Part 4: Rhetorical Analysis
Wendy Berliner is an author of two books, an award-winning education Journalist and a joint CEO at the Education Media Centre. In the article “Schools Are Killing Curiosity: Why We Need To Stop Telling Children Shut Up And Learn”, Berliner intends to inform educators that curiosity plays a role in teaching children. Berliners article is structured to grab all types of readers attention and inform them. Within doing so, she uses images as well. The images used are meant to make the reader feel empathy and understand what it feels like. She also uses credible research from organizations to help support her point. Towards the ending of the article, Berliner uses an anecdote of her visit to Ilminster Avenue Nursery School. During her visit, children toys were replaced with everyday objects such as pots, pans, tin can, etc. The point of doing this was to test the children’s curiosity by having them use their imagination with these new objects. Parents and teachers then recognized the curiosity within the children rose.
Part 5: Quotables
“Reading, maths and behaviour were then checked in kindergarten (the first year of school), where they found that the most curious children performed best.” (Berliner 2 )
“When teachers teach young children not to ask questions, it is not surprising
that high-performing students studied by American researchers in 2013 were
found to be less curious, because they saw curiosity as a risk to their results.
The questions they asked were aimed at improving their results, whereas the
questions asked by more curious students were aimed at understanding a
topic more deeply.” (Berliner 3)
“How well they behave, and how they perform seem much more important to many people in the educational communities. Often education bureaucracies have shunted curiosity to the side.” (Berliner 3)
