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.