Students, below appears an example of how to expand your own shorter papers into the six- to eight-page longer paper that the course requires. In this example, which is the bare minimum allowable length for your own papers, I work from my earlier contrast paper. The material that I bring straight over from it appears in white. The added counter-argument appears in red. The rebuttal is in green. New material supporting my thesis is in blue. Sources for each are in the Works Cited according to the color of what they support (the source for the counter-argument is red, for example).
Please note that in your own papers, you are not to color-code; I do so in the example as a teaching device, showing you how the parts fit together. Please note also that, as with the earlier paper, the topic of the example is not one you may use.
An antagonist is anything that hinders or prevents a focal figure or focal figures from pursuing an end goal. The household chores of doing laundry and of washing dishes both perform antagonistic functions. Of the two, the more antagonistic is the dishwashing.
There are, admittedly, reasons to think it strange to call doing laundry and washing dishes antagonistic. One is that having household chores to do necessitates that there is a household for which to do them, and it is certainly the case that having a household, a secure place in which to live and carry out personal and familial affairs, is an end-goal held by many. The support of that goal would definitionally fail to be antagonistic, and since chores support that goal, they cannot be antagonistic. Another is that household chores are honest work. It has been held for quite some time and in several cultures that simple physical labor has a beneficial effect on those who do it. For example, the Bhagavad-Gita reports that "Work is more excellent than idleness; / The body's life proceeds not, lacking work." Similarly, comments about the life of St. Isidore speak to divine favor--the receipt of which is widely considered good--attending upon manual labor (World). The idea, according to Bob Hoover, was even voiced in the inauguration of President Obama. It becomes clear, then, that the notion of work as a good thing has substantial sanction.
Even so, "substantial sanction" is not the same thing as "total sanction" or even "prevailing sanction"; it would be folly to say that work such as washing clothes or dishes is considered good. The contrary can, in fact, be amply demonstrated. For instance, Mark Edmundson equates a desire to be a carpenter with "no real worldly ambitions" (57); trade labor is devalued in the equation, and household chores are not typically regarded as well as trade labor, so that to devalue trade labor necessarily also devalues household chores. It is true that people seek to be valued, so that if household chores are devalued, those who perform them tend to be similarly devalued, and that devaluation would tend to inhibit a person's ability to pursue a specific goal, making it antagonistic. Prevailing depictions of custodial and housekeeping staff tend to support the idea that cleaning up is not a good thing to have to do; it is oppositional to advancement, and so antagonistic.
That antagonism does manifest in doing laundry. For example, for many in New York City and the surrounding urban sprawl, as well as in other major metropolitan areas, the chore requires an excursion to a laundry facility, which effectively prevents at-home relaxation; clothes must be gathered up and carried or carted down the street, or they must be thrown into a car and driven, both of which take time and take the laundry-doer out of the home. As home is generally a desirable place to be, that which removes a person from home is typically antagonistic.
Even if a person lives in a building with its own laundry rooms, as is the case with many college dormitories and some apartment buildings (particularly those with higher rents and land-values), that person is obliged to remain with the laundry while it is being done, lest the clothes be stolen or thrown aside in favor of another person's wash. In addition, then, to hindering many people's at-home relaxation--a goal common to a great many people and almost-universally regarded as a good thing--laundry day invites other persons to act as antagonists, thereby admitting the possibility of its own prevention. This makes the task doubly antagonistic; it is a hindrance to the laundry-doer, and it inhibits others who face the task themselves, so that one load of laundry potentially serves to antagonize multiple people.
Further, laundry facilities are often expensive. It is not uncommon for a single-load washer at a laundromat to require the insertion of a dollar to work. It is also not uncommon for a single-load dryer to require a quarter of a dollar to work for ten minutes, and for it to take thirty minutes to dry a load of clothing, so that each load requires $1.75 to complete. For someone who changes clothing completely each day, with a set of clothes being two undergarments, socks, pants or skirt, and shirt, one load of laundry is filled every other day, so that laundry costs some $3.50 every two days--in addition to the costs of detergent and fabric softener. Meeting those costs has the effect of taking money away from being spent on more favored pursuits and thereby acting antagonistically financially.
For those who are fortunate enough to have washers and dryers in their homes, laundry is still antagonistic. Because the machines are in the home, they intrude upon the home-dweller's awareness to a greater extent than does the laundromat walked by on the way to the bus stop or subway station. That intrusion tends to inhibit enjoyment of other activities that take place in the home. Since most such activities are regarded as desirable to undertake, that which inhibits them is antagonistic.
Also, the presence of machinery in the home opens up the possibility of mechanical malfunction in the home. Specifically, washing machines can flood the rooms in which they sit, causing water damage to floors, walls, and other surrounding objects. The flooding also opens up to possibility of electrical hazards, since washing machines tend to have electric motors which can short out and present electrocution hazards. Dryers can cause fires; electric dryers can short out even as washing machines, producing sparks that can ignite flammable materials, and gas dryers always offer the potential for catastrophic gas leaks. All are generally considered to be detrimental to the conduct of other household activities, and since those activities are typically desirable end goals, insofar as the equipment needed to do laundry inhibits them, the task is antagonistic.
