be years before I know whether I got my money’s worth, and that goes both ways. A course I absolutely loved may turn out be worthless because the instructor substituted wit and showmanship for an explanation of basic concepts. And a course that left me feeling confused and convinced I had learned very little might turn out to have planted seeds that later grew into mighty trees of understanding. “Deferred judgment” or “judgment in the fullness of time” seems to be appropriate to the evaluation of teaching…

Now an entire state is on the brink of implementing [a “customer satisfaction” style of teaching]. Backed by Texas Governor Rick Perry, the plan calls for college and university teachers to contract with their customers — that is, students — and to be rewarded by as much as $10,000 depending on whether they meet the contract’s terms. The idea is to hold “tenured professors more accountable” (“A&M regents push reforms,” The Eagle, June 13, 2010), and what they will be accountable to are not professional standards but the preferences of their students, who, in advance of being instructed, are presumed to be authorities on how best they should be taught. A corollary proposal is to shift funding to the student-customers by giving them vouchers. One respondent to the June 13 story in The Eagle got it exactly right: “In the recent past, A&M announced that it wanted to be a top ten public university. Now it appears to be announcing it wants to be an investment firm, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, and a car dealership.”

3. Bermudez,  Jose Luis “Students are not college customers” Sept. 2011 Houston Chronicle

Are students customers? For some, understanding that students are customers is the key to solving ongoing budget problems. For others, even mentioning the words "student" and "customer" in the same sentence is betraying the fundamental principles of higher education. Who is right?

Universities certainly have customers. For us at Texas A&M University, the state of Texas is a customer and we serve it in many ways. We provide a high-quality education to young Texas women and men, enhancing the skills of the work force. Students and faculty work together on research improving the economy and quality of life in Texas. And the university itself is a powerful economic engine for the local community. In some respects our students are obviously part of the customer base. Universities are in the restaurant and hotel business. They are subject to the same constraints and obligations as any other restaurant or hotel. Likewise for athletics facilities and tickets to sporting or artistic events.

But these services are not part of our core mission as a leading research university. Our mission is to create and transmit knowledge. We create knowledge by doing research. And we transmit knowledge by teaching. This is the heart of the issue. Even though we are transmitting knowledge to students, that doesn't make them customers. The real customers are the people on whose behalf we educate our students. This includes the state of Texas; the government agencies, private companies and branches of the armed forces that employ our students; and it includes all those whose lives are enriched by contact with graduates of a great university driven by academic excellence and its own unique spirit.

It is true that students and their families pay for the education that universities provide. But there are things that we pay for without thereby becoming customers. It is better to think of the money students pay for their education as an investment. They are investing both in their own future and in the university to which they have entrusted their education. We can measure the return that students receive on this investment. It takes different forms. One is financial. Texas A&M provides an outstanding "payback ratio" when graduate-earning levels are compared to tuition, fees and living costs. In fact, Texas A&M was recently ranked first in the nation for its payback ratio by Smart Money magazine. There are other, indirect, forms of return on investment. I have met many in Texas and elsewhere who have told me how their lives have been transformed by a single, transformative learning experience — often in an arts or literature course in the College of Liberal Arts.

[The current budgetary climate] will involve discussions with many different groups of stakeholders, customers and investors. But these discussions will only be constructive when we move beyond the idea that students themselves are customers. Universities do have customers. And they educate students on behalf of those customers. But the students themselves are not the customers.

4. Taylor, John S. “Absolutely the Best Dentist” Abbreviated. The School Administrator (2000)

My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don't forget checkups. He uses the latest techniques based on research. He never hurts me. And, at 52, I've still got all my teeth. When I ran into him the other day, I was eager to see if he'd heard about the state’s new initiative to help him succeed in his work. I knew he'd think it was great....

"Did you hear about the new state program to measure the effectiveness of dentists with their young patients?" I said. “They will just count the number of cavities each patient has at age 10, 14 and 18 and average that to determine a dentist's rating. Dentists will be rated as Excellent, Good, Average, Below Average and Unsatisfactory. That way parents will know which are the best dentists. It will also encourage the less effective dentists to get better," I said. "Poor dentists who don’t improve could lose their licenses to practice in South Carolina."

"But that's not a fair way to determine who is practicing good dentistry."

