Introduction
Despite my students' current economic standings, they are constantly exposed to and bombarded with propaganda and advertisement which have a common goal of persuading them to buy something. How is this relevant? "Children spend the majority of their days consuming mass media. On average, children spend four-and-a-half hours a day using television, video games and computers. Yet children are not provided with the tools needed to evaluate and analyze the media messages they see." (http://pbskids.org/dontbuyit/teachersguide.html) This unit will teach my students the importance of understanding their needs versus wants in a financial situation where there is a very limited amount of money and resources.
The area in which I teach is a housing project located on the south side of Chicago, Illinois and was built in 1945 to satisfy the needs of African American veterans returning from World War II. The residents are 97% African American and the area is surrounded by numerous manufacturing plants, former steel mills, waste dumps and landfills. The students in this area are families that are 99% low income, with quite a few coming from shelters in the surrounding areas.
This unit ties media's use of persuasion, which is undoubtedly part of their daily lives, and uses it to teach the art of rhetoric in persuasion. We will focus on various aspects of how persuasion is important. It will give students the opportunity to listen to, analyze, and write speeches and advertisements for various reasons and topics.
Rationale
In the urban communities in Chicago Public Schools, parents as well as the students have grown to have a common interest in what technologies are necessary in their households as well as their toy boxes. Things such as the latest gaming systems, electronic equipment, computers, cell phones, and accessories are found to be the norm in every household, yet the expenses are far beyond the household's spending capabilities.
There is an overwhelming population of students in my current area that are considered living below poverty levels yet deem the same things as being necessary as the middle and upper class citizens in surrounding areas. What they have yet to consider is what causes these commonalities. I want to teach my students that being persuasive is a very powerful skill that moves and shapes our desires.
Students need this exposure at a very young age because it is at this time that they are beginning to understand themselves and the feelings that impact them daily. This is also an important time to get students excited about learning and what they are capable of accomplishing through their own reading and interpretations. Of all the language arts, listening and speaking are those most often used on a daily basis at home, school and work or in the community.
This unit will allow me to address my student's weaknesses at this age because students need to build critical thinking and analytic skills which are important across the curriculum. With the use of dissecting the use of media the students will be able to distinguish between realism and fantasy, and consider what information is of value and what is not.
Tune into the Tone is unlike what I have ever seen being taught in the Second Grade Classroom. It is a new and innovative way of tying the curriculum and life skills together to aid the growth of the whole student as in holistic teaching. So often we, as teachers, stop short in our teaching of a curriculum by not elaborating on teachable moments and eliminating the use of outside resources and technology to build upon what we are required to teach.
My students are required and expected to be able to solve disputes amongst themselves at these age and it is important that they are equipped with the skills to persuade and understand that even emotions determine whether they will concede, change their mind, or do nothing at all. Through this study the student will be able to determine what makes people sway in decision making. What makes people angry? What calms them down? Students need to understand that in order for people to listen to them, they must show them that they are trustworthy.
In connection with this aspect of speeches the unit will bridge the gap in speaking in our learning environments. Most students are "talked at" and are not encouraged to be thinkers, but to be mere responders. So often we present a lesson and expect students to act as sponges as we pour out knowledge instead of allowing a transfer of thought and expression. This unit will address this problem by taking a look at speaking as a function. They will look at speech as having purpose and an intent purpose. This will also address some of the social downfalls of this urban community. As students study the elements that persuasive speech uses, they will be able to be persuasive and therefore able to use higher level thinking in their evaluation of things that they hear as well as that which they read.
Being persuasive is something that deserves a lot of practice and is definitely something that students at this age are able to do. They are able to understand and decipher an authors purpose and therefore able to write or create their own form of persuasive tactics given a specific purpose.
Background – How is Rhetoric used in Persuasion
Rhetoric exists to affect the giving of decisions ("Aristotle' Rhetoric", Book II, Chapter 1) Rhetoric is more commonly known as a style of speaking that is used to make the listener make a decision or take a certain action.
The information presented in the 2010 Yale National Seminar: Persuasion in Democratic Politics by Professor Bryan Garten, has proven to be an essential tool in understanding the persuasion strategies used in media today. The study of Socrates and Aristotle who were Greek Philosophers demonstrated very significant use of rhetoric in world history.
When considering the art of persuasion we must ask two preliminary questions: Who is your audience? Is your audience in a position to be persuaded? Second: Follow the five steps that Cicero recommended: 1. Consider ideas about all the possible ways to be persuasive in your given situation. When considering your ideas go through the three types of proof that Aristotle outlines: ethos, logos, and pathos:
Ethos: How can you make yourself seem like the kind of person that the audience can trust? When addressing this detail, as a speaker we must seem decent and be someone with good common sense judgment, and we must be reassuring that we are not acting out of our own self-interest. When I think of ethos I consider how when we listen to any political figure we consciously or subconsciously first desire to find this person to be trustworthy. We consider if this person has made good decisions in the past, do they stand for against our current views, and whether they present compelling evidence when necessary.
Logos: What argument or reason will work best in the situation? First, what is it that we want the audience to do? Consider this: make a certain judgment about something that happened in the past; feel a certain way about themselves in the present; or to do something in the future. Logos leads the listener to: (1) reach a judgment about something that happened in the past usually guilt or innocence, right or wrong (2) have a feeling about the present by describing the current moment, its importance, and how the position came to be (3) go into action by explaining what action should be, present the result of the action, and explain why the action would be good for the audience.
Pathos: What do you want to make the audience feel when you finish? Should they feel happy, sad, angry, proud, fear, hopeful, resolved, or brave? Pathos incites an emotion. If the presenter expects an angry crowd, one may convince the audience that they are being insulted or belittled to incite anger or a guilty verdict.
Aristotle states that we must understand the frame of mind with what persons, and on what grounds people grow angry, or grow into any emotions.
Arrangement: In what order should you put your different ideas? A general rule would go in the following order: 1 st ethos (establishing credibility) 2 nd logos (give reasons that appeal to them and that use the most appropriate criteria), 3 rd pathos (make them feel the rightness of your argument),
Style: What is the appropriate manner in presenting your information? Now that you have established credibility you must maintain credibility (ethos). Make sure that you are clear and well understood. Be sure to demonstrate your intelligence and good taste.
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