Dishwashing is hardly an enjoyable task. Since dishes become dirty primarily through use, and the use of dishes typically involves foodstuffs, dirty dishes are commonly festooned with unused food and drink. Being largely organic, that food and drink begins to corrupt soon after it is set aside, and corrupting foodstuffs have an unfortunate tendency to stink. Bad smells, particularly those associated with decay and corruption, are typically regarded as inhibiting enjoyment, and enjoyment is a prized end-goal of a great many people. Washing dishes necessitates exposure to that unused food and the foul odors that soon begin to issue from it, so that it obliges the dishwasher to suffer bad smells, thereby inhibiting the dishwasher's enjoyment. Since dishwashing tends to create a situation in which an end-goal is inhibited, it also tends to be antagonistic.
In addition, dishwashing exerts a number of physical ill-effects upon those who do it. The aforementioned corrupting food also, as it is corrupting, invites the generation of disease and the presence of vermin such as flies, roaches, mice, and rats. The diseases themselves, as well as those carried by the vermin, present clear hazards to human health; impaired health necessarily keeps people from doing all they would wish to do, thereby serving as an antagonist. In addition, the vermin themselves tend to cause damage to the houses in which people live; since, as has already been noted, the home is a place of desired relaxation, it follows that damage to it restricts relaxation, thereby inhibiting the achievement of desire and serving once again as antagonist.
Also, dishwashing involves sticking one's hands into water through which one cannot see. Knives, forks, graters, and the occasional broken glass appear among the dishes that are concealed by such water; each has sharp edges or points, and so sticking one's hands into it invites cuts, punctures, abrasions, and other injuries. The injuries are possible even with the use of "protective" devices such as the dishwashing gloves sold at many grocery and retail stores; they are latex, and latex is easily pierced by metal or cut by sharpened steel or jagged-edged glass. Indeed, many of the things that end up in the dishwater are specifically designed to cut, tear, pierce, or shave off things with much greater integrity than latex. Such injuries tend to rupture the skin as well; knives and forks are designed at least in part to cut apart and poke into meat, which has at least as much strength as human flesh. Injuries incurred by hidden pointy bits expose the dishwasher's blood to the potential diseases and vermin-waste in the dishwater--for bugs and mice excrete even as they eat, often onto the very things they seek to eat, and it is because they view it as food that they are drawn to corrupting materials. Thus, in addition to the injuries themselves, there is an increased potential for infection of the dishwasher, with such antagonistic consequences as are noted above.
Even leaving aside such directly concrete instances of harm, washing dishes requires repetitive wrist motions. Such repetition commonly results in carpal tunnel syndrome, as noted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which notes in addition that carpal tunnel syndrome "can lead to numbness, tingling, weakness, or muscle damage in the hand and fingers" ("Carpal"). Each of these will prevent people from effectively performing any number of manual tasks. Since many of the things that are enjoyed (such as playing video games, handling electronic devices, sports, cooking, eating, reading, and others) are done with the hands--and, as noted before, enjoyment is a common end-goal--that which prevents the use of the hands is necessarily antagonistic.
Similarly, the height of a sink typically requires that the dishwasher either bend over repeatedly or assume a hunched position. This is a form of twisting, which the National Center for Biotechnology Information relates can cause chronic lower back pain ("Low"). Chronic pain, by making many activities painful that would otherwise not be, has an antagonistic function; people tend to avoid things that are painful, and causing avoidance of an activity the performance of which is otherwise desirable is very much antagonistic. In its potential to promote such circumstances as keep people from doing things because they hurt when they ought not to do so, dishwashing has a markedly antagonistic aspect.
Worse yet, dishwashing is a frequently-necessary activity, needing to take place daily or more often. Unless it does, the chances of stink becoming unacceptable or vermin and disease growing in the house increase immensely. As such, each of the annoyances and inhibitions of enjoyment that it provokes happen every single day in many households; in some, it is even more frequent, taking place after each of the traditional "three square meals a day" and, from time to time, brunch or afternoon tea. Admittedly, it may be argued that the intensity of annoyance and degree of hindrance offered by a single instance of dishwashing is equivalent to that of a single instance of doing the laundry. Certainly, laundry does require bending and twisting and hand motions, and if it does not entail quite as much potential for direct injury as does dishwashing, it does offer opportunities for injury to occur by other means. But because dishwashing takes place so much more frequently than doing the laundry--and laundry is commonly regarded as a weekly occurrence among household chores--the intensity and degree of dishwashing antagonism are amplified to a much greater level than is the case for laundry, making dishwashing far more of a hindrance to the focal character in people's lives--the people themselves--than caring for the linens.
In truth, it is difficult if not impossible for any one person to fully maintain a household of more than one person, so that the division of chores becomes a necessity in short order. Certainly, among siblings and among roommates and families, much attention is paid to who does what and how hard each thing is. Knowing which chores are most onerous, then, has a direct effect on the harmony of many households, and that harmony is a thing which ought well to be protected.
Works Cited
~"Chapter III: Of Virtue in Work." The Bhagavad-Gita. Sacred-Texts.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 July 2011.
~Edmundson, Mark. "Against Readings." Profession (2009): 56-65. Print.
~Hoover, Bob. "Inauguration Poet Praises Virtue of Work." Post-Gazette.com. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 24 February 2010. Web. 13 July 2011.
