“That essay was phfop!”
”Phfop” is a slang term for “awesome”! Use is all the time! : D
1. I believe this to be true, generally speaking, but not in all cases. In terms of reading and understanding books solely for their content, English class is certainly the place to be. Personally, however, attention to detail and analysis of a book’s writing style has been more of a domestic occurrence. I don’t really remember a time at school in which the class had a good discussion about the way a certain story is written. At home, though, this is one of the main things I focus on when I read books.
2. I completely and totally agree with her statement. Those sorts of questions that made me relate my own experiences to those of characters in a book always frustrated me because they tore me right out of the story and its events. No longer am I engrossed in the world presented by the book, learning to feel things I’d have never felt otherwise. Instead I am racking my brain for the juvenile anecdote I could relate best to the given situation. Once again, I am back in my own world, experiencing my own normal life, feeling my own normal emotions. Thus, nothing is learned.
1. The most prominent form of ethos Prose takes is her identity as a mother with concern for the education of her children. She also points out the fact that she is a teacher who “often finds [herself] teaching bright, eager [students]… nearly incapable of doing the… reading necessary to disclose the most basic information…” (17). Lastly, one very peremptory yet not-directly-mentioned identity she takes on is that of a person who is generally very well-read educated. Throughout the essay, she makes knowing references to a multitude of books, mentioning characters, situations, and other such details—good and bad—with much knowledge.
2. Using such words in her opening paragraph, Prose attracts more potential enemies than she repels. People are usually flared up by such language, and will read on just to find faults in the writer’s work. She also uses strong language when referring—sarcastically—to “that bigot, Mark Twain” whose classic Huckleberry Finn is often unfortunately known as the “fictional equivalent of a minstrel show.” While her language is strong, it is certainly called for while mocking the unsettlingly stupid opinion on such a great book.
3. Prose’s assumptions are that “great novels can help us master the all-too-rare skill of tolerating”, that literature should be taught with more consideration to the writing itself rather than just its content, and that if more engaging and thought-requiring books were taught correctly in schools, kids growing up would have that much more engagement in life.
6. Her analogy is bluntly accurate, as Angelou’s writing style is undoubtedly filled with the very foibles students are taught not to have, such as the use of “stale, inaccurate similes” such as “the man’s dead words fell like bricks around the auditorium and too many settled in my belly” and the fact that she “obscure[s] ideas that could be expressed so much more simply and felicitously.” Prose’s other most hard-hitting use of figurative language can be found in the last paragraph, where she claims that such flawed and soulless educational methods “equips our kids for the future: Future McDonald’s employees. Future corporate board members. Future special prosecutors. Future makers of 100-best-books lists who fondly recall what they first read in high school—and who may not have read anything since.”
7. Prose’s rhetorical questions all relate to simple changes that can be made to better the system. When phrased in such a way, the possibility and logic behind the ideas themselves come forth when one realizes that there is no good answer to the question, “Why not introduce our kids to the clarity and power of James Baldwin’s great story ‘Sonny’s Blues’?”
8. I think a few interviews would have helped to strengthen the argument, if only for the inclusion of some sort of refutation (given, of course, that the interviewee had a counterargument). But at the same time, the argument was, in my opinion, already strong enough. As someone who has had the same experience she talks about, I understand the importance and authenticity of her claim.
9. Prose’s main reason for a given student’s dislike for literature is the way it is presented in class, namely, the questions and activities that go along with the literature. Also, the fact that writers are selected not based on their skills or styles, but on their ethnic backgrounds or sexual orientation, matters she feels are irrelevant in such terms.
