Post 2
Rhetorical Analysis
Classism destroys the education system more and more every year as shown through the article, “Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say” written by the New York Times author Sabrina Tavernise on February 9, 2012. In the article, Sabrina Tavernise explains how the achievement of education has a growing gap between the rich and the poor. She also states how the education gap between black and white has diminished while the gap in education seems to be within the income levels of family income.
There has been a growing gap in the education system between the rich and the poor income students. For example Tavernise states, “We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race.” This is a prime example of how the education gap has switched from racism to classism. The article also suggests that the gap has grown to 40% between the rich and the poor success in education because the parents of the rich family spend more money than ever on outside school resources like tutors, test taking camps, and other school subjected camps. An example of this would be, “A study by Sabino Kornrich, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid, and Frank F. Furstenberg, scheduled to appear in the journal Demography this year, found that in 1972, Americans at the upper end of the income spectrum were spending five times as much per child as low-income families.” Tavernise uses this example to demonstrate how families of high income spend more and more money on their child to help put them in a well prepared position for college so they can too one day reach the same success as their parents have.
A growing issue in the United States is the influence classism has on our education system. Classism in the education system has separated the low income students from the high income students by presenting those of lower income with less opportunities to succeed in the education system. Tavernis uses the three rhetorical devices; pathos, logos, and ethos to help strengthen her argument on how classism creates this gap of success between the low income and the high income occurring in the education system. This article Tavernise uses the rhetorical device pathos by displaying images on the article of graphs that show the trend in the growing gap of success in education and uses many facts to help conclude her argument. An example would be, “By contrast, only 9 percent of the low-income students in the second generation had completed college by 2007, up only slightly from a 5 percent college completion rate by the first generation in 1989.” This is a credible fact the author uses to contribute to her argument. The author uses the rhetorical device ethos to help strengthen her argument by using ethos in forms of ‘less-fortunate’ and ‘struggling’ to help appeal to the readers’ emotions to help them understand how big of an issue it is. For example, “Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role”. Tavernise uses ethos in this case to demonstrate the struggle the poor income students go through to draw emotion and sympathy from the reader. Lastly the rhetorical device Sabrina Tavernise uses is logos by crediting the research done by stating what research centers where it came from. An example of this would be “Meredith Phillips, an associate professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, used survey data to show that affluent children spend 1,300 more hours than low-income children”. Sabrina Tavernise is using logos to credit where she is getting all of her information so it seems credible. The destruction of education in the earliest stages is due to the implementation of classism in education.
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Works Cited
Tavernise, Sabrina. “Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html.