~National Center for Biotechnology Information. "Carpal Tunnel Syndrome." PubMedHealth, 25 May 2010. Web. 13 July 2011.
~---. "Low Back Pain." PubMedHealth 10 July 2009. Web. 13 July 2011.
~World Youth Day. "Saint Isidore, a Farmer Who Found God through His Work." WYD 2011 Madrid Official Site. World Youth Day, 2011. Web. 13 July 2011.
Showing posts with label Summer 2011. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer 2011. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Sample Contrast Paper
Students, please find below a draft of a contrast paper, as discussed during class. As with the earlier sample definition paper, keep in mind that it is a draft and not a finished work. Do also note that the larger group at work is not allowed for student use.
Oh, two other things:
1) This is an example of how to make the argument. It is not necessarily true.
2) The example is the average acceptable length for your own papers, when formatted for class submission.
An antagonist is anything that hinders or prevents a focal figure or focal figures from pursuing an end goal. The household chores of doing laundry and of washing dishes both perform antagonistic functions. Of the two, the more antagonistic is the dishwashing.
Laundry is certainly antagonistic to those who have to do it. For many in New York City and the surrounding urban sprawl, the chore requires an excursion to a laundry facility, which effectively prevents at-home relaxation. Even if a person lives in a building with its own laundry rooms, as is the case with many college dormitories, that person is obliged to remain with the laundry while it is being done, lest the clothes be stolen or thrown aside in favor of another person's wash. In addition, then, to hindering many people's at-home relaxation--a goal common to a great many people and almost-universally regarded as a good thing--laundry day invites other persons to act as antagonists, thereby admitting the possibility of its own prevention. Further, laundry facilities are expensive, taking money away from being spent on more favored pursuits and thereby acting antagonistically financially.
Even for those who are fortunate enough to have washers and dryers in their homes, laundry is antagonistic. Because the machines are in the home, they intrude upon the home-dweller's awareness to a greater extent than does the laundromat walked by on the way to the bus stop or subway station; that intrusion tends to inhibit enjoyment of other activities, making it antagonistic. Also, the presence of machinery in the home opens up the possibility of mechanical malfunction in the home. Specifically, washing machines can flood the rooms in which they sit, and dryers can cause fires. Both are generally considered to be detrimental to the conduct of other household activities, and since those activities are typically desirable end goals, insofar as the equipment needed to do laundry inhibits them, the task is antagonistic.
Dishwashing is hardly an enjoyable task. Since dishes become dirty primarily through use, and the use of dishes typically involves foodstuffs, dirty dishes are commonly festooned with unused food and drink. Being largely organic, that food and drink begins to corrupt soon after it is set aside, and corrupting foodstuffs have an unfortunate tendency to stink. Bad smells are typically regarded as inhibiting enjoyment, and enjoyment is a prized end-goal of a great many people. Since dishwashing tends to create a situation in which an end-goal is inhibited, it is necessarily antagonistic.
In addition, dishwashing exerts a number of physical ill-effects upon those who do it. In many cases, the activity involves sticking one's hands into water through which one cannot see. Knives, forks, graters, and the occasional broken glass appear among the dishes that are concealed by such water, and so sticking one's hands into it invites cuts, punctures, abrasions, and other injuries. Even leaving aside such directly concrete instances of harm, washing dishes requires repetitive wrist motions, which common understanding notes leads to carpal tunnel syndrome and in turn prevents people from effectively performing any number of manual tasks. Since many of the things that are enjoyed are done with the hands--and, as noted before, enjoyment is a common end-goal--that which prevents the use of the hands is necessarily antagonistic. Similarly, the height of a sink typically requires that the dishwasher either bend over repeatedly or assume a hunched position, both of which tend to cause back pain and thereby inhibit enjoyment in a manner like to wrist injuries.
Worse yet, dishwashing is a frequently-necessary activity, needing to take place daily or more often. As such, each of the annoyances and inhibitions of enjoyment that it provokes happen every single day in many households. While it may be argued that the intensity of annoyance and degree of hindrance offered by a single instance of dishwashing is equivalent to that of a single instance of doing the laundry, because dishwashing takes place so much more frequently than doing the laundry--commonly regarded as a weekly occurrence among household chores--the intensity and degree are amplified to a much greater level than is the case for laundry, making dishwashing more antagonistic.
In truth, it is difficult if not impossible for any one person to fully maintain a household of more than one person, so that the division of chores becomes a necessity in short order. Certainly, among siblings and among roommates and families, much attention is paid to who does what and how hard each thing is. Knowing which chores are most onerous, then, has a direct effect on the harmony of many households, and that harmony is a thing which ought well to be protected.
Oh, two other things:
1) This is an example of how to make the argument. It is not necessarily true.
2) The example is the average acceptable length for your own papers, when formatted for class submission.
An antagonist is anything that hinders or prevents a focal figure or focal figures from pursuing an end goal. The household chores of doing laundry and of washing dishes both perform antagonistic functions. Of the two, the more antagonistic is the dishwashing.