"Why not?" I said. "It makes perfect sense to me."

"Well, it's so obvious," he said. "Don't you see that dentists don’t all work with the same clientele? So much depends on things we can’t control.”

"For example," he went on, "I work in a rural area with a high percentage of patients from deprived homes, while some of my colleagues work in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Many of the parents I work with don’t bring their children to see me until there is some kind of problem and I don't get to do much preventive work.

"Also, many of the parents I serve have allowed their kids to consume way too much candy and soda from an early age, unlike more-educated parents who understand the relationship between sugar and decay.

"To top it all off," he continued, "so many of my clients have well water that is untreated and has no fluoride in it. Do you have any idea how much difference early use of fluoride can make?"

"In a system like this, I will end up being rated average, below average or worse. My more-educated patients who see these ratings may believe this so-called state rating actually is a measure of my ability and proficiency as a dentist. They may leave me, and I’ll be left with only the most needy patients. And my cavity average score will get even worse. On top of that, how will I attract good dental hygienists and other excellent dentists to my practice if it is labeled below average?"

The program still sounded reasonable to me, so I asked, "How else would you measure good dentistry?"

"Come watch me work," he said. "Observe my processes."

"That's too complicated and time consuming," I said. "Cavities are the bottom line, and you can't argue with the bottom line. It's an absolute measure."

"You don't get it," he said. "Doing this would be like grading schools and teachers on an average score on a test of children’s progress without regard to influences outside the school, the home, the community served and stuff like that. Why would they do something so unfair to dentists? No one would ever think of doing that to schools."

5. Pausch, Randy. The Last Lecture (2008)

I don’t fully reject the customer-service model, but I think it’s important to use the right industry metaphor. It’s not retail. I’d compare college tuition to paying for a personal trainer at an athletic club. We professors play the roles of trainers, giving people access to the equipment (books, labs, our expertise) and after that, it’s our job to be demanding. We need to make sure that students are exerting themselves. We need to praise them when they deserve it and to tell them honestly when they have it in them to work harder. Most importantly, we need to let them know how to judge for themselves how they’re coming along. The great thing about working out at a gym is that if you put in effort, you get very obvious results. The same can be true of college. A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror.



6. Perry, David M. "Faculty Members are Not Cashiers." The Chronicle for Higher Ed 17 March 2014.

For years now, corporate language and thinking has invaded academe....[T]he attempt to shift the world of higher education into the business paradigm seems rational to administrators: Without customers--i.e., students--faculty jobs will be cut, programs shuttered, and staff members 'downsized.'

Meanwhile, students (and their families) are taking on ever-increasing amounts of debt, paying higher tuition, and fearing they will never earn enough to make those costs worthwhile....They've paid their money--or they will over the next 30 years or so--now they want service.

But public discourse has consequences for how we think and act...Students who believe that they are mere customers are selling themselves short, as are the faculty members and administrators who apply business-speak to the classroom. Students are not customers to be served. They are far more important than that...

Perhaps I'm a romantic, but I believe in teaching as a vocation and a craft, not a sale. I believe that it's possible to turn a class into a microcommunity of learners and teachers. Such an approach yields some of the power back to the students and makes us collaborators, all governed by expectations, feedback, evaluations, and conversations.

Gun Debate Metaphors

Multimedia to Begin Class

"Loaded Words: How Language Shapes The Gun Debate"

Class Work

Analyze the following sets of metaphors. First determine the metaphor repeated by each selection. Next, analyze how each author uses the particular metaphor. Which side do you think benefits most from the connotations of that particular metaphor?

CASE 1

Barack Obama, “President Addresses Vigil for Sandy Hook Shooting Victims”
Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America -- victims whose -- much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens -- from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators -- in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of NRA, “Standing Guard: Making Our Nation’s School Children Safer”

With the horrific series of mass murders culminating in the cold-blooded killing of children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December, this latest iteration of “gun control” is entirely directed at making the sane pay the price for unthinkable acts committed by the insane. It is the root of the civil disarmament movement in America today.

But for the evil acts of these and other deranged killers, all of the sane people in America are supposed to pay the price with the loss of our freedom. On its face, that very concept is, well, insane. And the gun-banners know it. They cynically exploit these tragedies and their elite media enablers amplify what they, too, know to be a big lie: that, somehow, homicidal maniacs are going to be stopped through legislation, as if you can legislate morality, or sanity, for that matter.

