Over the weekend, I’d like you to continue drafting your individual blog posts in preparation for our peer review workshop on Monday. To help you with this process, I would like to remind you to review all the rhetorical strategies of invention that we’ve studied this quarter and encourage you to use them as a way to generate your draft.
To help generate a focus for your argument, you might consider returning to the stasis questions or the common topics. Clarifying the kind of question that you’re answering might be one powerful way to help you frame your argument about your topic. Or, you might start by appealing to kairos and situating your discussion in relation to whatever current debates are going on in relation to your topic. You might also find a way to address appropriately a very specific audience who’s invested in this issue (and again, think of one that might be somewhat skeptical to your approach). Similarly, you might think about how you could develop your logical appeals or the reasons behind your argument, cultivate your ethos within your piece, or appeal to pathos. As we’ve also been talking about, identifying and presenting extrinsic proofs are also a compelling way to persuade your reader.
However you proceed, please aim for a draft of 3-4 pages by Monday so we can make use of our peer review time most productively. If you have any questions or run into any difficulties, please post a comment here and explain what kind of help you need. Feel free to respond to your classmates if you’re able to help out, and I will do the same. Good luck drafting!
Bullying within Colorado’s Education system
ReplyDeleteThe United States education system is facing criticism for the issue of bullying in schools. The school system is working hard to improve the level of education our students are receiving, but are not making strides to improve the school’s environment outside of the classroom. In recent years legislation has been passed and measures have taken to stop bullying within schools. However, even with laws in place this is a reality that many kids in our school systems still face. The other problem is that many people today still disregard the fact that bullying is a serious problem. So therefore, the larger debate at hand regarding the issue of bullying becomes what can we can we do further as a community to stop bullying in schools.
The issue as I see it is that legislation has been passed to try and halt the issue of bullying within schools, however bullying is still happening. In the last couple year’s measures have been taken within the government to support anti-bullying. In fact in February of this year a new anti-bullying law has been introduced in legislation that proposes things such as creating a legislative study committee on the issue to even requiring schools to conduct annual surveys about student perceptions of the problem. Also measures such as Safe2Tell that allows students to safely and anonymously keep lines of communication open between themselves, educators and law enforcement. Since 2003 Safe2Tell has helped prevent school attacks and suicides and has helped law enforcement and school intervene before problems got out of control. It has helped prevent 858 cases of bullying, 561 instances of drug or alcohol abuse, 387 threats of violence and many more issues. Why though is bullying still a problem then is it still a problem after measures have been enforced to prevent it. The school’s board and the community need to spend more time and or money preventing the issue of bullying within schools. So do you think bullying is a serious problem enough that we need to spend the issue worth our time and money to fix it.
The sad fact is that most authority figures such as teachers, parents or any type of adult will disregard the issue completely. They will tell you that bullying is part of growing up or not a big problem. Too often people just don’t take the issue seriously, until people share their heartbreaking and frightening stories. It ends up happening more often than most people are lead to believe. However, as reports of bullying have increased the issue has come to the foremost attention of the American public. In fact within the last 10 years reports of bullying within schools have increased. It is shown that since 2001 15-25% of students report being frequently bullied. While 15-20% people also report frequently bullying others. Furthermore, bullying then negatively affects a child’s future. Kid’s who bully in school are more likely to engage in bad behaviors. Bullying can lead to huge problems later on in life including skipping school, smoking, drinking alcohol, getting into fights and vandalizing properties. Satistics even show that 60% of boys who were bullies in middle school had at least one criminal conviction by the age of 24. The most troubling issue that comes to light is that some kids who bully most often drop out of school. Colorado is known for being a state with one of the highest dropout rate for kids in high school. As of 2010 we have a dropout rate of 3.1 percent or 13,147 students from seventh to 12 graders who left within the last year. The victim’s as well over time become so scared of being bullied that they skip school. Studies show that as many as 160,000 students are so afraid of being bullied that they will skip school. So even with government and school boards taking measures to decrease the rate of rate of bullying in schools, they are still not following up with the issue by monitoring the activity of students outside of the classroom.