Laundry is certainly antagonistic to those who have to do it. For many in New York City and the surrounding urban sprawl, the chore requires an excursion to a laundry facility, which effectively prevents at-home relaxation. Even if a person lives in a building with its own laundry rooms, as is the case with many college dormitories, that person is obliged to remain with the laundry while it is being done, lest the clothes be stolen or thrown aside in favor of another person's wash. In addition, then, to hindering many people's at-home relaxation--a goal common to a great many people and almost-universally regarded as a good thing--laundry day invites other persons to act as antagonists, thereby admitting the possibility of its own prevention. Further, laundry facilities are expensive, taking money away from being spent on more favored pursuits and thereby acting antagonistically financially.
Even for those who are fortunate enough to have washers and dryers in their homes, laundry is antagonistic. Because the machines are in the home, they intrude upon the home-dweller's awareness to a greater extent than does the laundromat walked by on the way to the bus stop or subway station; that intrusion tends to inhibit enjoyment of other activities, making it antagonistic. Also, the presence of machinery in the home opens up the possibility of mechanical malfunction in the home. Specifically, washing machines can flood the rooms in which they sit, and dryers can cause fires. Both are generally considered to be detrimental to the conduct of other household activities, and since those activities are typically desirable end goals, insofar as the equipment needed to do laundry inhibits them, the task is antagonistic.
Dishwashing is hardly an enjoyable task. Since dishes become dirty primarily through use, and the use of dishes typically involves foodstuffs, dirty dishes are commonly festooned with unused food and drink. Being largely organic, that food and drink begins to corrupt soon after it is set aside, and corrupting foodstuffs have an unfortunate tendency to stink. Bad smells are typically regarded as inhibiting enjoyment, and enjoyment is a prized end-goal of a great many people. Since dishwashing tends to create a situation in which an end-goal is inhibited, it is necessarily antagonistic.
In addition, dishwashing exerts a number of physical ill-effects upon those who do it. In many cases, the activity involves sticking one's hands into water through which one cannot see. Knives, forks, graters, and the occasional broken glass appear among the dishes that are concealed by such water, and so sticking one's hands into it invites cuts, punctures, abrasions, and other injuries. Even leaving aside such directly concrete instances of harm, washing dishes requires repetitive wrist motions, which common understanding notes leads to carpal tunnel syndrome and in turn prevents people from effectively performing any number of manual tasks. Since many of the things that are enjoyed are done with the hands--and, as noted before, enjoyment is a common end-goal--that which prevents the use of the hands is necessarily antagonistic. Similarly, the height of a sink typically requires that the dishwasher either bend over repeatedly or assume a hunched position, both of which tend to cause back pain and thereby inhibit enjoyment in a manner like to wrist injuries.
Worse yet, dishwashing is a frequently-necessary activity, needing to take place daily or more often. As such, each of the annoyances and inhibitions of enjoyment that it provokes happen every single day in many households. While it may be argued that the intensity of annoyance and degree of hindrance offered by a single instance of dishwashing is equivalent to that of a single instance of doing the laundry, because dishwashing takes place so much more frequently than doing the laundry--commonly regarded as a weekly occurrence among household chores--the intensity and degree are amplified to a much greater level than is the case for laundry, making dishwashing more antagonistic.
In truth, it is difficult if not impossible for any one person to fully maintain a household of more than one person, so that the division of chores becomes a necessity in short order. Certainly, among siblings and among roommates and families, much attention is paid to who does what and how hard each thing is. Knowing which chores are most onerous, then, has a direct effect on the harmony of many households, and that harmony is a thing which ought well to be protected.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Sample Classification Paper, Option 2
Students, please find below a draft of a classification paper that follows Option 2, as discussed during class. As with the earlier sample definition paper, keep in mind that it is a draft and not a finished work. Do also note that the classification at work is not allowed for student use.
Oh, two other things:
1) This is an example of how to make the argument. It is not necessarily true.
2) The example is the minimum acceptable length for your own papers, when formatted for class submission.
An antagonist is anything that hinders or prevents a focal figure or focal figures from pursuing an end goal. Many people claim that Mr. Elliott keeps his students from effectively pursuing their end goal of getting an education and thus that he is an antagonist. As it turns out, this is not entirely true.
It is admittedly the case that Mr. Elliott does teach a subject that many people hate: English. It is also true that he assigns a fair amount of work to the students in his English classes and that he has high standards of performance on the work he assigns; few people earn As from him, and many fail to pass his classes. But none of this means that students do not receive educations from him.
That a person hates a given thing does not mean that the person will neither have use for the thing nor benefit from understanding it. In the case of English, students in Mr. Elliott's classes are in a country whose dominant language is English, so that there is a larger social impetus for them to learn the language. More specifically, English in its various forms remains a worldwide common tongue; scientists and businesspeople across the planet conduct their affairs in the language, so for students to successfully navigate the broader technical and commercial world, thereby earning a living as many of them profess a desire to do, they will need to have a command of the subject matter Mr. Elliott teaches. His subject, then, is far from antagonistic, but is instead a significant facilitator of student desire, and so in that subject, Mr. Elliott is not an antagonist.
