Friday, April 25, 2014
Schools for Sale?
For years corporations have sponsored high school sports. Their ads are found on the outfield fence at baseball parks or on the walls of the gymnasium, the football stadium, or even the locker room. Corporate logos are even found on players‟ uniforms. But some schools have moved beyond corporate sponsorship of sports to allowing "corporate partners" to place their names and ads on all kinds of school facilities-libraries, music rooms, cafeterias. Some schools accept money to require students to watch Channel One, a news program that includes advertising. And schools often negotiate exclusive contracts with soft drink or clothing companies. Some people argue that corporate partnerships are a necessity for cash-strapped schools. Others argue that schools should provide an environment free from ads and corporate influence. Using appropriate evidence, write an essay in which you evaluate the pros and cons of corporate sponsorship for schools and indicate why you find one positions more persuasive that the other.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Home at Last
Dinaw Mengestu wrote a collection of essays about living in Brooklyn, New York. Read the essay titled "Home at Last" which is on page 337 in your text book. You might also be able to find the essay on line. After reading the piece, discuss in your blog its tone and purpose. If you are struggling with the assignment, you may want to use SOAPStones to get through it. Good luck.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Testing 1,2,3
Write your reaction to the AP practice exam. What was hard, what was easy? How did you feel about taking it? Was it what you expected? If you had to make a plan for the actual exam, what things, what skills do you think you would improve upon. Make an estimated guess as to what you scored on the exam.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Rhetorical Devices Anyone!
The passage below is from Last Child in the Woods (2008) by Richard Louv. Read the passage carefully. Then, in
a well-developed essay, analyze the rhetorical strategies Louv uses to develop his argument about the separation between people and nature. Support your analysis with specific references to the text. DO NOT list logos, pathos or ethos as rhetorical devices. Talk about how rhetorical devices are used to appeal to logos, pathos and ethos. Here is a link to a list of rhetorical devices. You need to know some of these for the success on the exam. Study. We have 6 weeks. Learn 5 to 10 a week and you will be golden. http://teachers.sduhsd.net/ppennock/ap%20resource%20packet.pdf
Researchers at the State University of New York at
Buffalo are experimenting with a genetic technology
through which they can choose the colors that appear
on butterfly wings. The announcement of this in
5 2002 led writer Matt Richtel to conjure a brave new
advertising medium: “There are countless possibilities
for moving ads out of the virtual world and into the
real one. Sponsorship-wise, it’s time for nature to
carry its weight.” Advertisers already stamp their
10 messages into the wet sands of public beaches. Cashstrapped
municipalities hope corporations agree to
affix their company logo on parks in exchange for
dollars to keep the public spaces maintained. “The
sheer popularity” of simulating nature or using nature
15 as ad space “demands that we acknowledge, even
respect, their cultural importance,” suggests Richtel.
Culturally important, yes. But the logical extension of
synthetic nature is the irrelevance of “true” nature—
the certainty that it’s not even worth looking at.
20 True, our experience of natural landscape
“often occurs within an automobile looking out,”
as Elaine Brooks said. But now even that visual
connection is optional. A friend of mine was shopping
for a new luxury car to celebrate her half-century of
25 survival in the material world. She settled on a
Mercedes SUV, with a Global Positioning System:
just tap in your destination and the vehicle not only
provides a map on the dashboard screen, but talks you
there. But she knew where to draw the line. “The
30 salesman’s jaw dropped when I said I didn’t want a
backseat television monitor for my daughter,” she told
me. “He almost refused to let me leave the dealership
until he could understand why.” Rear-seat and in-dash
“multimedia entertainment products,” as they are
35 called, are quickly becoming the hottest add-on since
rearview mirror fuzzy dice. The target market: parents
who will pay a premium for a little backseat peace.
Sales are brisk; the prices are falling. Some systems
include wireless, infrared-connected headsets. The
40 children can watch Sesame Street or play Grand Theft
Auto on their PlayStation without bothering the
driver.
Why do so many Americans say they want their
children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the
45 opportunities for them to watch it? More important,
why do so many people no longer consider the
physical world worth watching? The highway’s edges
may not be postcard perfect. But for a century,
children’s early understanding of how cities and
50 nature fit together was gained from the backseat: the
empty farmhouse at the edge of the subdivision; the
variety of architecture, here and there; the woods and
fields and water beyond the seamy edges—all that
was and is still available to the eye. This was the
55 landscape that we watched as children. It was our
drive-by movie.
Perhaps we’ll someday tell our grandchildren
stories about our version of the nineteenth-century
Conestoga wagon.
60 “You did what?” they’ll ask.
“Yes,” we’ll say, “it’s true. We actually looked
out the car window.” In our useful boredom, we used
our fingers to draw pictures on fogged glass as we
watched telephone poles tick by. We saw birds on the
65 wires and combines in the fields. We were fascinated
with roadkill, and we counted cows and horses and
coyotes and shaving-cream signs. We stared with a
kind of reverence at the horizon, as thunderheads and
dancing rain moved with us. We held our little plastic
70 cars against the glass and pretended that they, too,
were racing toward some unknown destination. We
considered the past and dreamed of the future, and
watched it all go by in the blink of an eye.
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