A Wrestling Mom

Blakely makes several arguments in her piece. Her main one is about the bond of love people share and how a relationship changes as the people change. Another is words and language and how they matter no matter what way we use them. Blakely uses her own experiences with her son to build her argument as well as her ethos and pathos. She explains how their relationship changed as her son was in his senior year of high school, and uses stories about her son to build each topic she comes in contact with. 

SWA#5

Goodman’s main claim in “Womb For Rent-For a Price” is that the new technology that makes surrogacy possible is unethical and becoming more of a marketable attribute for young women.  She expands on that in society it is becoming more and more acceptable for women to carry other people’s offspring for them.  She brings up the subject of women in third world countries carrying children for people is bringing out a global “baby-making” industry. 

Goodman appeals to pathos by incorporating two stories about the surrogate mothers.  She explains that the money that the women receive, $5,000 to $7,000 a birth, is almost 10 years worth of wages that the same woman would earn at their normal job crushing glass in a factory for $25 a month.  One woman she explains used the money to fund her son’s heart operation, while another raised her daughters wedding dowry.  She also explains that she does not make light of the infertile couples that want children but is more explaining the surrogate mothers view of the child they carry, and the views they have when the child is not even partly theirs. 

I decided to answer the question on kairos.  I believe that Goodman was motivated to write this particular piece as a response to the increase in popularity of surrogacy. She focuses mostly on the surrogate mothers and where they live in third world countries.  She also explains that some of the women are illiterate and instead of signing their name they use a fingerprint.  This makes me feel that she is only pointing out the dark side of surrogacy. Some families turn to surrogacy, as a last resort as she said, but continues to say that the surrogate mothers believe that the child they are carrying is not theirs because it has none of their DNA. 

I feel that Goodman made a problematic point when she said that surrogacy comes close to selling ourselves into slavery or just selling our children.  On one end the surrogate mothers are giving people who want children their desire and they are compensated through a contractual agreement.  In no way is that near slavery.  It is a woman’s decision if she wants to become a surrogate mother, and each woman has different circumstances for choosing surrogacy no matter what color their skin. 

Catherine Beecher

After shortly researching Catherine Beecher, I found that she was raised in the period of the "cult of domesticity". She was educated until the age of 10 and taught herself the other subjects that she could not learn in her schooling.  By 1824 she believed that her mission was "to find happiness in living to do good".  She opened her first private school for young ladies in Connecticut. She went with her father and helped start up the Western Female Institute in Cincinnati.  She is recognized as a promoter for the higher education of women, and was a teacher, lecturer, and writer.  She wrote on the subjects of education, domestic economy, and women's health.
With her growing up in this time it is easy to see that in her writing in the Carolina Reader is a bit biased based on the time she was writing it.  It is aimed towards young women who are supposed to be starting families and taking care of their households. While today women of her targeted age group are in school and college.

SWA#4

In Catherine Beecher’s “On Preservation Of A Good Temper In A Housekeeper” she depicts a ‘housekeeper’ as a woman who is “habitually gentle, sympathizing, forbearing and cheerful” so that she makes it easier for the staff under her to do the right things without the constant fear of reprimands. The housekeeper should always strive to have an “equable and cheerful temper” so as not to make her household a somber shade in the minds around her.

            The consideration Beecher gives the women of households is to approach their duties as dignified, important, and difficult. She says to look at it as if destinies of those generations after hers will be affected by any decision she makes, and to approach problems as if that were true always. A housekeeper should also feel that her duties are difficult to meet and overcome so that she never underestimates her duties.  The third is that a housekeeper should always expect her best laid plans to be interfered with. She should always expect that something will go wrong and that she should keep “her mind girt” so that she can “meet such collisions with a cheerful and quiet spirit.” A housekeeper should form all plans and arrangements in consistency with those around her.  She should be able to know her limits so that she would not embarrass herself and her family and not wind up disappointed.  An important one was that system, economy, and neatness are valuable.  Such that children should be brought up in an environment where they can “learn to meet the crosses of life with patience and cheerfulness.” Lastly was that a housekeeper should refrain from using angry tones of voice. A calm voice with determination will get a better response then those that use angry tones to get prompt obedience.

            When Beecher refers to a ‘Mistress’ this normally refers to a larger household with staff, with the mistress as the mother of the children.  Also when she says such things as ‘family state’ or ‘domestics’ I believe she is talking about a larger family with a staff beneath the mother. In these cases the housekeeper is depicted as a helper instead of the woman of the household.  

