Taiesha Edwards
Draft 3
Ever get that feeling when something bad happens to the hero out of everyone in the whole movie? When you thought the hero would get back up and be alright but he/she didn’t and the movie ended? That heart throbbing feeling is exactly what I felt when I heard about the Sandy Hook School shooting. It was emotional for everyone, for people that did not even live in Connecticut or for anyone who had any relation to the school itself. To hear that tons of innocent children and teachers died while at school was devastating. School was thought of to be the safest place for children, but now who can agree to that? This tragedy has opened the eyes of many, such as an author from the Connecticut Post named Bruce Morris. In his editorial, “Mental Health Support Key To Problem” Bruce describes the well known tragic mass murder that happened in Newtown, Connecticut. Bruce also tries to get to bottom of how to prevent this from occurring again.The author’s argument is that the shooting occurred because of many possible reasons such as teachers and parents not being trained enough to identify mental health problems with kids,not enough funding for awareness programs and tighten gun regulations laws. His main thesis is that people do not have enough access to mental health care. Many of these reasons may be true, but the way he wrote this editorial angered me because I, being a reader wasn’t sure what action I was supposed to take. His argument is not valid because it is informative rather than having an actual argument within it. Although the author provides ideas that boost his credibility his argument is full of fallacies and therefore confuses the audience.
This first fallacy that Bruce produces is hasty generalization. This quote states, “about 60 percent of children and adolescents have untreated mental health problems is a sure recipe for future tragedies and an unproductive future..”,which contains a fallacy of hasty generalization because the author is saying that most people with mental health problems will be subjected to creating chaos, when many people who have mental health problems and are very successful. Although he addresses a valid reason for the school shootings,” that people do not pay enough attention to their children and their health problems” he mentions some generalization in his wording, which would probably get a negative effect from the reader.
Readers gain negative feelings towards a piece of work when it is biased, commits fallacies and is not straightforward. Throughout the editorial the author makes the reader question his credibility because he doesn’t get straight to the point . First he provides the uncited quote “about 60 percent...”, but then regains some of his credibility when he sees the other side of the problem, which is maybe parents and teachers are not trained or educated enough to notice that kids could have mental disorders. However, his credibility is shot down yet again when he gives us almost useless information. First he gives us a conflict: the sandy hook incident, a solution: invent programs to help teachers and parents identify kids with mental health problems and to shoot down the solution: “President Barack Obama wants to allocate $15 million for training for teachers and other adults to detect and respond to mental illness in children and young adults, but frankly the federal funding split among 50 states is not going to be enough and Connecticut will have to consider doing more.” This confuses the audience because now the reader is like well what are we suppose to do then?
As some readers can tell, Bruce is all over the place. He also mentions the gun regulations should be more strict. The author then touches on the topic of not being able to access health care and if you do have health insurance, it does not mean that you will get the proper care. This seems to be resorting to a refutation strategy because he was seeing the opposing side and counteracting it. Using this tactic makes someone’s piece of work, predictable and too “perfect”. Since Bruce counteracts all of the possible arguments against his own that it seems as if he was trying to create the perfect essay, which destroyed the main points of his paper. In this editorial it says all the solutions of how we can prevent these certain crimes, there is no arguing in that but so what? Now that I’m very informed of the situation and have been given some solutions that have been either shot down or not fully shed a light on by the public eye, what was the purpose of this editorial?
What have you read so far? A situation that pulled on emotions and a disappointing editorial that seemed to have gotten no where but stating the problems and solutions but not telling us what to do next, should we take action? stand by? This editorial needs more convincing language because I felt as if I just read a report about the situation. He should have not to rely on this Sandy Hook situation to draw in readers and expect them to agree with whatever he says.
~Yes i have to add more .-.
0 comments:
Post a Comment