Reading Response #2 - "And Yet"

1) Marx and Engels wrote: "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat" (10). If only that were true, things might be more simple. But in late twentieth-century America, it seems that society is slitting more and more into a plethora of class factions - the working class, the working poor, lower-middle class, upper-middle class, lower uppers, and upper uppers. I find myself not knowing what class I'm from.
In my days as a newspaper reporter, I once asked a sociology professor what he thought about the reported shrinking of the middle class. Oh, it's not the middle class that's disappearing, he said, but the working class. His definition: if you earn thirty thousand dollars a year working in an assembly plant, come home from work open a beer and watch the game, you are working class; if you earn twenty thousand dollars a year as a school teacher, come home from work to a glass of white wine and PBS, you are middle class.
How do we define class? Is it an issue of values, lifestyle, taste? Is it the kind of work you do, your relationship to the means of production? Is it a matter of how much money you earn? Are we allowed to choose? In this land of supposed classlessness, where we don't have the tradition of English society to keep us in our places, how do we know where we really belong? The average American will tell you he or she is "middle class." I'm sure that's what my father would tell you. But i always felt that we were in some no man's land, suspended between classes, sharing similarities with some and recognizing sharp, exclusionary differences from others. What class do I come from? What class am I in now? As an historian, I seek the answers to these questions in the specificity of my past.

Julie Charlip, "A Real Class Act: Searching for Identity in the Classless Society"

Italicized phrases are showing ideas which are possessed by the author
Bold phrases are showing ideas possessed by others



2)
a) In my letter to a Michigan Representative in Congress I used two perspectives, that which is believed by the general public and mine own.
b) In order to make my piece more persuasive it would have been wise to include a perspective from an individual that has a expertise in the subject of the letter, such as a sociology professor from a well renounced university.
c) I was able to clearly distinguish my views by using clear transitions. It was also helpful that for this particular piece the views were opposing with no overlap.
d) I was able to use clear voice-signaling phrases.
e) Some options I have for clarifying whose view is being presented would be to clearly define by name whose spoken view is is being presented instead of relying on the phrase "the public".
f) I believe that to best improve this piece at least one expert view of the subject needs to be added as well as a new way of phrasing "the public".

"They Say"
Exercise

1.)
a.) When I was a child, I used to think that our cities drinking water was safe to ingest. Today, experiments suggest that there are dangerous levels of chemical X in the Ohio groundwater.
b.) At the same time that I believe that love makes the world go around, I also now know that material forces drive history.
c.) Throughout my education in the field of psychology i have come to believe that Freud was a brilliant man, yet proponents of Freudian psychology question standard notions of "rationality".
d.) You would think that class discussions are run in a gender neutral manner, it has been shown that males tend to dominate class discussions.
e.) The film is about romantic relationships; the theme I discovered was that inner strength is all you need to move on from the tough decisions of life.
f.) I'm afraid the templates in this book will stifle my creativity, yet they create only a building block for me to advance from.

2.) If ever there was an idea custom-made for a Jay Leno monologue, this was it: the thought that men dominate class discussions. Isn't that like saying men are dominating the world? Whatever happened to taking turns? I used to believe this was an elementary skill, though now I'm starting to think those teaching our elementary school students should take some more curriculum time to teach this needed skill.
I happen to sympathize with the men only because they are unaware of how they are acting in public. Just because they tend to be louder and have strongly set opinions doesn't mean that they are correct or based on fact, though, perhaps because men are losing ground at such a fast pace in areas of life women were once absent from they feel the need to try and make up for it in this manner.

I was astonished at the feelings i possessed when asked to take a screen shot of my computer and reflect upon it; never before had i felt like just another person. My words could be any body's words, they possessed no voice. My name being added to my work meant nothing; it could have read any one's name and the person reading it would have felt the same way about the piece no matter who has published it. When i personally take the time to place my thoughts and ideas in to a text for others to see I want those reading it to know that what they are reading has come from me. This is a very important aspect of our society, mainly in an academic environment, taking credit only for ones own work. This is why we have such strict plagiarizing laws being enforced.

I believe digital space is best utilized when the composition being publicized is of factual matter. There is no voice to be lost when the subject matter contains no personal views or opinions. The use of digital space has made it possible for individuals on opposite sides of our globe to interact instantaneously. This way of communication will never take the place of face-to-face interaction, which is being pushed aside with ever technological advance we make. While electronic interaction is necessary for some situations i believe that we should, whenever possible, go back to the old fashioned face-to-face interactions where the voice in communication is never lost.