Harris on Countering

I appreciate that Harris addressed how current political debates are structured.  It’s almost as if he knew that I had just previously blogged about that.  Rather than forwarding, countering is what happens in most of the political scheme of things.  In countering, Harris explains that one can argue the other side, uncover values or dissent.  Arguing the other side consists of stating the benefits of something an author has criticized or the negatives of something an author has argued for.  This is probably the main part of countering.  Uncovering values is slightly different.  It doesn’t involve arguing against something the author said but rather something the author didn’t say.  It involves taking an undefined term in a text and analyzing it for greater meaning.  Dissenting is where you find a shared thought with the author and then you identify its limits.  Gizmodo, a blog that I often read for electronic and other news often uses countering.  Normally it doesn’t directly cite another author, say what he or she says and then argue the other side.  Rather countering on this blog comes in the form of one article arguing both sides of an argument.  Though the same author writes it, it seems to fit with countering.  Take this article that I read today on Googles’ new ‘Latitude Leaderboards’ which is a new program to let friends know where you are and see where they are.  (http://gizmodo.com/5886460/googles-latitude-leaderboards-is-a-blatant-foursquare-rip+off)  The author begins by offering its benefits but then goes on to say the other side of it that is that this program has already been created by many other sites.  In offering this information it provides both perspectives.  

Forwarding Off of Harris

Harris begins with a good example, that in having a conversation with somebody, you rarely can convince him or her of your perspective by just refuting what he or she is saying.  Conversations require that you take what they have said and expand on it.  This expansion carries the subject matter on into new places and opens the mind of whom you’re talking to rather than just closing it to what they already know.  This is critically important with the reading and writing we are doing.  If we took what other authors said and simply pointed out everything they were saying as wrong, this would be a reply that would end the conversation.  Instead, as Harris mentions, we must forward their ideas and beliefs into new realms and add to them.  Mentioning faults and inconsistencies isn’t always a no-no so long as it is balanced out with comments that forward their writing on.  In a short little tangent, this is what I feel is wrong about politics these days.  Debates, political advertisements and other parts of politicians campaigns oftentimes focus on what their adversaries are doing wrong.  Rather than continuing the conversation into new places, adding to others thoughts and really opening up the political world to the public, they focus on scandals and mistakes.  This is why we are experiencing such slow progress in this country.  The democrats and republicans aren’t forwarding off of one another but simply replying.  This creates a static environment.  Returning to what we are doing in blogging we are commenting on the writing of others and continuing the conversation.  It is important for us to look at the works of others and forward their ideas by using examples, invoking their expertise, drawing on terms and putting our own spin on their concepts.  The New York Times as I discussed in a previous post forwards many ideas off of the White House Blog.  Information that comes out on the WHB for example on the budget then gets looked at by journalists at the Times and they draw on examples, use the expertise of quotes from the president, draw on terms and they even put their own political spin on the news.  Its interesting to see the tie in between the two.

A great example of the press sphere.

The top story on the left side of the New York Times homepage is “Obama Uses Budget to Set Election-Year Priorities.”  At the same time, the first post on the White House Blog is “The 2013 Budget.”  The New York Times article seems to focus on the upcoming election and how his new budget will help his campaign.  An important passage portrays the tone of the article: “The budget over all captures Mr. Obama’s effort to define the 2012 election not as a referendum on his record, which puts him on the defensive if unemployment does not continue to come down, but as a choice between his priorities and those of Republicans, who reject any higher taxes and want to sharply reduce the size of government and remake its most popular programs, Medicare and Medicaid.”  This contrasts the post on the White House Blog, which portrays the president’s interests, and perspectives on the new budget.  The blog tries to focus on what the budget will do for the middle class and attempts to give voters hope: “This year’s budget reflects the President’s firm belief that our country has always done best when everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules. It’s a document built around the recognition that this is a make or break moment for the middle class and those trying to reach it.”  The president focuses on the parts of the budget that target job growth, a reauthorization bill for roads, and how the economy will be boosted in the next year.  The New York Times read into all of this as the president setting up for his election year and campaign.  This is probably correct.  It’s interesting to think that the author of the NYT article might have read this blog.  If that were true it would be a great example of the press sphere.  The government/white house is represented directly by the white house blog and the NYT article represents the press.  Information from the government gives the press information for its news story.

