A. Walzer-Prieto 1
FC English 100
Paper #1: Popular Culture and the Millennial Mind
Relevant Texts
Steven Johnson. Everything Bad is Good For You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter.
Kubey et. al. “Television Addiction is No Mere Metaphor.” Scientific American.
Christine Rosen. “The Age of Egocasting.” New Atlantis.
George Will. “Pathetic Americans and the Morons Who Watch Them.”
PROMPT
Write a 4-6 page paper (MLA Style) for an academic audience in which you make an argument of value in response to the question “to what extent is popular culture making us smarter?” To write your best paper you should:
1. analyze Johnson’s argument in Everything Bad is Good for Youidentifying all the parts of the argument, defining the significant terms, and explaining how the most significant pieces of support help to prove Johnson’s claim.
2. evaluate Johnson’s argument, identifying both it’s strengths and it’s weaknesses. Use ideas and examples from Kubey, Rosen and Will’s essays (as well as your own reasoning and experience) to support your evaluation.
3. make your own argument about the extent to which popular culture is making us smarter. Help illuminate the issue in a fresh way--in a way that none of the individual texts do alone. Reflect your clear understanding of all the texts up for discussion, including awareness of their logical strengths and weaknesses. Respond to the prompt question with insight, intelligence, and imagination.
First Draft (4-6 Typed Pages x 4 copies) due:______
Two Peer Responses (1-2 Typed Pages x 2 copies) due:______
Final Draft*(4-6 Typed Pages)due:______
*Please attach one copy of your First Draft to the back of your Final Draft, and attach a blank sheet of paper (for in-class handwritten reflection) and your “receipt” from WritingCentertutoring (if you have one) to the top of your packet. The receipt from tutoring should be on the very top and will count as extra credit.
How This Paper Relate to Our Course Theme
Our Course Theme is “The Writer’s Mind Wide Open.” In our first paper we are taking on this theme directly as we contemplate how popular culture is influencing our minds: is it opening them, shutting them down, or perhaps doing something altogether more complex? The focus of this paper is specifically on the mind of the Millennials, students like ourselves, who are being educated in America in the Post-9-11 era. The promptfor Paper #1 also challenges us to open our minds to multiple viewpoints of an issue, to draw conclusions which embrace the contradictions of these multiple viewpoints rather thanchoose among them. This paper asks us to do “both/and” thinking as opposed to merely picking a side and fighting for it.
How This Paper Relates to Our Unit Focus
Ourunit focus is “Considering Content & Audience: Thinking About What a Writer has to Say, to Whom and Why.” Essentially, we are focusing now on the content of argumentative and expository texts (as opposed to theform of these arguments). So our paper topic is also content-focused, asking that you contemplate an issue.
How This Paper Relates to Our Daily Group Work
You’ll be working toward the production of your paper with a group of about 4 other students. As a group, you will be given challenges to complete in class. As you complete each of these challenges, you and the members of your group will move toward deeper understanding of the texts up for discussion and move closer toward completingyour best papers. (At a certain point, you’ll be exchanging drafts of your papers with the members of your group and providing formal feedback to one another.) Each group challenge will build upon the previous one, so it’s important that every member of your group participate fully in every class challenge. The harder your group works, the better the results will be for each individual member. Your group goal is for every member of your group to hand in an outstandingpaper.