Valedictiorians / Resistance to Civil Government

English 11 - Today, we continued to work with Henry David Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government.  We spent a good portion of the time closely examining a few passages so we could really get a good grasp on the ideas that Thoreau was putting out there.  Thoreau argues that governments do not physically exist and are instead just a set of traditions people agree to follow.  In other words, the reason we don't steal is not because there is a law that will punish us, but because as a group we do not steal and we designate people to punish those who do.  If laws only work so far as people follow them, then Thoreau points out that we can get rid of laws we do not agree with by simply refusing to follow them and then accepting the consequences.  If enough people choose not to follow or enforce the laws on principle, then the law will no longer function.  Thoreau puts this logic into action by not paying his taxes so that he is not forced to pay for the Mexican American War or the slave rebellions that were put down in his time.  I really enjoy this reading and I find that some of Thoreau's ideas can be really helpful in understanding how classroom activities operate.  To be honest, my classroom functions only to the point that we all decide to do the activities and follow the rules.  Everyone needs to see that what we do is in their best interest, otherwise the activities we do or the rules we set fall apart.

Here is a video of famous actor Mark Ruffalo reading Thoreau's essay:



AP - We opened up class by working with "Best in Class" by Margaret Talbot applied some of our rhetorical analysis to it (categorizing and describing the argument, identifying appeals to ethos and pathos).  Talbot's essay is one of the many we have been reading lately on education.  Talbot looks at the controversy surrounding valedictorians and the intense number-crunching law-suit heavy culture that has sprung up around it.  She explores our options - should we leave the valedictorian award the way it is, reform it, or just remove it?  We spent the rest of class analyzing, talking, and writing about the rhetoric of speakers during the current Democratic and Republican National Conventions.  I was really happy with the level of analysis that I saw students doing and their descriptions of the messages speakers were trying to make and the types of appeals they made to sell their messages to the audience.  I, at times, noticed the level of polished analysis that I would expect from an article in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or New Yorker.  We definitely seem to be making some good progress.  Here are links to the two speeches we spent time working with: