- Dec 2022
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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How bad are these scores? Very bad. If you know half the letters in the alphabet, we don’t call you “half literate.” We correctly call you illiterate.
Seems to be a lack of civility here and/or an appeal to emotion. In this section the author targets the audience and tries to make his point by invalidating intellectual ability.
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The general pattern is that grown-ups have shockingly little academic knowledge. College graduates know about what you’d expect high school graduates to know; high school graduates know about what you’d expect dropouts to know; dropouts know next to nothing. This doesn’t mean that these students never knew more; it just means that only a tiny fraction of what they learn durably stays in their heads.
There seems to be a lack of civility throughout the argument, using many negatively charged words to imply that the public retains no knowledge.
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I have deep doubts about the intellectual and social value of schooling.
I don't believe any deductive reasoning was used.
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Even here, though, schools’ performance is mediocre and unlikely to meaningfully improve. Schools have been trying to overcome reading, writing and math deficits among underperforming students for decades.
I think the argument would improve greatly if statistics were included here. Statistics to prove school performance is mediocre would improve the argument greatly since that is a premise of the argument.
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I have deep doubts about the intellectual and social value of schooling.
I don't believe the author uses analogical reasoning in this argument and cannot think of a particular way this certain argument would benefit from it.
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I have deep doubts about the intellectual and social value of schooling.
I believe that correlation and causation does not pertain to this argument, nor can I think of a way this particular argument would benifit.
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This is especially clear for subjects beyond the three R’s — reading, writing and arithmetic. Fewer than 1 percent of American adults even claim to have learned to speak a foreign language very well in school, even when two years of coursework is standard. Adults’ knowledge of history and civics is negligible. If you test the most elementary facts, like naming the three branches of government, they get about half right. The same goes for questions of basic science, like “Are electrons smaller than atoms?” and “Do antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria?”
In this paragraph the author explains how subjects and information learned in schools are poorly retained, adults not being able to answer 'simple' questions. I believe in this paragraph he's exhibiting Confirmation Bias because there are many other factors as to why adults may not retain information such as interest, other ongoing events personally or socially, or simply just the passage of time.
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How do we know all this? My work focuses on tests of adult knowledge — what adults retain after graduation. The general pattern is that grown-ups have shockingly little academic knowledge. College graduates know about what you’d expect high school graduates to know; high school graduates know about what you’d expect dropouts to know; dropouts know next to nothing. This doesn’t mean that these students never knew more; it just means that only a tiny fraction of what they learn durably stays in their heads.
Week 9- In this paragraph the author included that he works on testing adult's knowledge and what they're retained after graduation. He states that education levels are below that of where they're expected to be. I believe here he is exhibiting generalization. The sample size of his research is not included, leaving many undefined variables that may give a confirming impression when it may not be if the study is expanded. While he may have credentials for it, statistics are not shown or provided with context and therefore I find the correlation not appropriate.
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My work focuses on tests of adult knowledge — what adults retain after graduation. The general pattern is that grown-ups have shockingly little academic knowledge. College graduates know about what you’d expect high school graduates to know; high school graduates know about what you’d expect dropouts to know; dropouts know next to nothing
Week 11- In this paragraph the author mentions that their work consists of collecting data and makes a claim based off that data but does not provide the readers with it. I believe that the argument would be much stronger if supporting data was shown.
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