That a thing requires effort, even sustained and at times dull effort, does not necessarily make it a hindrance. The English language, like all currently spoken human languages, is vast and nuanced, with quirks that have grown up across fifteen centuries and more of use by populations widely disparate in time, geography, cultural heritage, and socioeconomic status. It is a complex system, and like all complex systems, it is not necessarily easily understood, let alone mastered. It requires difficult work to achieve competence in English, and Mr. Elliott provides that difficulty for his students both in the amount of work assigned and in the standards of performance he enforces. Repeated practice is necessary to move practitioners past they point at which they must think about the specifics of the actions they perform and into the area in which they consider when and for what purpose to perform those actions. Thus, Mr. Elliott assigns much work. Also, if practitioners are told at the outset that their skills are sufficient, then they have no motivation to improve those skills; it is only by insisting on a higher standard of performance that higher levels of performance are achieved. As such, Mr. Elliott does not reward lower levels of proficiency, and in the combination of his restriction of reward and expectation of amount of practice, he provides students with the necessary difficulty to improve. As such, he necessarily helps them to learn what they need to learn, and so is far from hindering them as an antagonist must.
It is unfortunately true that some people have overly inflated opinions of themselves and their abilities. In such cases, they need to learn the true measure of their skills, and this means that some will not receive high grades and that others will need to repeat courses. As regards Mr. Elliott's classes, students in both situations are given opportunities to learn about themselves and the system into which they have voluntarily entered by registering for college level coursework. The lessons thusly offered are not necessarily those that students either expect or desire, but that does not mean that they are not lessons and that being offered them is not concomitantly educational. Accordingly, even in issuing low grades based on low performance--or, more commonly, a lack of observable performance--Mr. Elliott teaches. If the point of being a student is to gain an education, any teaching furthers that goal, and so Mr. Elliott serves to facilitate education, denying him status as an antagonist to the students in his classes.
That Mr. Elliott does not necessarily follow the easygoing model of a great many other instructors does not make him an antagonist. Rather, it offers a divergent opinion and a specific set of challenges to students that they are not likely to find in a classroom elsewhere--although they will face harder tasks yet when the worst consequence is, instead of the poor grade Mr. Elliott can assign, unemployment, homelessness, injury, or death. His classroom, then, is potentially a place well worth seeking.
Oh, two other things:
1) This is an example of how to make the argument. It is not necessarily true.
2) The example is the minimum acceptable length for your own papers, when formatted for class submission.
An antagonist is anything that hinders or prevents a focal figure or focal figures from pursuing an end goal. Many people claim that Mr. Elliott keeps his students from effectively pursuing their end goal of getting an education and thus that he is an antagonist. As it turns out, this is not entirely true.
It is admittedly the case that Mr. Elliott does teach a subject that many people hate: English. It is also true that he assigns a fair amount of work to the students in his English classes and that he has high standards of performance on the work he assigns; few people earn As from him, and many fail to pass his classes. But none of this means that students do not receive educations from him.
That a person hates a given thing does not mean that the person will neither have use for the thing nor benefit from understanding it. In the case of English, students in Mr. Elliott's classes are in a country whose dominant language is English, so that there is a larger social impetus for them to learn the language. More specifically, English in its various forms remains a worldwide common tongue; scientists and businesspeople across the planet conduct their affairs in the language, so for students to successfully navigate the broader technical and commercial world, thereby earning a living as many of them profess a desire to do, they will need to have a command of the subject matter Mr. Elliott teaches. His subject, then, is far from antagonistic, but is instead a significant facilitator of student desire, and so in that subject, Mr. Elliott is not an antagonist.
That a thing requires effort, even sustained and at times dull effort, does not necessarily make it a hindrance. The English language, like all currently spoken human languages, is vast and nuanced, with quirks that have grown up across fifteen centuries and more of use by populations widely disparate in time, geography, cultural heritage, and socioeconomic status. It is a complex system, and like all complex systems, it is not necessarily easily understood, let alone mastered. It requires difficult work to achieve competence in English, and Mr. Elliott provides that difficulty for his students both in the amount of work assigned and in the standards of performance he enforces. Repeated practice is necessary to move practitioners past they point at which they must think about the specifics of the actions they perform and into the area in which they consider when and for what purpose to perform those actions. Thus, Mr. Elliott assigns much work. Also, if practitioners are told at the outset that their skills are sufficient, then they have no motivation to improve those skills; it is only by insisting on a higher standard of performance that higher levels of performance are achieved. As such, Mr. Elliott does not reward lower levels of proficiency, and in the combination of his restriction of reward and expectation of amount of practice, he provides students with the necessary difficulty to improve. As such, he necessarily helps them to learn what they need to learn, and so is far from hindering them as an antagonist must.
It is unfortunately true that some people have overly inflated opinions of themselves and their abilities. In such cases, they need to learn the true measure of their skills, and this means that some will not receive high grades and that others will need to repeat courses. As regards Mr. Elliott's classes, students in both situations are given opportunities to learn about themselves and the system into which they have voluntarily entered by registering for college level coursework. The lessons thusly offered are not necessarily those that students either expect or desire, but that does not mean that they are not lessons and that being offered them is not concomitantly educational. Accordingly, even in issuing low grades based on low performance--or, more commonly, a lack of observable performance--Mr. Elliott teaches. If the point of being a student is to gain an education, any teaching furthers that goal, and so Mr. Elliott serves to facilitate education, denying him status as an antagonist to the students in his classes.
