Benjamin Barber's School Summary

Authors Benjamin Barber and Diane Ravitch write about America and how society is standing idle and failing to address the issue on education. Barber’s “America Skips
School” focuses on the cold - shoulder approach America takes towards its children’s education, while Ravitch’s “Back to Basics: Test Scores Don’t Lie” takes a different approach to the rebuff caused by peer pressure to specific races and sexes. Both essays present a common point of view by combining various nonfiction elements: the ignorance of our society shown through style, diction, and theme.
Barber implies the theme of ignorance through his style and unique point of view.
The diction of the short work is meant for educated p eople to read. While Barber fails to
In this combined passive connotation and euphemism, Ravitch’s e asy and conventional writing style evokes her readers to see the illiteracy issue as an excuse rather than a fact. Barber’s inflated diction also serves its purpose well. He demonstrates a more authoritative mindset than Ravitch. The inflated diction allow s him to sound higher and impressive, effectively commanding approval of his point in the reader’s mind. As both authors sing a common blame to society, they hold different points of views. Barber switches the blame of the children to the parents and gove rnment; his point is trite: monkey see, monkey do. Ravitch reaches out to a different audience through her style. Ravitch’s text contains nearly no inflated diction; this short work was obviously intended for a much lower reading
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level audience. The dictio n makes her more passive points stronger. Since Ravitch writes about how the issue is not the child’s but society’s way of viewing certain ethnicities and sexes, her work may reach out to these children.
This is smart: she effectively but passively gains t rust of her target audience.
B
oth authors combine the same elements of nonfiction writing to promote a
Student’s last name
Barber’s style includes writing longer sentences that use semicolons to join ideas and colons to add informa tion. Ravitch’s work contains a few quotes to mark slang terms and hyphens to primarily introduce her thoughts subjectively.
Creating a non
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exhaustive product and keeping a lower
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level language will certainly reach out to a younger audience who is vulnerab le to opinion and much more likely to agree. Ravitch’s essay aims at young girls, blacks, and Hispanics and the reasons they fair worse in school against young white males. Barber’s and Ravitch’s essays state the same thing: society controls society. If it
’s considered “un
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cool” to be a physicist, chances are there will be a low supply in that field. However, Ravitch’s essay does prove a point that girls, blacks, and Hispanics are frequently not found in higher paying jobs that demand a continued education
. Barber and Ravitch both effectively reach out to their target audiences. Through common but different styles, diction, and theme, both authors were able to create the same point of view and argue that society drives the nation’s youth. Both essays balanc e statistics and blend in their opinions to create highly
agreeable