The S.S. Discourse

          Essays are a unique form of writing. They can be incredibly fun and engaging to write or that experience can be the exact opposite where you pray for death the whole time you're working on it. Essays inspire strong feelings. That's just the nature of the essay. A lot of where that comes from is the strength and thoughtfulness that goes into the argument presented. As Turner and Hicks point out in chapter one, we have the job as conscious consumers of varying kinds of media to be mindful of where our information comes from and the kind of spin or argument that the texts we read are presenting. And there is always an argument, whether it's obvious or not. We need to sort, "through a variety of texts and make sense of each within the network where it exists. Status updates. Hashtags. Blogs. Infographics. Web searches. Any text we encounter ---- fiction or nonfiction, print or digital --- is at some level presenting us with an argument," (Turner-Hicks, 6). I suspect that this is why a lot of pre-law students start out as English majors, since some form of the skills needed for that job are present in literary analysis. If there is only one thing that our students can remember from our class, it should be how to make sense of the world and facts that surround us. We have a duty to help students become involved in the discourses that determine their future. These things will shape who they want to become and what will happen to them as they move on into adulthood. Again, as illustrated in the chapter, there is, "a model for argument that focuses on practical uses and accounts for the complexity of human conversation, where arguments can be nested within each other and challenged at multiple levels," (Turner-Hicks, 8). We also have to remember not to distance ourselves from arguments in the real world that are incredibly messy. 

 Once again Christensen delivers on talking about strategies for working on essays with students. One thing that I really liked was that she talked about Daniel Beaty visiting Grant High School and telling the students to "button" their poems. I think that's a great way to describe finishing up what you plan on saying and ending it on a strong note. This definitely still applies to essay writing. I feel like when most teachers talk about essays, the major emphasis is on the introduction where you're supposed to begin appealing to the reader and stating the major points of what's coming up, but having a solid ending is not just about using the last bit of space to hit the page requirement or restating every little thing that you just did. That buttoning is meant to be the bold statement that finishes off the piece and leaves a strong impression with the reader. It's as Christensen says: students limp to the end because they've expended all their energy traveling to that part of the essay. One way to prevent that battle fatigue that students often get is to have students try writing their introduction and then the conclusion before starting their body paragraphs. This effectively helps them to chart the course of their essay so they know what point they're starting from and they know how they want it to end. As they're writing, they just fill in the gaps until the progression from beginning to end feels natural. 

Getting back to the video above, the top comment was someone saying, "The abuse room was later renamed the Internet." That definitely got me. It was just so perfect and poignant. It's in this spirit that I want to talk about discourse. One thing that's really been bothering me is this Trump administration rollback of protections for trans people. The latest issue being that the government is asserting its dominance and telling people that the genitals they were born with are their identity, case closed. In this definition sex is defined as, "either male or female, unchangeable , and determined by the genitals that a person is born with." The only way to dispute this rigid definition is to undergo genetic testing. What makes me angry is that people use biology as an excuse to be dismissive and not grant people their well-deserved civil rights. This is not a thing that ends well for anybody, because when a dictatorial government starts coming for people's rights, they start with the least powerful and work their way up. This article from The Federalist takes a different stance on it and, "this change will in no way affect how trans people or anybody else choose to label themselves. Rather, it will allow the government to have an objective standard when implementing federal programs." Essentially that this breach and dismantling of protection is really to benefit women and that the, "72 or more," pronouns and labels that people have made for themselves can just be simplified to a nice easy binary as it was always meant to be. I don't think that anyone really believes that these things will not be used to harm transgender Americans, but it's better than outright saying that people want an excuse to discriminate against them. My favorite response to that argument is, "Well, what about babies that aren't born with easily identified male or female genitalia? If biology has all the answers, what do you make of that?" This type of thing is when discourse turns into name calling and a cover for promoting the dominant ideology. Now you may not have realized that milk is the newest symbol of white supremacy, but racists have taken to chugging gallons of it. The dumbass science behind this is that because people of European descent are more likely to be able to tolerate lactose into adulthood, white people have a distinct advantage when it comes to diet and somehow this means they're better than those that can't digest lactose. Check these guys out. We've got the master race right here. These are the same alt-right psychos that say gender is determined by birth. Excuse me while I go bang my head into a wall.