Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Legacy Admissions Essay Sources
Bumiller, Elisabeth. "Bush, a Yale Legacy, Says Colleges Should Not Give Preference to Children of Alumni."
This article is going to be helpful to me because it uses a specific example of someone referring to the controversy of legacy admissions. Since it was President Bush, this particular example caused a lot of controversy. Using the contradiction of Bush being a Yale legacy, and him saying that legacies should be banned, I can bring to attention the conflicting views of legacies. He also provides why he thinks they should be banned. The issue of race, regarding legacy admissions, is addressed in this article.
http://ezproxy.tc3.edu:2062/pqdweb?index=2&did=490364221&SrchMode=2&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1235534268&clientId=12441
Rodriguez, Roberto. "The Dirty Little Secret Of College Admissions."
This article goes into specific details revolving around a scandal regarding the admittance of students into the University of California. These details can be used to generate information to a wide number of ideas about legacy admissions. The author has a clear view that opposes the idea of allowing legacy admissions. He also has specific interest with the aspect of race, in regards to legacy admissions.
http://www.popecenter.org/clarion_call/article.html?id=1966
Leef, George. "Legacy Admissions - Affirmative Action for the Rich?" www.popecenter.org 19 Feb. 2008.
This article presents the issue in a much broader sense than my other two articles. This article will allow me to present the reader with a clear understanding of the issue as a whole. The author has the opinion that schools should not use legacy admissions, if they are a public school (he believes that private schools should be able to operate as they please). He does provide some specific examples, he uses UNC as a college to look at, but I will find this article the most useful to explain the topic.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
SAW Chapter 3
I expect to get a strong definition of what a explanatory synthesis is, and how and why someone would use one as the form of their paper. I then expect to get a detailed step by step explanation of what the process of writing one is going to be like. This will then be followed by an example of a an explanatory synthesis.
Reaction-
The chapter demonstrated what I expected. It first started by defining what a synthesis is in general; it is a discussion that refers to two or more sources. They then presented the reader with the process for writing a synthesis, which went something like this:
-Consider purpose
-Select and carefully read your sources
-Take notes on readings
-Formulate a thesis
-Decides how to use sources
-Develop an organizational plan
-Draft topic sentences
-Write first draft
-Document sources
-Revise
They then present the two different types of synthesis; explanatory and argument. They say that explanatory syntheses focus on presenting the main ideas of a topic and stray away from giving any opinions. Next they gave a sampling of sources about the topic of hydrogen-powered vehicles. Then a student paper, that used these sources to write an explanatory synthesis, was shown. They showed how the student went about going through each of the steps listed above.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Works Cited
2. Daly, Peter. “Extension of Single-sex Public School Provision: Evidential Concerns.” Evaluation & Research in Education 18.1/2 (2004): 129-136.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Essay #1: Rough Draft
How can a question that has so many different answers and opinions swirling around it, ever be put to rest? This problem is apparent when comparing the articles “Extension of Single-sex Public School Provision: Evidential Concerns” by Peter Daly, and “Learning Separately: The Case For Single-sex Schools” by Peter Meyer. And the differences between the articles don't stop at the conclusions.
Daly's article takes the results tests that were given to students from single-sex and mixed schools. He finds that girls who go to all girls' schools outperformed girls who went to mixed schools, while the opposite was true for boys (Daly 129). Meyer takes the opinions of other experts, like Rosemary Salomone, and concludes that single-sex education shows strong benefits for its students.
The main similarity in the articles is the constant idea that single-sex education is more beneficial to girls than it is to boys. Daly's article bases this on the data collected from the tests that were given. Meyer's article gets this idea from others; "'We can concentrate a lot better without boys,'...Boys seem less sure of the benefits”(Meyer 12).
The difference between the articles lies in the conclusion. Meyer has a much stronger, opinionated based, conclusion than Daly's. “Serious educators seem to realize that single-sex schools and classrooms are not a threat, but another arrow in the quiver of education quality”(Meyer 22). Daly's article presents a more neutral conclusion. It's a conclusion that basically says that it is too hard to draw a strong conclusion to either side of the argument.
It is so hard to find a definitive answer to any sort of debate because that's exactly what it is; a debate. Both sides are going to present their points in a polarizing ways. This is illustrated when looking at the differences between Daly's and Meyer's articles. There are going to be so many different ways of looking at a subject that it's resolution will become hazy.
Chapter 2 Journal Entry
There are certain things that I know I can learn about reading critically. I think that chapter may teach me how to read a document and then be able to recognize and gather the most crucial information from the text. I think I am pretty good at recognizing the information in a text, but I may be able to improve some when it comes figuring out what information is the most important. I also hope that it will provide some information regarding figuring out the authors true intent. Sometimes when I look at an essay or something like that, I will sometimes have some difficulty finding what the author's true opinion is. This is not always the case, but sometimes it is, and I would think that chapter may provide information about that.
Response:
I gained a lot from this chapter. The most I learned about was definitely how to critically read a persuasive piece. I think that the chapter gave the most detail and effort when it came to the persuasive style of writing. I think this is a very astute thing to do because the other two styles don't really seem like they would need it as much. An informative piece is probably going to be more straight forward because if it isn't it may fail at it's purpose which is to inform. So there is likely to be a lesser amount of critical reading that is needed. When writing to entertain I think the idea of critical reading is not going to be needed as much, that's not to say that it won't be needed at all. The one thing that I did not get out of this chapter was a more detailed explanation of just how to identify a thesis statement. Usually I am able to find it quite easily, but on some occasions I find I have trouble finding it. I usually have trouble finding thesis statements in longer scholarly journals. Besides that, I thought the chapter was very informative.