Unit 1 Reflection

Unit 1 Reflection Blog Post

Marlene Lawston

The academic style of writing has a number of components. One component involves the structure of the writing piece; in an academic style essay there must be an introductory paragraph, body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. A second component is academic tone, which is formal and succinct. These two components of academic writing have been taught to us [students] starting at a young age.  In WRT 105, my understanding of academic writing style was improved as we were introduced to two new components of academic writing, the ideas of abstract thought and referencing the literature of other authors. Abstract thought is the newest component of academic writing. With this component, the topics that are written about are often nonconcrete and complex, requiring us to form theories and claims instead of simply agreeing or disagreeing with an idea or a piece of literature. This is more challenging because it requires a thorough understanding of the topic at hand and it goes against human instinct, which is to immediately “take a side.”  Referencing literature was also an important component that we previously had brief exposure to. This component, however, was important for this assignment because it was useful as evidence to support our claims and it demonstrated a thorough comprehension of the literature from class.

In addition to academic writing, we blogged. This type of writing was new to me because it has different conventions than academic writing. For example, in academic writing, the authors typically write in the third person to hold a formal tone while in blogging, it is very common for the author to write in the first person and colloquially. Also, blogging does not require the writing structure that academic writing does and authors have more freedom when it comes to structuring their piece.

            In March 2015, I attended the three day National Youth Service-Learning conference in Washington DC with fellow volunteers from Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital. A major theme of this conference was “Education Inequity.” All of the students in my group were from fairly affluent areas and went to good high schools such as Niskayuna, Bethlehem and Shaker. When students and teachers from all over the Nation spoke at the conference about the negative impact of students sitting in a classroom and being lectured to all day, we did not really understand what they were talking about because we had always viewed education as liberating, not oppressive and discouraging to the student. This is why The Banking System of Education and Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work stood out to me as we progressed through the unit. They both included numerous impactful quotations that were important in shaping my claim such as in Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, when the teacher of “working class” students said “Simple punctuation is all they'll ever use.”  These two pieces of literature completely changed the way I view the education system. Before, I did not realize the complexity of the issue; I thought it was simple, as long as an individual could stay in school and receive an education, they had a high chance of being successful in life. I thought that the main obstacles they would encounter would be outside of school and that education could only benefit them. When I read about how the banking system of education can in fact be oppressive and how the type of education children receive is based directly on the circumstances of their birth, I realized that my point of view on the education system was skewed.  This is when I had the idea to incorporate into my claim that the “American Dream” is not attainable for some because education opportunities are very unequal across the United States, and even when there is access to education, it can be discouraging to the student and turn them away from the path to the American Dream.