Blog Analysis

White House Blog

Purpose - Essentially this serves to update readers on what the president, the first lady and other members of the cabinet are doing.  It contains articles on topics like the science fair held in the white house, the first lady's 'conversation on healthy eating,' and Obama's new budget.  It gives the president a direct, controllable outlet to release information.

Audience - The audience of this blog seems to be more to the side of Obama's supporters rather than his opponents.  It is for everyone to read, but the perspective of the blog seems very limited.  It seems to show only stories supporting what the president is doing.

Author - The authors are most likely Obama's staff members.  I doubt that Obama is writing this blog himself.

Materials and Methods - The blog contains videos of the president and others in the white house, quotes that the president made in statements and facts on legislation.  The methods used in writing seem to be writing about what the president has done recently and then sharing a video or quotes that inform the reader further.

Key Words - None that I noticed

Uses and Limits - This blog seems to be limited to what the president is doing.  Though it provides beneficial information on that it doesn't offer much perspective on other news outside the presidents circle and what is happening at the white house.

The Press Sphere Model

Jarvis approaches the shift in the distribution of information that has occurred.  He describes the change in how news organizations relate with readers, the government and companies.  The way that the media and its readers interact has changed.  Jarvis explains that the flow of information is no longer a one-way street.  Instead, news sources, archives, government, companies, witnesses and the press all share information back and forth.  Readers post links to background information, and a multitude of perspectives are shared in a story.  News coverage is no longer about a newspaper presenting the facts on an event or a topic.  With the Internet, it is a conversation between many organizations, people and interest groups.

I wasn’t really confused by this model; it actually made complete sense to me.  Though basic, it seemed to cover the way news and articles develop fairly well.

Looking at his rough sketch of the ‘press sphere’ model, I was reminded of a similar model from my political science class.  The cobweb model has many of the same groups in bubbles and it talks about how interests within the country come to compromise and maintain a balance in creating public policy decisions.  The overlap shows that people can be in both groups, which is the same as in Jarvis’s model.  Jarvis says, “Witnesses can join in the process directly. Background might come via links to archives.”  A member of the press can also be a witness or observer.  Meaning readers are also writers.  This ties into my relation with the news and becoming a blogger.  As we are reading more articles, we are also writing more.  The interplay between readers and writers on the Internet is much more prevalent then ever before.

Where in the world is President Obama?

I found number 44 on technorati's list of top blogs to be interesting.  It is the White House Blog.  This blog is hosted and controlled by the President's staff.  It updates readers on what the president and the rest of the cabinet is doing.  The most recent updates are on Michelle Obama and the science fair hosted at the white house.  It seems interesting to me because it will keep me informed on what the president is doing in relation to what is going on in the rest of the news.

My opinion on the Times

I've been quite used to reading the New York Times for a while now.  As I described in earlier posts, though I took a break from it last quarter, I did read it throughout most of high school.  The NYT is one of the most respected and influential news sources in the world, if not the most.  Even facing a society drifting away from print news sources, the NYT found a way to survive.  It revamped its business plan, putting all of its news online and beginning to cap the articles that you can read.  To access more than the headlines and a few articles, you now have to pay the subscription fee.
The stories that I remember reading most were ones about the current political environment and the republican primaries.  These seemed the most important to the days events.  Most of my reading went off of the home page, without venturing to the different sections of the world news.  In doing this I'm sure I missed interesting stories that for whatever reason didn't make the headlines.
What the New York Times does that I love is in articles it links to opinion pages and other interesting stories.  After skimming an article I can read related articles.  This leads me to read the different perspectives on an event as well as background information that I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to.

Comparing how we are informed

It seemed that many of my peers accessed their news in similar ways.  Their current main source of the news is the internet but this wasn't always the case.  I noticed that parents and families had an impact on their news gathering.  If their family had the news hour on television playing nightly, they would often watch that.  Others had NPR playing in their household.  Those around us always impact our sources of information.  Parents are especially influential in doing this.
Where we get our information from can impact many things.  Daily events affect our conversations with others, our opinions on politics and how we engage in class.  If we have biased information, it can skew our perspectives.  From looking at the diverse sources of information that my classmates cited, I don't think that is the case with a lot of them.  They seem to receive balanced information from many sources.  This highlights a huge change in the flow of information.  Previous generations may have gotten all of there news from one source like a specific news paper.  Our generation has the internet and can access an infinite amount of websites.  Though there might be more biased perspectives out there today, there are a lot of good ones that balance them out.

