This week’s assignment was for my students to read the essay Learning to Read and Write, by Fredrick Douglass and turn in a one page reflection that focused on one of the questions at the end of the essay. I haven’t had a chance to read through the reflections yet.
What I like to do on fridays (at least so far this semester) is to use the essay questions to start a conversation, since every student has been reflecting on at least one of them, and just kind of see where it leads.
It started off on a bit of a rough foot today. We were discussing the ways in which Douglass shows that slavery and education are inimical to one another. I asked them if they thought that any of the major political parties relied to any degree on an uneducated voting base. In my own head I was thinking of the “hillbilly vote,” the lower class rural christians who will vote for any candidate who is against abortion and for prayer in schools. I suspect, however that this argument can be made for both major political parties.
Anyway, that just didn’t get very much traction. Not the end of the world in my opinion. I try to make it clear to my students that, when we are having a class discussion, we can sort of “throw things in the hopper” and see if we find them interesting. If they aren’t, well that’s ok too. So I let it drop.
However Learning to Read and Write turned out to be a pretty good vehicle for discussing Logos, Pathos, and Ethos, which we had been working on earlier in the week. The questions I asked that got some good discussion going were these:
Can you find specific examples in the essay where Douglass is using Logos, Pathos, and Ethos?
Which of the three might be more useful if Douglass were trying to persuade a slaveholder? why?
Would your answer be any different if you were looking toward persuading someone who was undecided on the slavery issue?
After that, we had a few minutes left so I asked them if they thought there was anything comparable to slavery today, even if not as bad. I asked them if they thought “wage slavery” was anything like slavery. They decided that it was not comparable. Somebody brought up the plight of child laborers who get paid like a penny for every nike they make. This made someone think of child soldiers. Turns out that one of my students wrote an essay last semester about that subject so he had some valuable things to say on the subject.
then it was time to go. I think it turned out to be a good class for my students and myself.
