Education, Modernity
Critique” Prompt
This essay should reach between 1000 and 1250 words (that’s 4-5 pages double-spaced). Be sure that you have enough to say, and that the substance of the essay, when organized appropriately, doesn’t run away with you.
Format the essay according to MLA guidelines, or the guidelines appropriate to your discipline (indicate which documentation style you use). Neither “Title” nor “Analytic Essay” are appropriate titles (snore). Use your title to establish at least some general expectation in your reader about the essay’s content. Pages must be numbered, right-side-up, and in the proper order. The essay should not be printed on construction paper, toilet paper, fly paper, or paper-maché. Save trees: do not include a title page.
Analyze the structure of claims, evidence, and assumptions in either (not both) of the following articles (in the “Readings: Education” folder on Moodle):
Elliot, Brian and David MacLennan. “Education, Modernity, and Neo-Conservative School Reform in Canada, Britain and the US.” British Journal of Sociology of Education, 15.2 (1994): 165-85.
Parameters:
1. Your analysis should involve the four operations as critical activities: analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and evaluation.
2. Bring to bear what you know about patterns of development and rhetorical appeals, but focus your analysis on testing the validity ofthe author’s principal assumptions/inferences/premises, evaluate the clarity and validity of claims, and address the sufficiency, relevancy, validity, etc, of the evidence in supporting those claims.
Here are some guidelines for getting started:
i. Review the material from lectures and our handbook.
ii. Remember that this is not an opinion piece. You are not simply to convey a response to your reader, but rather you are to make a claim (via a clearly articulated thesis) about the efficacy and value of the text, and analyze/interpret its parts in support of that claim. Flights of fancy and baseless, subjective opinions will be duly and publicly ridiculed.
iii. Many of the skills you have developed in summary will come in handy here. As a pre-writing activity, summarize the article for gists, and separate out the high-level ideas from the specific details. Review the general structure of the article for function/organization. Examine the connections the author makes between points, and engage critically with the logic and soundness of those connections.
On final note: this assignment is intended as a hybrid of analysis and persuasion. I will expect, therefore, that your analysis (all four operations logically, appropriately presented) will be persuasive.
