In “Reading and Thought” by Dwight Macdonald, Macdonald raises the idea of reading deeply and how our society has changed its reading style. He points out that our modern society constantly reads irrelevant information in articles, newspapers, or magazines in our daily lives. A term called “functional curiosity” is a person’s interest in being amused, entertained or wanting to know what’s happening around the world. According to Henry Luce, the creator of Time magazine, “Functional Curiosity grows as the number of educated peoples grows.” Macdonald argues that being “functionally curious” is not functional because it does not help the individual function. These articles, magazines or newspapers do not help the reader become wealthier, politically known, or a better person. The author believes that reading irrelevantly …show more content…
Reading purposely can help the reader develop connections to the articles because they are taking their time to read and develop these feelings that can relate to their personal lives. I disagree with Macdonald because I believe that there are benefits to not taking the time to read and reading ‘irrelevant’ articles. It can help ones’ personal life because they are able to find more media that can help their personal life and it can also help improve them to be a well-rounded person. Our modern society has evolved a lot since the 16th century, it has become a fast-paced environment from technology and the Industrial Revolution. Many people do not have the time to sit down and read a four-page article, and the result of this has changed how our media presents their media. Articles are very quick and straight to the point, although they are very short, many readers skim through it because they may be multitasking. Readers can be scrolling through their social media while eating breakfast, on their way to work or another activity that doesn’t require their full attention. Even though the reader is trying to read
Dana Giola believes literature is a crucial part of life, especially for young adults. In her passage “Why Literature Matters” she describes that young Americans' interests have diminished for literature. She persuades her audience using ethos, logos, and cause-and-effect reasoning. Giola starts off her passage by describing the interest young Americans showed in arts which “actually diminished”(Giola 1) because of how they “taught reading comprehension”(Giola 2).
Dana Gioia creates a passage encouraging, influencing, and informing the reader of the recent literacy rate decline. He begins by verbalizing the problem, then moving to how it connects to business, then finally the decline affecting politics. Gioia uses evidence such as facts and quotes to support this idea and drive the thoughts into the reader’s head. These strategies, build his argument and assists with persuading the reader on how this decline will have a negative effect on society.
“Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore” (Carr 32). The internet has taken a personal toll on Carr, in which he cannot even look at a long piece of writing, because it has become so unfamiliar to him. He has become accustomed to the internet, and therefore replaces his passion of reading.
In “Why Literature Matters”, the Dana Gioia emphasizes the importance of literature. Using logos and pathos, he justifies his claim on how the waning interest in literature is affecting America’s society in many negative ways. In the sixth paragraph, he uses logos to appeal to the working class by referring to a poll in 2001 taken by the National Association of Manufacturers. The poll was taken on their members about the skill deficiencies among their workers.
By labeling the diminished percentage of those who read as “worrisome” and “troubling” Gioia is able to convey the negativity of the lack of literacy. Upon reading the article, and mulling over how Gioia feels about America’s current reading levels, a reader is inclined to acknowledge that illiteracy is detrimental to American society and something that needs
George Orwell’s “desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after” can also be seen through Ian Leslie’s strategies in his book, Curious. In the book, Leslie demonstrates excellent use of rhetorical strategies to convince his reader of his thesis that knowledge is the force which powers beneficial curiosity. Leslie even goes as far as to say that curiosity without any previous knowledge can be dangerous. Throughout the book, Ian Leslie attempts to push the world in the direction of his thoughts, and convince them that knowledge truly is the key to positive curiosity.
They also gain an understanding of that period in time, how people were treated during that period in time and what went on during that period of time. When reading a novel it is more enjoyable to read than reading a factual report or article. It has been proven that if you find something enjoyable you learn and understand the topic better and in more detail compared to if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing. From my own experiences I can relate to the evidence.
In this article “ Why literature matters” by Dana Gioia explains that American art has changed. It points out the fact that literary knowledge is declining. Some of the changes that were pointed out is that most people no longer read. His main purpose is to encourage people to begin to read again and that will help them improve their intellectual level. In the article Gioia expresses reasoning and includes evidence of the importance of reading.
Hidden Intellectualism In Hidden Intellectualism, Gerald Graff introduces the reader to his article with the comment that street smart students are being labelled nonintellectual by colleges and schools professors since they do poorly in academic work and their interest is centered into sports, magazines, and video games; nonetheless, these nonintellectual students seem more intellectual than those called themselves intellectual. As a first argument, the author claims that being interested in sport and novel reading more than school work readings could be another form of being intellectual. As a personal example, Graff writes “Until I entered college, I hated books and cared only for sports” (265).
People are getting used to reading online and now expect to have everything introduced as a short analysis. In the excerpt essay, according to Nicholas Carr, using the internet for reading and researching may affect
The Metamorphasis of Wisdom In his article, The Owl Has Flown, author Sven Birkerts suggests that knowledge has lost nearly all of its depth and reading has shifted from vertical to horizontal. The author supports this suggestion by providing the example of Menocchio, a 16th century man who nearly memorized the few books that he owned. He argues that the generations before the 17th century did not have access to the vast number of books that those of the future generations do. This allowed people of the past to take more time to analyze and make inferences about books.
For a long time the debates had been going about how was the better prime minister of Canada. On the the top of most lists of best prime ministers are Mackenzie King and Sir John A. Macdonald. For example, according to the Expert Survey that was made in 2013 “Laurier came first, Macdonald second, and King third, but the difference in their overall scores was negligible”. Both prime ministers had a strong vision of the country that helped shaped Canada to become the country it is today(in 2015). Thesis: Sir John A.Macdonald was one of the founding fathers, but William Lyon Mackenzie King had to lead the country through the part of Depression and WWII, and they both have made different positive contributions to Canada and are highly respected
Journal Entry #1: Why Read? In the essay, “Why Read?” the author illustrates the meaning of reading and the benefits reading brings through the roles readers may play. To begin, the first task of readers discussed in this piece is to preserve literature’s content.
According to this statement the readers can conclude that the main reason for reading concentration disturbance is the internet. In terms of the scientific research, the article provides the research by the British Library and U.K educational consortium which states “They found that people using the sites exhibited ‘a form of skimming activity,’ hopping from one source to another rarely returning to any source they’d already visitied” (Carr, 2008). From this statement we can understand that there are numbers of attractive information piled on one page, people have a hard time choosing which one to read, resulting them to skim and jump to one another. From these couple examples, it can be concluded that the author of this essay is strongly attempting to convince the readers in his idea of internet disturbing people’s concentration. However, the essay itself is extremely biased, because of the fact that there is no information about benefits of using the internet and reading online.
Carr (2008) declared, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of the words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (n.p.). Reading online has caused many people to develop the sense they need to read quickly and efficiently rather than slowly and completely. People have developed the skill of skimming through information without reading thoroughly and without understanding the information fully. Carr