Rhetorical Analysis

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Jonathan Kozol revealed the early period’s situation of education in American schools in his article Savage Inequalities. It seems like during that period, the inequality existed everywhere and no one had the ability to change it; however, Kozol tried his best to turn around this situation and keep track of all he saw. In the article, he used rhetorical strategies effectively to describe what he saw in that situation, such as pathos, logos and ethos. Kozol illustrated many examples effectively by showing the poor education and people’s unequal minds. He tried to persuade the audience to believe that the inequalities and education are savage. We can find the use of diction is effective here with an example “Robert Frost and Langston Hughes were ‘too advanced’ for children of this age” (55). He emphasized “too advanced” to express a feeling of absurdity. The poetry is the knowledge the students have to know and study; however, he regarded it as the ordinary knowledge and taught them with the Robert Frost and Langston Hughes’s poetry. Unfortunately, he was fired because of the “too advanced” knowledge. Here, he used the strategy revealed the poor education level vividly and for the school officials regarding that simple knowledge as not suitable for young students. It seems very ridiculous and frustrated for they could not accept the knowledge and fired the teacher. He used it here in order to let the audience believe that how insufficient knowledge the students were studying and it worked very effectively here. The second strategy he used is the diction as well. He illustrated, “In Boston, the press referred to areas like these as ‘death zones’—a specific reference to the rate of infant death in ghetto neighborhoods—but the feeling ... ... middle of paper ... ...he black one writing with a one-inch pencil stub. It was as the one was living in modern and the other was living in poverty. The inequality was shown by comparison with two girls and the author let the audience quietly believe the gap between white students and black students was big. According to the whole article, the author used the ethos at most for these were his real experience. He established powerful credibility. He showed many examples and the events he had experienced which could make the audience know directly with the education situation during that time and believe the ghetto people and the students were really poor. The uses of logos, pathos and ethos were a big success for each of them could let the readers understand the bad situation with the students and ghetto area’s people. From all over to everywhere did he show the savage inequalities existed.

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