I want to make my assignment a letter because even though a speech is more of you speaking out to more people I feel a letter is more direct. My intended audience for this letter are the adults and parents in Caribbean and Brown households and it is from the young adults and teens of these families. The main point I want to get across is the premise of these adults trying to talk more. It is the main problem that I see and deal with is that most of these adults rather scold their kids and set standards rather than talk to them. I do believe that this is a serious issue when it comes to the youth making choices and how they will proceed in life. I know many people who only go to college to please their parents so they don’t look like a “waste” and I would like to see this issue spoken directly to these adults.
To back up the main point of getting these adults to talk more is the excuse I always hear is that “They weren’t raised to talk like that”. Which to me is just another way to avoid talking more about your feelings. In many instances, I can see that some parents force some of their kids to do something that they don’t really want to strive for or be happy doing. Instead of talking to their children they just instill these goals for them. A majority of men in these families or just men in general don’t like talking about there feelings or wanting to get to emotional but that’s just what I want to also focus on fixing. Emotions like many things are part of life and I want to hammer in that point that it is okay to want to talk. Also that everyone understands its hard to not not want to talk but its about trying and I want to expand upon that in my letter.
Sean, You have a great topic. I think it needs a little bit of focusing or clarifying. Do you just want to talk about the college expectation? Or are you addressing this community of elders to show them that the way they relate to the younger generation is not working for this time and place and actually preventing them from accomplishing what they want? Or are you saying that there is a set of expectations (values and beliefs, which you would have to state explicitly) that the older generation imposes on the younger one that does not work for this time and place?
Then, depending on what you are discussing, you need to work on clearly showing why this is a problem and how this problem works. You also need to motivate your audience to change–in other words what is in it for them?