Jordan Donze 1/29

Last week in class, we applied Aristotle's three appeals of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to some of our reading assignments as well as reading about Stanley Fish's article, "Democracy in Education" in the New York Times.  We additionally read Jones’ article, “Find the Argument.”

During our group activity, we each looked at Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" from each of the different appeals.  My group used Pathos, which related to emotion.  King is very passionate about equality and uses children in his examples to convey innocence.  “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  King is being mindful of the suffering but is confident that one day there will be a change.  I personally enjoyed the readings from chapter three because there was a valid purpose; King wanted equality and Skinner addressed the issues of sex trafficking. 

Stanley Fish’s article focused on the issue “whether a public employee is limited to his or her right of free speech by an employer’s interest in promoting the efficiency of the unit’s operation.”  Before learning the background of the story, we were asked if we agreed with Fish’s opinion of denying students in the education system the right to freedom of speech.  As a class, we all disagreed because everyone should be allowed to speak their minds.  Once we learned the reasoning of the article, that a student had manipulated his rights and raised an inappropriate banner in the school, we all suddenly changed our minds.  If something is morally incorrect or offensive to people, the right should be taken away.  In this case, the student’s banner was taken down from the school.  Schools have the right to intervene when under the right circumstances.  The student’s banner may have been freedom of speech, but it could have also been offensive to other students in the school.

Jones’ article, “Find the Argument” addresses the different ways to discern an argument.  In class we used his methods and applied them to Fish’s article.  We learned about the claim, data, warrant, and the rebuttal.  The claim is basic principle presented; data is evidence supporting the claim; the warrant makes clear assumptions for underlying the argument; and the rebuttal is a condition or flaw that supports the alternate position.