For short assignment three I edited Mark Bauerlein’s post “Society is Dumbing Down” from The Chronicle of Higher Education. According to the content provided about the piece, Bauerlein is no stranger to the critique of higher education, in fact, he often writes about just that. His posts concerting the matter can be found archived at this link http://chronicle.com/blogAuthor/Brainstorm/3/33/Mark-Bauerlein/77/.
I was pleasantly surprised at my ease while editing this post. At my first read however, I did find it lacking in clarity and the statistics stated by Bauerlein felt forced, and almost awkwardly composed within the post. It also felt somewhat aggressive towards the modern man, quite literally saying that the majority of people have been dumbed down. But as discussed by the James Macdonald piece “Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation,” critical discourse is necessary in order for people to reevaluate and learn from their mistakes.
In my edit I paid a lot of attention to the general flow of the piece, that is, I felt it necessary to add certain lee ways into the otherwise spewing out of facts. For example, one of Bauerlein’s statistics said that “Around 60 percent of e-journal users view no more than three pages and a majority (up to 65 percent) never return.” I felt that was a very important fact, but in the interest of the assumedly less engaged reader, I decided to add some context in order to make this fact’s significance read better, therefore, my inclusion of this statistic was as follows: “Although the internet does allow for users to have a much higher access to different sources, typically this “access” is dwindled down to new forms of “reading,” wherein “users ‘power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts, going for quick wins.” The Internet generation has been given far more accessibly but it is almost negated by the tendency of millennial to seek instant gratification, rather than to patiently read on the Internet.
Rebekah Jones’ piece “Finding The Good Argument OR Why Bother with Logic,” talks about how in a typical argument meant for mass consumption, “what is often missing from these discussions is research, consideration of multiple vantage points, and, quite often, basic logic.” I believe that the Bauerlein blog post does most of this effectively, but that does not mean that there isn’t room for editing improvement. Another element that I considered while editing this piece was its categorization as a human-interest piece. Humans, without a doubt, are interested in themselves; therefore this post has an inherent applicability when it comes to this concept. However applicable it may be, Bauerlein’s post did not seem to be composed with the intent to fall within this genre. But as discussed in the Killingsworth piece “Scientific Discourse in the News Media, “the human interest approach goes against the grain of scientific research.” It is possible that by limiting his discussion of why “society is down” to include only the necessary facts, Bauerlein was attempting to preserve this staple of scientific discourse. But I, as an editor, found myself reconsidering this.
I found editing this piece interesting and very rewarding but on a side note- I was unable to affectively access Word’s Track Changes, therefore these were not included in my edit and for this I apologize sincerely.
Works Cited:
Bauerlein, Mark. “‘Society is Dumbing Down’.” Brainstorm. The Chronicle of Higher Education (13 Feb 2008): Weblog. http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/society-is-dumbing-down/5698.
Jones, Rebecca. Finding the Good Argument OR Why Bother With Logic?
Killingsworth, Jimmie, and Jaqueline S. Palmer. "Scientific Discourse in the News Media." Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America
Macdonalds, James. "Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation,."
I was pleasantly surprised at my ease while editing this post. At my first read however, I did find it lacking in clarity and the statistics stated by Bauerlein felt forced, and almost awkwardly composed within the post. It also felt somewhat aggressive towards the modern man, quite literally saying that the majority of people have been dumbed down. But as discussed by the James Macdonald piece “Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation,” critical discourse is necessary in order for people to reevaluate and learn from their mistakes.
In my edit I paid a lot of attention to the general flow of the piece, that is, I felt it necessary to add certain lee ways into the otherwise spewing out of facts. For example, one of Bauerlein’s statistics said that “Around 60 percent of e-journal users view no more than three pages and a majority (up to 65 percent) never return.” I felt that was a very important fact, but in the interest of the assumedly less engaged reader, I decided to add some context in order to make this fact’s significance read better, therefore, my inclusion of this statistic was as follows: “Although the internet does allow for users to have a much higher access to different sources, typically this “access” is dwindled down to new forms of “reading,” wherein “users ‘power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts, going for quick wins.” The Internet generation has been given far more accessibly but it is almost negated by the tendency of millennial to seek instant gratification, rather than to patiently read on the Internet.
Rebekah Jones’ piece “Finding The Good Argument OR Why Bother with Logic,” talks about how in a typical argument meant for mass consumption, “what is often missing from these discussions is research, consideration of multiple vantage points, and, quite often, basic logic.” I believe that the Bauerlein blog post does most of this effectively, but that does not mean that there isn’t room for editing improvement. Another element that I considered while editing this piece was its categorization as a human-interest piece. Humans, without a doubt, are interested in themselves; therefore this post has an inherent applicability when it comes to this concept. However applicable it may be, Bauerlein’s post did not seem to be composed with the intent to fall within this genre. But as discussed in the Killingsworth piece “Scientific Discourse in the News Media, “the human interest approach goes against the grain of scientific research.” It is possible that by limiting his discussion of why “society is down” to include only the necessary facts, Bauerlein was attempting to preserve this staple of scientific discourse. But I, as an editor, found myself reconsidering this.
I found editing this piece interesting and very rewarding but on a side note- I was unable to affectively access Word’s Track Changes, therefore these were not included in my edit and for this I apologize sincerely.
Works Cited:
Bauerlein, Mark. “‘Society is Dumbing Down’.” Brainstorm. The Chronicle of Higher Education (13 Feb 2008): Weblog. http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/society-is-dumbing-down/5698.
Jones, Rebecca. Finding the Good Argument OR Why Bother With Logic?
Killingsworth, Jimmie, and Jaqueline S. Palmer. "Scientific Discourse in the News Media." Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America
Macdonalds, James. "Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation,."
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