That Mr. Elliott does not necessarily follow the easygoing model of a great many other instructors does not make him an antagonist. Rather, it offers a divergent opinion and a specific set of challenges to students that they are not likely to find in a classroom elsewhere--although they will face harder tasks yet when the worst consequence is, instead of the poor grade Mr. Elliott can assign, unemployment, homelessness, injury, or death. His classroom, then, is potentially a place well worth seeking.
Sample Classification Paper, Option 1
Students, please find below a draft of a classification paper that follows Option 1, as discussed during class. As with the earlier sample definition paper, keep in mind that it is a draft and not a finished work. Do also note that the classification at work is not allowed for student use.
Oh, two other things:
1) This is an example of how to make the argument. It is not necessarily true.
2) The example is the minimum acceptable length for your own papers, when formatted for class submission.
An antagonist is anything that hinders or prevents a focal figure or focal figures from pursuing an end goal. As a teacher, someone whose ostensible purpose is to aid students in pursuing their educations, Geoffrey B. Elliott should be far removed from being an antagonist. All too often, however, the reverse is true, and Mr. Elliott is very much an antagonist.
By some accounts, such formal education as takes place in a classroom is exactly that: formal. It is old-fashioned, ritualized, and more or less removed from the day-to-day practical realities of contemporary life. This is particularly true in studying the fine arts and humanities (under which heading the study of English, and therefore Mr. Elliott's teaching, falls), in which the focus is commonly on people and works that, however interesting and/or relevant they may have been when they were created, are now so old as to be fully disjunct from what is going on now. Less commonly, the fine arts and humanities turn their attentions to constructions so strange that they defy common sense and the typical aesthetics of the population at large, and so do not even have the claim of the older stuff to have been relevant once; they are the "never-was" to the commonly-studied "has-been." In either case, they do not bear in on what people need to know now to get ahead now, and their study takes up time that could be devoted instead to finding ways to do things and make money. As such, in the very subject Mr. Elliott teaches, he serves as a hindrance to student success, making him antagonistic.
His antagonism becomes more overt and direct than the simple fact of his subject area, though. In the classroom, Mr. Elliott is known as a tyrant. Most of his students seek to have high grade point averages (GPA), rightly thinking that to have a 3.5 or better GPA will lead them to institutional honors and to improved abilities to find employment after graduation. Getting such a GPA requires that the grades assigned in coursework be high, the traditional B or better. Mr. Elliott, however, rarely offers that level of grade to his students; typically, students will make the so-called average C, and a high number of students fail his class for one reason or another. Both sets of students do not receive the high grades that mark successful experiences in formal education, making it more difficult for them to secure a good overall GPA and therefore limiting their abilities to attain institutional honors and after-graduation employment. His grading, then, marks Mr. Elliott as a direct antagonist to the students who are, after all, the focus of school.
Other classroom conduct displays Mr. Elliott's antagonistic tendencies. The low grades he hands out are, at least in theory, based on a number of assignments, including long readings and pages-long papers. Completing the assignments takes time, and students typically do not have time outside of class to devote to performing the kinds of mental labor that Mr. Elliott unmercifully demands of them. They do not have the time or energy to spend poring over pages of a textbook they purchased as cheaply as possible and are not going to keep past the end of the semester or to sit and type out two or three pages of text about a subject nobody cares about and only one person--and that a person who, following an old adage, teaches because he cannot get a real job--is going to read with anything approaching interest. But students are expected to do so, rather than going out and actually enjoying themselves, and they are punished if they fail to meet Mr. Elliott's demands. That punishment takes the form of low grades, with the consequences outlined above, and so in assigning the work he requires of his students, Mr. Elliott presents himself as an antagonist towards them.
It is expected of teachers that they facilitate learning and help their students to set and achieve goals. At the college level, the end goal is already in place, so that all a teacher need really do is facilitate learning so as to help students get where they want to be. Mr. Elliott does not do this, but rather performs the opposite function, getting in the way of students making good grades and doing the things that they actually need to do by forcing them to do things of minimal or zero importance. He is an antagonist, and like all antagonists, he is to be avoided or defeated.
Oh, two other things:
1) This is an example of how to make the argument. It is not necessarily true.
2) The example is the minimum acceptable length for your own papers, when formatted for class submission.
An antagonist is anything that hinders or prevents a focal figure or focal figures from pursuing an end goal. As a teacher, someone whose ostensible purpose is to aid students in pursuing their educations, Geoffrey B. Elliott should be far removed from being an antagonist. All too often, however, the reverse is true, and Mr. Elliott is very much an antagonist.
By some accounts, such formal education as takes place in a classroom is exactly that: formal. It is old-fashioned, ritualized, and more or less removed from the day-to-day practical realities of contemporary life. This is particularly true in studying the fine arts and humanities (under which heading the study of English, and therefore Mr. Elliott's teaching, falls), in which the focus is commonly on people and works that, however interesting and/or relevant they may have been when they were created, are now so old as to be fully disjunct from what is going on now. Less commonly, the fine arts and humanities turn their attentions to constructions so strange that they defy common sense and the typical aesthetics of the population at large, and so do not even have the claim of the older stuff to have been relevant once; they are the "never-was" to the commonly-studied "has-been." In either case, they do not bear in on what people need to know now to get ahead now, and their study takes up time that could be devoted instead to finding ways to do things and make money. As such, in the very subject Mr. Elliott teaches, he serves as a hindrance to student success, making him antagonistic.