Final Essay

Zach Quinn

Professor Eric Leake

Writing 1122

29 January 2012

Essay 1: Thoughts on Civic Literacy

            I wrote this essay as a letter to Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education.  Duncan, appointed by President Barack Obama, heads up the U.S. Department of Education.  The language I used is appropriate for the formality necessary in addressing one of the president’s cabinetry members.  My tone conveys concern for the state of education in this country and I used the articles and studies we’ve read so far to back up my claims.

Secretary Arne Duncan,

            As technology, media, and culture affect large changes in our society, our educational system must adapt and transform along with.  Over the past decades, our society has seen many new developments.  The Internet and the computer were some of the most influential inventions of the 20^th century.  Their creation and expansion up to this point have created millions of jobs, innovative ways of sharing and storing information, and new methods of communication.  With these benefits, consequences have surfaced.  Our educational system must adapt to minimize these problems.

Nicholas Carr writes in his article Is Google Making Us Stupid? about the creation of the printing press, “Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds.” (Carr 7)  Carr goes on to quote that these concerns were mostly correct but the ‘doomsayers’ were unable to predict the vast benefits of the press.  Without reservation, I’d argue that computer technology has brought us to a further civilized state and its benefits are infinite.  At the same time, however, it is changing how we access and receive information.  Many printed newspapers have gone out of business; others have had to change their business strategy to stay afloat.  One of the largest bookstore chains, Borders, filed for bankruptcy and liquidated its assets.  It was unable to adapt to keep up with online book sales and e-books.  These occurrences reflect large changes in our society.

We’ve become a culture obsessed with TV and computer screens.  Recent generations of children figure out how to play a game on an iPhone years before they are able to read.  Older generations are changing the way they intake information.  What used to require lengthy research to be completed is provided with the click of a mouse button.  The ability we have to access information with ease is making us lazy.  Bruce Friedman commented, “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.” (Thompson 2)  But what do these changes mean for the education of our youth?  With the creation of the printing press, more people had access to books and the literacy of the world grew exponentially.  Though some were afraid what the printing press might do, it turned out to be beneficial.  We should not be afraid of the Internet but we must optimize it.  With the creation of the web and additional access to articles, statistics, facts and information, literacy should have again gone up.  This isn’t the case for our society and many others around the world.  The Internet isn’t the problem but how we use it is.  Chris Hedges writes in his article America the Illiterate, “There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year.” (Hedges 1)  The Internet is having a profound effect on the literacy of this country in particular.  We cannot go back and eliminate the web, nor would we want to.  It has had uncountable benefits for our society but we seem to be ignoring the problems.

Without change, we will become a society without progress.  Our educational systems have to adapt to confront the problems that the Internet has created in our society.  As the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, I have no doubt that you are confronted with problems in our public educational system every day.  As congress allocates trillions of tax dollars to the military and other sectors of government, education is often given the leftovers.  As the U.S. loses many of its manufacturing jobs to China and other countries, we must focus on creating smart individuals.  Without doing this, the U.S. will continue to lessen its importance in the world.  Our public education system must begin to create a larger number of engaged and inspired students if we are to compete.  The problem currently is that the way high school teachers are teaching subjects doesn’t line up with way students are learning information elsewhere.  Andrea Lunsford concludes her essay Our Semi-Literate Youth? Not So Fast by saying, “What students need in facing these challenges is not derision or dismissal but solid and informed instruction.  And that’s where the real problem may lie-not with student semi-literacy but with that of their teachers.” (Lunsford 3) Before we place all the blame on the teachers though, we must look at the reason why they teach the way they do.  The way that classes are taught has changed very little over the past century.  The educational system has made teaching into a cookie cutter profession.  Teaching must get back to what it really is about, creativity.  Teachers must forget the traditional methods of teaching and create new methods to engage with their students.  We need to encourage teachers to try and stick square blocks in circular holes.  By doing so, we’ll engage students to think and act creatively as well.

High school students are no lazier today than those of the past.  It can be argued that they have more distractions but mostly they are used to accessing information fast and moving through it as quick as their Internet connection.  Its impossible to expect that a brain trained to intake information in that way will do well reading a 20 page long article.  Information on the Internet is summarized down to what is useful.  For most of us, minus the journalism majors and law students, that’s completely acceptable. 