SWA#3

In the interview “Am I My Brother’s Keeper” Elie Wiesel places a lot of his responses on his definitions of certain words and phrases.   For him the definition of knowledge is different from just information.  He says that we know too much and then says that we are informed of to many things.  It is not that we actually know too much of anything, but we are in a world where information is just a few keystrokes away.  We have the ability to gather information in seconds, but the difference between knowing and being informed is completely different.  Wiesel says, “Whether information is transformed into knowledge is a different story.”  If we take the overload of information and find something that we can stand for and that we can educate ourselves on through research of the topic, exposure to the topic, or simply finding a way to immerse ourselves in that ‘something’, then we will have transformed some simple ‘information’ into ‘knowledge’. 

Responsibility is another word Wiesel puts some stress on.  He says that it is up to us as ‘brothers’ and sisters to take the information given to us about things going wrong in the world, whether from natural disasters, civil wars, terrorist acts, etc. and make them our responsibility.  He says that in this world, we are either brothers or we are strangers.  To me it would be impossible to leave a brother or sister in need of something that I can give.  He says that because he has that knowledge then he “must keep [his] brother.”  With a world again where information is given to us in tons, we should be able to look for our ‘brothers’ whether it is a friend in need, a person at our school who may need help of some kind, or a family in Africa, we should strive to keep our brothers and sisters. 

Presence was significantly related to responsibility in my views, because Wiesel says that he “urges his students to be present when someone is in need of a human presence.”  Again it falls under our responsibility as compassionate human beings to strive to be the presence people fall on when they are suffering.  I agree with his statement that when you suffer, you need a presence, because when a time of suffering is there, knowing that you are not alone and have someone there willing to take the responsibility to be there with you makes a difference beyond compare.  

SWA#2

The quote Richtel uses from his text, “technology is rewiring our brains” means just that. In today’s society, the majority of the population has become dependent on technology, whether it is a ‘Smartphone’, a laptop computer, a PC tablet, or any kind of electronic device. With technology surrounding us many people believe they have become a ‘multitasker’, which is making them more productive and able to do more things that before technology they were unable to.  But in actuality “heavy multitaskers have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information.” Studies showed that people who believed they were multitaskers were more likely to have a lack of focus and were unable to keep a train of thought.  But the brain is made to be constantly rewired and is always changing.  The brain doesn’t stop developing after childhood it is continually changing to suit the needs of each individual person, which Richtel goes into more detail with his ‘Myth of Multitasking’.

According to Richtel his myth of multitasking is just that, a myth.  People begin to link multiple trains of thought with the ability to multitask, when to me that is just someone say they may or may not have an attention deficient disorder whether it is mild or indeed a case of ADD.  Richtel included some studies of people who were classified as multitaskers and people who were not classified as multitaskers and were put through the same tests.  Those people who were classified as multitaskers showed that they had more trouble filtering out irrelevant information, than those who were not multitaskers.  My views of multitasker are that people who believe they can multitask may just have a mild case of ADD.  I say this as a person who used to think I was a multitasker, but realized I was the farthest from it.  When I start something, something else either distracts me or I isolate myself to make sure I get it done. Which means I have to put my cell phone on silent or turn it off, I have to turn off the internet on my computer, and normally close myself off so that I can indeed get the things done that I need to. 

Richtel does a good job with the Campbell family as a way to connect with his readers, because each person can relate to at least one person in the family.  Either the young adult/teen who is always texting and getting distracted because of the social media, the father/worker who is always distracted by work emails or news, the mother who wants everyone to dislocate from the technology, or the little girl who is just getting introduced to the wonder of technology and has already become somewhat dependent.  It drives the importance in that this is happening to everyone not just one family, and that it is an issue that is relevant in today’s age. 

Reading Response

In "Is Google Making Us Stupid" Nicholas Carr argues the point that in an era where information is as easy to obtain as typing words into a search engine, we have become incapable of focusing like we used to before computers became a household object.  Jamais Cascio argues the other view in "Get Smarter" that instead of Google and the Internet making us 'stupid' it is make us smarter.
Carr and Cascio both argue that our way of thinking is forever changing whether for 'getting smarter' or becoming 'stupid'.  It is true that in today's world the way people are thinking is always changing.  The older generations were used to going through libraries and card catalogs to find information on what they needed to know, but now we simply type in what we need to look up and Ta Da on our screen are thousands of different sources that have the exact answer that we need.
 Though I personally do not believe Google is making us 'stupid' I am able to see where Carr gets his idea for his side of the argument.  Instead of being able to research and truly read a source we merely skim and pick out what we want for our specific needs. Though I don't feel as if it is making us 'stupid', I feel it is making us lazy and dependent on a source that works all to well.  But I can also see Cascio's point of view as well.  I do not feel as if access to everything on the web is dumbing us down, but giving us a resource that has infinite ways of giving us what we need.  In a way it is making us smarter. We can look up random facts and from then on we know something we did not know before.  All in all, I agree with both articles and see them both as valid points of the same argument.