The common ingredient that I find in all the writing I admire ... is something that I shall reluctantly call the rhetorical stance, a stance which depends on discovering and maintaining in any writing situation a proper balance among the three elements that are at work in any communicative effort: the available argument about the subject itself, the interests and peculiarities of the audience, and the voice, the implied character of the speaker. I should like to suggest that it is this balance, this rhetorical stance, difficult as it is to describe, that is our main goal.

We have been reading and discussing many education topics for the last few weeks. Re-read the introduction for the Education section in your book. You might also want to review what you have written so far.

Some of the questions raised by the reading selections in IDEAS.

• Should colleges and universities serve to pass on to students the great traditions and values of Western culture?

• Do colleges and universities need to change to accommodate students once excluded from the university?

• Should colleges and universities emphasize a unified view of culture and the commonalities among people, or should they emphasize people's differences?

• What is (or should be) the relationship between the college/university and society?

• In what ways is knowledge acquired, passed on, or made in college/university? Are some better than others?

If you haven't already done so, take a look at the questions in your text after the articles for even more possibilities.

• A question worth answering:
• An audience who could possibly care:

You may use the above questions as starting places to focus your paper, or you may wish to develop your own question based on the articles in the Education section is IDEAS, for a focus and try to answer it. Use 2-3 sources from the readings we have discussed as a class. Outside research is not only unnecessary, but also not called for in this assignment because you are asked to use the texts we have read together for the class. The material we have covered is sufficient for the assignment, and in fact, using more than two sources will likely cause too broad a focus for your discussion.

The final draft should be 5 pages minimum (double spaced, MLA format with a Works Cited page, not included in the final pagination).

The following dues dates are to help facilitate working with partners. Writers should complete each workshop:

• Feb 6: Rough draft (min 3 pages) for development
• Feb 11: Workshop dev and organization
• Feb 13: Editing workshop
• Feb 20: Final Due, published on mahara with timed writing, first draft, final draft and self-evaluation.

I do not accept drafts or final papers in email, so if you have a question about an area of your paper that might be giving you a headache, please upload a draft to a page on mahara and notify me by posting your question to the comment area on the page.

Follow up questions, as usual, can be posted to the FAQ forum on mahara.

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