Monday, February 9, 2009

I Just Wanna be Average

This story definitely gives the reader a lot of feelings of pathos. Rose was a kid that got put into the wrong category because his school tried to label kids with tests. The kids that were in the vocational school with him felt it was much easier to just be average because of the situation they were in and the teachers that they had. It was much simpler to be like everyone else and just go through school without learning anything than actually trying. The author even speaks about when he was in a class a student by the name of Ken Harvey said something that has stuck with him even to this day. The class was talking about the parable of the talents and when the teacher called on Ken Harvey he actually said, “I just wanna be average.” That phrase right there made such an impact of Rose that he wrote a story on it. Rose has a lot of strong feelings toward what the vocational tract does to students. He backs up those feelings with phrases like, “The tragedy is that you have to twist the knife in your own gray matter to make this defense work.” He means that kids have to act more stupid than they really are just to “flaunt their ignorance” or live up to the labels that they have been given by their school. Clearly, after reading this essay, you get a sense of ethos. That this guy really does know what he is talking about because he got past the labels that his school had given him and he overcame them and made something of himself.

2 comments:

Not important said...

Good job on finding the Rhetoric in this peace and using quotes to bring the story home. I think you did a good job analyzing the author and felt you got more out of this than I did.

LaLa said...

I think kids do act a little more stoopid... is stoopid the new cool? Haha