Apostrophe's with possessive nouns and pronouns.

Every now and then I have a tendency to misplace or fail to place an apostrophe. The following rule helps clarify any doubts of distinguishing between possessive nouns and plural nouns. Possessive nouns and pronouns demonstrate ownership or some similar relationship over something else. Plural nouns indicate more than one person, place or thing. You can view the above rule here: http://www.yourdictionary.com/grammar-rules/Possessive-Nouns.html

Modifiers, my favorite :)

Modifiers really help add description to writing and provide visuals to the reader. A modifier is a word, a phrase, or a clause that function's as an adjective or adverb that adds information and detail about a noun, a verb, or another word. Of course you don't have to take my word for it, click on this site to see for yourself. Here, http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/modifier.htm

The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue.

Tannens, Roots of debate in Education is focused on the educational system, and weather or not it aspires to assist students in obtaining all they can from their time in school, and weather it uses the best methods for all its students to learn to their full potential.

My first impression of this essay was that the whole paper was going to focus on the school system providing advantages to men over women. However, as I continued through the paper I found that its larger scope was really addressing weather or not the school system serves all of their students equally and to the highest extent of their potential using the best most effective ways to teach students so that they can gain all they can out of their lesson. 

I really thought this paper was well done, even if I don't share the authors every point of view. I think she did a great job at writing a well proportioned paper. She addresses her readers concerns, and gains more of her readers respect. She also follows up on the concerns she addressed and refutes them, making her paper much more persuasive rather than just going for controversy and a reaction. The author is the communicator in this paper, and she appeals to an audience of primarily women and students, administrators, and the general public. She uses large quantities of ethos, pathos, and logos appeal.

In fact her entire paper is based on ethos appeal. questioning the ethics of the educational system, and the system surrounding it. She presses most all her points using logos, appealing to the logic of her readers, supplying them with sources from current scholars, philosophy, history from various time periods, and different cultures. She continues to appeal to logic, and she involves some pathos appeal using sources of psychology, sociology, relating a lot of her material to women, and equal opportunity. The author digs into scholastic debating, peer reviews involving excessive criticism, and public humiliation, demonstrating how people are torn apart though these methods rather than inspiring or exploring lessons deeper, making a strong emotional appeal to her audience. Well written and very persuasive paper, Deborah Tannen relates to her readers, and provides informative rhetoric delivering a influential paper.

Comma splice

Commas are used in so many different ways throughout writing, I've found that I need all the tips I can pick up with them. So the rule states, "A comma splice occurs when two independent clauses (clauses that could be sentences on their own) are jammed together with a comma". So how can you fix the sentence? You must do one of two things: either separate the clauses completely into two sentences or join the sides together with an appropriate connector, you can use a semicolon or a word as a connector. You can view more help on this herehttp://homeworktips.about.com/od/improvingyourgrammar/a/commasplice.htm

Against School, Gato

John Taylor Gato, after writing best selling books, and highly awarded as an educator writes this piece on the so called real purpose of public schools. 

As an experienced educator, Gato has written various books delivering the message that public schools have alterior motives besides their elected mission statement. Stating that both children and teachers are bored with the curriculum, and are failing to engage children's and young adults creativity. Creating a system where everyone learns to just follow directions. Relating public schools as prisons for youth.

While Mr. Gato is obviously an award winning teacher in the state of New York, He seems to have had some trouble with his administrators. Who tried to get him not only fired, but also have his license to teach, taken away as well. Obviously Mr. Gato doesn't see eye to eye with administration and their system, and may result in some bias within his paper and books. Listening to the lectures and notions of other anti-public school advocates as well. However, his points have strong merit, and set forth a good argument.

While up front public schools preach a mission statement that their overall purpose is to create good people, make good citizens, and make each person his or her personal best. Yet Gato claims that public schools are really interested in mediocracy and have a much deeper underlying purpose, and their interests is that of a complex management of economic and political proportions to really create harmless voters and mindless consumers. In order to test Gato's theory when we look at general public which do we see? I have to agree with Gato to the extent that their is a lot of discrimination in what is published and fed through our text books, not to mention Government in control of what the nation is taught also controls the next generation of voters, and outline the type of citizens that they desire.

I Just Wanna Be Average, Rose.

I just wanna be average, is a narrative, In which the author incorporates his high school experience to demonstrate high schools effectiveness with struggling students.

In this paper, the author Mike Rose relates his experience through high school, to demonstrate points in regard to high schools effectiveness. Using his characters to paint a picture of the type of atmosphere he experienced throughout high school, and the type of student he was. He makes strong points of his teachers lack of effort or interest within his troubled youth classes, and how they are designed to "occupy or train"  the students to function as desired within society and go nowhere jobs. As he and most class-mates coasted through courses earning C's and F's with out taking much interest. They placed more effort into their image to not care about the system or themselves.

However, he show's that despite appearances they are still quite capable of learning, if only engaged with material they can relate to and captivate their interest. In fact the underlying point it seems he is trying to make, is that the school, or the system has stacked the deck against him in the first place. Developing them for less glamourous roles throughout society.

Its through a teacher who is quite passionate, that Mike Rose finds a renewed interest in himself and his future. A well educated teacher who may not look the part, but has captivated his students with his passion to help them achieve the most out of their education and their time spent at school to achieve more through out this life. Which ultimately asks the question, what is our public schools real purpose if not to focus all there resources to educate americas youth to their full potential?

Idiot Nation

                                  Idiot Nation, By Michael Moore.

This essay was painful to read! I started the essay with an open mind, but the first four pages were enough to get under my skin. I was open to the idea being presented, which was that our nation by majority is illiterate. However, this essay wasn't an argument. It was more like, listening to a teenager go off for eighteen pages about how much smarter he is than the rest of the nation--without having earned a college degree--and then go on complaining about the educational system, and politics, anything he could find to complain about. Furthermore, he didn't offer any solutions, or locate the the real source of the so called problem. Instead he offers advice on how to undermine authorities, or how to be as disruptive as possible in in school, as if that will help to raise the average IQ rating. The entire essay is like he wants to sit on a bench complaining about anything that he comes in contact with, and then expect the people around him to fix things to his satisfaction just because he says there wrong. I think this essay says more about Michael Moore than the so called purpose of the essay, which was the literacy of our nation.

Throughout the majority of the essay Mr. Moore fails to offer any valuable sources to back up his claims, at one point he supports his study by saying, "how do I know this? Because I read it thats how". Which left me asking, read it where? The enquire? or wikepedia? This essay has logical fallacy written all over it! Starting off strongly with hasty generalization, sarcasm, playing on emotions of his readers, and on people's standard of no tolerance of racism, or sexism.

Eventually this essay does touch on some viable argument, which had to do with corporations marketing within our schools nation wide. There is also an underlying point about questioning information we're given, and thinking for ourselves. However, he fails to back up much of this with good sources. It leaves me asking what are his facts based on? Where did this information come from? Its difficult to have any respect for the essay when its all unsubstantiated, and based on simply Michael Moore's opinions, and very limited scope of things. People gain their education based on information that their interested in, and is pertinent to their survival. We don't all have to have Michael Moore's standard of literacy in order to be intelligent.