Good afternoon!
Links I went over Monday:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/
http://www.alternet.org/education
http://www.mediamatters.org/issues/education
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/
Instructions for Informal Proposals:
If you do not plan on meeting with me Friday, write a paragraph or two (about one page) proposing what you’d like to focus on/argue in your final research essays and email it to me by the time class would normally start. Be sure to note what kinds of materials you intend to look at for research. While I thought I made this pretty clear, your topic has to be relevant to university-related issues. While there are literally thousands, some potential topics are:
- Debates around free speech (if you already wrote on this, you can easily approach it in a different way)
- Gun control on campuses in a culture in which mass shootings are pretty regular (see: http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/10/07/reasoning-point-gun/73531620/)
- Whether student athletes should be paid or not
- Student protest, generally
- STEM’s dominance / the Humanities’/Arts’ de-funding
- Why do students choose certain majors over others? (has to do with the previously listed potential topic) Why are minority students more inclined to choose STEM majors over others? See: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/college-major-rich-families-liberal-arts/397439/
- ADDING THIS LATE: Lots to be said about the destructive, often violent culture of masculinity on campuses. There is also a lot to be said about the treatment of LBTQ+ students on campuses. I think these two articles pair really nicely: (this older one that I used to teach) https://eone10.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/a-boys-life-wypijewski.pdf and (this new one I just read) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/education/edlife/teaching-men-to-be-emotionally-honest.html. I would highly recommend reading both, even if you don’t write on them.
Discussion:
More on citing in MLA.
Groupwork:
With your essay groups (yes, they are staying the same), talk for a few minutes about what you’re thinking about writing about for your final essay and ask for any ideas your group mates might have about your topic. Try to identify:
- Who is your audience? What group of people would you like to direct your essay toward (students, faculty, admin, larger publics?)?
- Why are you writing about your chosen topic (if you have one)? What are the stakes of your argument, and what are you hoping to contribute to the conversation which you are entering?
English 110 
So far i have been using ESPN, news articles and forbes just to get my argument about why student athletes should be paid. I have been looking for arguments that not only argue that they should be paid but also arguments that argue against paying student athletes, so i have more of a well rounded view of why people argue for either side.
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