Rhetoric Reading for the Week

Our reading for the week was on two separate articles designed to highlight rhetoric and its use in media. The first article is entitled “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto who is a former teacher. The second article is called “I Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike rose who is an author of several scholary material and a professor at UCLA. The information they share is of significant value on its own, but both choose to employ rhetoric to make their points.
The first article uses Ethos (credibility) as a major force to drive home his points at the beginning of the article. In fact, the first sentence is straight to that point “I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan…” This is clearly designed to immediately let the reader know that when it comes to education, he is the man.
His second point of rhetoric is in his Pathos (emotion). He uses this with questions to the reader such as “Do we really need school?” Questions like this are meant to bring the reader into the article and respond with feeling. Another use of this technique is when Mr. Gatto says “Now, you needn’t have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children.” This vicious little sentence brings the emotion of something you SHOULD know and allows him to link children and addicts in the same sentence to scare you. These tactics are used so well that its hard to realize exactly when the author “got” ya.
Mr. Rose chose to start his article with Pathos instead of what he could of easily relied on, his credibility. It’s hard not to get immediately swept up with his emotional appeal as he describes the two busses he took to get to school. His use of the language in order to paint an emotional picture is a tell tail sign that he intends to hook your heart first.
Mike Rose uses less of the other two rhetoric pillars of Ethos and Logos. He uses only a small amount of foot notes for his story to bolster his opinion and his educational background is not highlighted anywhere near as much as he could. It is possible that this message just did not need to expand to other parts of the rhetoric playing field, but I think it might of bolstered his argument. Emotion will keep the reader involved for a bit, but its logic and credibility that let the reader walk away with a message that can be shared with a friend and in the long run lead to making a difference.