If teachers want to inspire their students, they must stop teaching them the way that they were taught.  Clive Thompson writes in his article Clive Thompson on the New Literacy about Andrea Lunsford’s study of Stanford Students, “The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them.” (Thompson 1)  Most of the writing students do today is over texts, Facebook messages and writing online.  This writing is different from the writing in a formal research paper but it is not less important.  Lunsford explained in her study, “The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it's over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.” (Thompson 1)  If teachers gave their students a sense of purpose in their writing, they would find their students engaging and learning more.  I don’t mean to say that teachers are the problem.  Rather the system is currently the problem and the teachers can be the solution.  As human beings, we must feel as though we have a strong purpose.  Even in the small example of writing an essay, if the purpose is something more than getting a good grade, students will put more effort into their work.

With the creation of blogging, online forums and chat rooms, the spread of information has become more of a conversation.  While people used to read the same newspaper or watch the nightly news everyday for their information, people today can access information wherever links take them.  People are faced with far more perspectives and faster updates on news stories.  The information they are given is not always true but many don’t take the time to verify it.  Most Internet users don’t read past the headlines if they even get to a news related site.  Other information is passed through their friends and acquaintances on sites like Facebook.  Chris Hedges writes in his article America the Illiterate, “In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek or want honesty. We ask to be indulged and entertained.” (Hedges 2)  Much of the U.S. population isn’t prepared to sift through articles and read for hours, making their own opinions.  Most of them get their opinions from the images and propaganda that they are faced with.  Education today must face these issues if it wants to create engaged citizens.  There are ways for teachers to show their students how to involve themselves in the online conversations and I imagine those students will learn more from doing that than they would in skimming a long article.  Blogs and forums can be great sources of information for students.  They are able to see all perspectives and can find links to websites that back up the information they are presented with.  It won’t all be true, but if taught correctly, students will figure out how to learn on their own.

Teachers right now are given all the responsibility for what students must learn.  They are required to assign articles, textbook excerpts, and give out tests.  All of which perpetuates the idea that all students need to learn is what their teachers tell them to.  In an era of technology with so much information immediately accessible, teachers must stop telling students what to learn and instead teach them how.  To create engaged citizens and smart individuals in this country, teachers must focus on teaching younger generations how to use the Internet effectively.  A lot of teenager’s lives currently revolve around technology but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  In altering the system, we can morph using the Internet into a productive, learning activity.

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic (July-Aug. 2008): 1-8. Web. 6 Feb. 2012. <http://www.theatlantic.com/‌magazine/‌archive/‌2008/‌07/‌is-google-making-us-stupid/‌6868/>.

Hedges, Chris. “America the Illiterate.” Truth Dig (Nov. 2008): 1-3. Web. 6 Feb. 2012. <http://www.truthdig.com/‌report/‌item/‌20081110_america_the_illiterate/>.

Lunsford, Andrea A. “Our Semi-Literate Youth? Not So Fast.” Stanford University: 1-4. Web. 6 Feb. 2012. <http://www.stanford.edu/‌group/‌ssw/‌cgi-bin/‌materials/‌OPED_Our_Semi-Literate_Youth.pdf>.

Thompson, Clive. “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy.” Wired Magazine (Aug. 2009): 1-2. Web. 6 Feb. 2012. <http://www.wired.com/‌techbiz/‌people/‌magazine/‌17-09/‌st_thompson>.

What keeps me from being ignorant.

The sources that I use for gathering my news and information have changed in the past years.  At one point, before I could drive, I was forced to listen to National Public Radio everyday on the way to school.  I retained a lot of information about the news and politics from those drives.  After getting my license I often chose not to listen to the news however and rather listened to music.  Without the radio as a source for news, I made the New York Times my home page.  The choice to do so was partly to impress teachers at my small high school.  The NYT is still my home page and what I think an excellent source of news.  When I’m looking for other headlines, I often look to AOL and click through their top news stories.  These sources give me an idea about what is going on.  Unless a story is interesting enough, I often don’t get past the headlines.  As for TV, there are really only two shows that I will watch for news.  The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are those two.  Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have figured out a way to balance satire with the news in a comedic way.  It’s interesting to hear their opinions come out subtly in the news stories.  Stewart, in my opinion, is funnier and also contributes more news to his thirty-minute section.  They offer news reports that are most relevant to the nation as a whole.  I rarely watch local news because it tends to include only violent robberies and other reports only relevant locally.  Of course I also hear about the news from friends, family, teachers and other random sources.  These all culminate to make me a less ignorant person.