Ashley Currie
Robert LaBarge
ENG 102
25 January 2013
In the new college textbook coming out the first two
chapters are about arguments. Chapter one is “Well-made Arguments” and chapter
two is titled “Poorly made Arguments”. One of the articles chosen for this book
is “Where have all the good Men gone?” In helping the editor I will place the arguments
within the article into one of these two chapters. This article is from a
reliable research. It is believe that this article has well-made arguments and
poorly made arguments.
Starting with the first chapter of well-made arguments pre-adulthood
will be in there. “Pre-adults don't know what is supposed to come next” (Hymowitz).
There is nothing to argue about in this statement because it is the truth. This
argument is well put together. Yes, adolescents know what to expect next whether
it be college, get a job, and move out there parents or any of those in
combination. But what about the stage after that and before one is
considered an adult; Pre-adult. After college, starting your career is usually
next. What if one does not know what his career path is? What is he to do? There
is no guidance for this. So, yes pre-adults don’t know what’s coming next.
Also in the same chapter would go what makes men so
childish. The answer along with evidence is media. It offers no help when grown
men are in movies acting like teenager. One movie that proves it is ‘Ted’ how
many grown men does one knows that sit and talks to a teddy bear likes is their
best friend and dink and smoking/doing drugs all day at a dead end job; not
many. Talking let alone having a best friend that is a teddy bear is childish.
And there are much better choices than doing drugs one choice would to find a
job with growth potential. This would be a step in the right direction to
becoming a man. This argument is well made and provides no fallacies.
On the contrary there are some arguments in this article that
should be put in the poorly made argument chapter. A perfect night for a guy in his 20s is said
to be “hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip
to Vegas with his college friends.” Considering the author of this
article is a women she has made an over generalization of the guy population.
Most guys in their 20s would not see this as a perfect night but as a downtime
activity (guy floor mate). A guy might say the perfect night is going out to
pick up girls. As a women author she can offer very little insight into the men
culture. It also comes off as a little bias.
Another argument in this chapter could be focused on
women to not just men. One of the most bias arguments in here would be that
women get tired of having to deal with men and having children so they just go
to the sperm bank. This argument seems harsh and a waste of space. As if the
author ran out of reasons why men suck. It also lacks fair appeal to logic. I
would not consider this a good argument.
In General one
could say most of this article belongs in chapter two: Poorly made arguments
but for the books sake a few good ones were spotted. A way to improve these
arguments would to provide more evidence why guys are yet to be in the men
category on life rather than picking at the useless and debatable facts. A
little less use of abrasive and dismissive tone would be helpful and to not
fall into the fallacies of arguments to prove a point. Altogether a couple of good arguments were
made against men but the question was never answered. Where have all the good
Men gone?
In your paper you talk about the chapters in the book that tell you what is a ‘good’ argument and what is a ‘bad’ argument. I like that you put that in there because it tells your readers what you are using to make judgments on the article. You tell the readers about the chapters but not a lot about the article that you are writing about. It would help your readers for if you were to write a quick summery of the article, to give the readers an idea of what the subject of your writing is going to be about and then diverge off from that throughout your paper as you did. In your writing you quoted the author and you also talked about how the author fell into fallacies to prove a point. Expanding on what type of fallacy the author used like “Red herring” or “slippery slope” fallacies. By talking about what the fallacy is and how the author is using it will strengthen your argument.
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