Part 4: Rhetorical analysis
The author of the featured article,”’ Schools are killing curiosity’: why we need to stop telling children to shut up and learn, is Wendy Berliner. What we know about Berlinder is that she won an award-winning journalist and joint CEO of the Education Media Centre. She wrote many other articles such as “Proposed tests for reception children ‘verging on the immoral’ and more. The organization or newspaper magazine source is a reliable source because it is the most trusted by its readers among UK newspapers and, The Guardian was also rated the most trustworthy online UK newspaper brand – ranked as such by 73% of regular readers. The primary audience I would say for this article is the educators along with the general audience. This article is an informative writing piece because it teaches us or tells us how schools are teaching students without making any changes in the education system. This of course might not remain true today since in the article we see changes happening in some schools. The author uses logos in this article by using research from scientists to show the facts behind her reasons, pathos by describing the scene about the ninth grade who raised her hand to ask a question, and, ethos by showing her opinion in a way of what she thinks about schools killing curiosity by ending the article with a quote from a professor/researcher.
Part 5: Notable Quotables
“In one lesson she observed, a ninth grader raised her hand to ask if there were any places in the world where no one made art. The teacher stopped her mid-sentence with, “Zoe, no questions now, please; it’s time for learning.” (Berliner)
“Children should be prompted and encouraged to ask questions even though that can be challenging for the teacher,” he says. “We do need to find some time for questions during the day. There is not enough time in schools for creativity and following up on curiosity” (Paul Howard Jones)
“Research from Susan Engel, author of The Hungry Mind and a leading international authority on curiosity in children, finds questioning drops like a stone once children start school. When her team logged classroom questions, she found the youngest children in an American suburban elementary school asked between two and five questions in a two-hour period. Even worse, as they got older the children gave up asking altogether.” (Berliner)