In late January, NBC headlined its coverage of a Biden meeting and quoted Obama’s official gun-ban czar as saying, “Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting.” So what on earth is all this push for massive new gun controls on innocent citizens about?

CASE 2

Tom Brokaw on Morning Joe

Gun control "reminds me a lot of what happened in the South in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. Good people stayed in their houses and didn't speak up when there was carnage in the streets and the total violation of a fundamental rights of African-Americans as they marched in Selma, and they let Bull Connor and the redneck elements of the South and the Klan take over their culture in effect and become a face of it. And now a lot of people who I know who grew up during that time have deep regrets about not speaking out . . . Now it's time for the people who do have strong feelings, who are feeling that they can't do anything about it, to kind of band together and have something to say here."

David A. Keene, “We Will Prevail” NRA President’s Column
The Sandy Hook murders gave the president and his allies in Congress, the left-wing media and activists the political opportunity they had been waiting for. . . .

What the president and his allies didn’t count on was your deep belief in freedom and the Constitution, the tenacity of those of us dedicated to preserving the rights handed down by the framers of our Constitution and the good common sense of most Americans . . .

We are awake now. There are millions of us and we will not be cowed. The struggle to preserve our rights will get ugly, and there will be additional attempts to demonize us, divide us and limit the rights of gun owners who have never done anything wrong.

Millions of Second Amendment supporters are rallying, speaking up and letting their elected representatives know just how they feel. [There are] tens of thousands of new members joining the NRA and the continuing flood of calls to Congress are making it very clear that we will Stand and Fight when our rights are threatened. If we don’t let up, we will prevail.

Bob Scheiffer on CBS News
Let's remember: there was considerable opposition when Lyndon Johnson went to the Congress and...presented some of the most comprehensive civil rights legislation in the history of this country. Most people told him he couldn't get it done, but he figured out a way to do it. And that's what Barack Obama is going to have to do . . . What happened in Newtown was probably the worst day in this country's history since 9/11 . . . Surely, passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do; and before that, surely, defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby.

CASE 3

NPR Barbershop Segment, “Is Public Numb to Mass Shootings?”

IZRAEL: Thank you for the info, Michel. All right, fellas, so some people say these stories won't get the same attention that earlier shootings did, you know, and that maybe Americans are just getting a little too used to this kind of violence. Paul Butler, you live in the D.C. area. Do you see - do you think there's any truth to that at all?

BUTLER: Of course. I work about a mile from the Navy Yard. And it was kind of weird to go outside on Monday and wait in line at the food truck as if, blocks away, 12 people had not been gunned down. So I don't know if we're desensitized or if we're just suffering from combat fatigue because I've got some bad news - there's going to be another mass shooting this year and then another one after that. We know that from statistics. But is that supposed to change the way that I live my life? Am I supposed to be scared every time I go to work? I'm not going to live that way. So I wouldn't call it desensitized - I would call it a way of coping with a violent, scary world.

Emily Miller, “Inside Obama’s War on Guns: Rick Perry Decries Effort to Disarm Americans.” The Washington Times
The biggest fight in history over Americans’ right to keep and bear arms is being waged today. There were attacks on the Second Amendment in the early 1990s with the passage of the Brady bill and the “assault weapons” ban. The gun-control battle of 2013, however, could easily see the greatest losses of Second Amendment rights ever.

There are two key factors that make this assault more serious: billionaire New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is willing to spend anything to win, and a longtime anti-gun fanatic Barack Obama, who is applying the full power of the presidential bully pulpit for the gun-grabbers’ cause.

Jules Witcover, “Obama’s Limited War on Guns” Chicago Tribune
The rich and influential Bloomberg so far is waging a more pointed and expansive war on the NRA and the nation's gun culture than is the man in the White House. Obama's pitch to Congress that the recent gun victims on the streets and in the schools of America "deserve a vote" pales in comparison to Democratic [predecessors].

President Obama should do no less now in the fight against gun violence, regardless of Harry Reid's grim reading of the prospects of restoring the assault weapons ban in the Senate. Better to fight and go down swinging than to concede defeat once again to the NRA and its grip on weak-kneed or wrong-headed lawmakers on Capitol Hill.