His antagonism becomes more overt and direct than the simple fact of his subject area, though. In the classroom, Mr. Elliott is known as a tyrant. Most of his students seek to have high grade point averages (GPA), rightly thinking that to have a 3.5 or better GPA will lead them to institutional honors and to improved abilities to find employment after graduation. Getting such a GPA requires that the grades assigned in coursework be high, the traditional B or better. Mr. Elliott, however, rarely offers that level of grade to his students; typically, students will make the so-called average C, and a high number of students fail his class for one reason or another. Both sets of students do not receive the high grades that mark successful experiences in formal education, making it more difficult for them to secure a good overall GPA and therefore limiting their abilities to attain institutional honors and after-graduation employment. His grading, then, marks Mr. Elliott as a direct antagonist to the students who are, after all, the focus of school.
Other classroom conduct displays Mr. Elliott's antagonistic tendencies. The low grades he hands out are, at least in theory, based on a number of assignments, including long readings and pages-long papers. Completing the assignments takes time, and students typically do not have time outside of class to devote to performing the kinds of mental labor that Mr. Elliott unmercifully demands of them. They do not have the time or energy to spend poring over pages of a textbook they purchased as cheaply as possible and are not going to keep past the end of the semester or to sit and type out two or three pages of text about a subject nobody cares about and only one person--and that a person who, following an old adage, teaches because he cannot get a real job--is going to read with anything approaching interest. But students are expected to do so, rather than going out and actually enjoying themselves, and they are punished if they fail to meet Mr. Elliott's demands. That punishment takes the form of low grades, with the consequences outlined above, and so in assigning the work he requires of his students, Mr. Elliott presents himself as an antagonist towards them.
It is expected of teachers that they facilitate learning and help their students to set and achieve goals. At the college level, the end goal is already in place, so that all a teacher need really do is facilitate learning so as to help students get where they want to be. Mr. Elliott does not do this, but rather performs the opposite function, getting in the way of students making good grades and doing the things that they actually need to do by forcing them to do things of minimal or zero importance. He is an antagonist, and like all antagonists, he is to be avoided or defeated.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Sample Definition Paper
The essay which appears below is at the short end of what is an acceptable length for the definition paper I expect from my freshman English students. It attempts to refine the raw concept of antagonism for my students; students will need to follow the directions for their papers that are provided here in terms of topic; the formatting is adjusted for appearance on a blog. While it is a five-paragraph essay, each of the five paragraphs is well over one hundred words, and the number of sentences varies.
Many stories depend upon conflict, and a conflict can only be as intense as those involved in it are closely matched. As such, the opposition to the focal character or characters of a story is every bit as important to that story as those focal characters. That opposition is labeled as an antagonist, but it is not necessarily true that the opposition is evil or even targeted at the focal character or characters. Anything that impedes the ability of the focal character or characters to pursue the end goal of a story is an antagonist. Some examples of antagonists are rabid wolves, muggers on the streets, and overly rigid legal structures.
Many stories depend upon conflict, and a conflict can only be as intense as those involved in it are closely matched. As such, the opposition to the focal character or characters of a story is every bit as important to that story as those focal characters. That opposition is labeled as an antagonist, but it is not necessarily true that the opposition is evil or even targeted at the focal character or characters. Anything that impedes the ability of the focal character or characters to pursue the end goal of a story is an antagonist. Some examples of antagonists are rabid wolves, muggers on the streets, and overly rigid legal structures.
Wolves often figure as creatures associated with evil; werewolves are classic movie monsters and beasts of folklore, wolves themselves are one of the traditional forms assumed by vampires, and the animals themselves factor in as the villains of such traditional stories as “Little Red Riding Hood.” More concretely, they do present themselves as problems for those whose livelihoods depend upon livestock; wolves prey upon such creatures as sheep and goats, and those who herd them for their living tend to view their predators as enemies. When the already-oppositional lupine is infected with a disease that drives it to unusually aggressive behavior, the antagonistic tendencies of the beasts are only enhanced; rather than attacking sheep, they will attack people, and they are even more insidious in that they can prove fatal from even a minor bite, rather than the severe injuries normally required to kill. The reports of objectionable wolf behavior come from the people who are affected, and as it is a commonplace for the tellers of tales to present themselves as the focal characters or to speak on their behalf, the rabid wolves find themselves as the antagonists of the stories told of them. This occurs despite the fact that as animals—and as animals whose brains are affected by disease—they lack the capacity for moral judgment that can actually cause evil, so that while opposition is required for antagonism, direct malevolence is not.
Back-alley muggers, however, are directly and deliberately aligned against those whom they oppose. Attacking victims from ambush and using threats of force or actual force to extract from them what valuables they may have are certainly oppositional to those victims, and since the prevailing social mores maintain that persons have the right to be secure in their own persons, the victims, being wronged, are made the focal characters of the true stories of their being mugged. Also, attacking another person from ambush requires advanced thought and deliberation to establish a position from which to attack and a route from which to escape from the scene of the attack; intent is thus necessary, and is pursued at length by muggers. Opposition can therefore be deliberate, so that those who pursue it are made antagonists.
Both rabid wolves and muggers are discrete, identifiable beings. They can be seen and, potentially, avoided. It is not necessarily true, however, that opposition comes from a directly identifiable being. An inflexible legal system can prove oppositional, even to those who intend no wrong and simply try to live their lives well, and there is no specific person or tangible object that presents that opposition. While it is true that laws are put into place, enforced, and interpreted by individuals, working singly or in concert, the laws themselves are not tangible. There is no single object that is, in fact, the law; destroying no single document or group of documents will actually unmake the law. Even so, it can prove oppositional. Legislation restricting access to certain chemicals—whether used to harm others or by consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes—proves a hindrance to those who would employ them for whatever reason. Legal decisions restricting what can and cannot, and what must and must not, be taught in classrooms inhibits academic freedom and restricts the ability of pupils to learn freely, both of which are oppositional to the free inquiry upon which an open society theoretically depends; it can hardly be argued that those who are trying to learn are acting ill, and those who are attempting to learn are those from whose perspectives narratives are typically presented, so that those things which oppose them must be called antagonistic. Again, though, the raw definition of antagonism only provides for that opposition; it does not even necessitate a distinct thing to present that opposition.
Whatever form it takes, however concrete or abstract, that which opposes the focal character or characters is the antagonist. There are many varieties of antagonist, just as there are many different stories, and it is in the distinctions among them that they become truly interesting.
Monday, April 18, 2011
About the Summer Theme
I tend to teach my composition and reading classes to a theme. I find that doing so gives shape and guidance to my lectures, which helps me. I find also that it allows students to develop a knowledge base and to work from it, which helps them. It allows them to deal with information that they have already learned, so that they can focus on the application of the knowledge rather than trying to acquire an entirely new set of knowledge every few weeks. Also, it gives them confidence in their own ability to gain and exhibit expertise in a given subject.
Selecting a theme is always a difficult thing for me. Since I will be spending fourteen or fifteen weeks dealing with it, the theme needs to be one that will not bore me. Since I am doing a lot of other work, it has to be something that I either already know or am working with in my own research. And it does, in fact, have to be one that I can have some certainty is accessible to the students--I tried one a semester or two ago that did not work well at all, largely because it called for my students to stretch too far.*
In the spring term, I used genres of music. While there was some initial difficulty, I did get a number of the students on board, and I was able to get in some pretty good papers. It was also fun putting up examples; I think I did a little bit of decent writing, and it is useful to stretch myself a little outside what I normally do.
For the summer, I am returning to my own literary work (though not exclusively, as should become evident). It is a truism that a hero cannot be any better than the opposition that hero faces. Antagonists, then, drive the plots of stories--whether in writing, on stage, on screen (big or small), in games, or whatever. And it is the antagonist, in any of a number of forms, that is the theme for my composition courses in the summer term.
*I tend to adhere to Vygotsky's concept of the "zone of proximal development," which is that level of difficulty just beyond what a student can do unaided. It provides a comfortable stretch for the students' abilities, challenging them to improve without being so far ahead of where they are as to promote disengagement because "there's just no way I can do it." Sometimes, though, I do miss.
Selecting a theme is always a difficult thing for me. Since I will be spending fourteen or fifteen weeks dealing with it, the theme needs to be one that will not bore me. Since I am doing a lot of other work, it has to be something that I either already know or am working with in my own research. And it does, in fact, have to be one that I can have some certainty is accessible to the students--I tried one a semester or two ago that did not work well at all, largely because it called for my students to stretch too far.*
In the spring term, I used genres of music. While there was some initial difficulty, I did get a number of the students on board, and I was able to get in some pretty good papers. It was also fun putting up examples; I think I did a little bit of decent writing, and it is useful to stretch myself a little outside what I normally do.
For the summer, I am returning to my own literary work (though not exclusively, as should become evident). It is a truism that a hero cannot be any better than the opposition that hero faces. Antagonists, then, drive the plots of stories--whether in writing, on stage, on screen (big or small), in games, or whatever. And it is the antagonist, in any of a number of forms, that is the theme for my composition courses in the summer term.
*I tend to adhere to Vygotsky's concept of the "zone of proximal development," which is that level of difficulty just beyond what a student can do unaided. It provides a comfortable stretch for the students' abilities, challenging them to improve without being so far ahead of where they are as to promote disengagement because "there's just no way I can do it." Sometimes, though, I do miss.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Summer 2011 Schedule Preview
As posted on the portal site for the college where I teach, in the Summer 2011 term, I shall teach the following classes:
ENG 099: Basic Communictaion (one section)
ENG 101: Freshman Composition 1 (one section)
ENG 202: Technical Writing and Presentation (two sections)
HUM 110: Speech (three sections)
If the schedule holds as is, my usual Tuesday student conference time will be suspended. Thursday afternoons, though, will be pretty good meeting times.
ENG 099: Basic Communictaion (one section)
ENG 101: Freshman Composition 1 (one section)
ENG 202: Technical Writing and Presentation (two sections)
HUM 110: Speech (three sections)
If the schedule holds as is, my usual Tuesday student conference time will be suspended. Thursday afternoons, though, will be pretty good meeting times.
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