Then, in your notes, write out your best answer to your overall group assignment, saying either that you can't figure it out (and what you do think), or that Pollack did or didn't prove his claim against Keenan. Thus, your answer can take one of three forms:
AFTER you've done that, go to your assigned discussion and read all the existing posts.
First, without reading any other comments, paste in your prewritten analysis as a new post in that thread.
Second, then read all the other posts in the thread (you may have to come back later to do this), making notes as you go whenever an analysis differs from yours. Note down whenever someone disagrees with something you said, or mentions a detail you didn't include, or a logical implication you didn't notice, or leaves out something you think is an important detail, or makes what you see as a logical error. You don't have to note down dozens of details, but you should try to note down at least the most significant four, or five points, or at least what you can find.
THEN, decide if you're going to stand or fold. If you decide that your original analysis (which still gets 5 points) was wrong, you then add a comment to your original post in which you explain how and why you changed your mind. Or, if you still think you were right, make a comment on someone else's post politely ask a pertinent question, or otherwise make a comment that you think gently nudges the other poster in the correct direction.
Okay, here's your starting analysis question:
Your Overall Group Assignment: Determine through cooperative work and group discussion whether or not Pollak proves that Keenan said anything that isn't true about Ryan's views. |
You should treat this as if it were a mathematics problem. There is a right answer, and you have to figure it out before you start writing down your answer. If a teacher asks you "what is two-plus-two" and you feel very strongly that the answer is "seven," you would still be wrong to give "seven" as your answer to "what is two-plus-two." Similarly, there is a right answer to the question posed above, this answer can be determined by examining Keenan's writing, Pollak's writing and any other relevant evidence. If you base your answer on what you feel to be true instead of the evidence, you will very probably get it wrong and get zero points for this assignment.
There are certain things you absolutely must do in your paper.
After grading a couple of responses to this prompt, I realized that there are a couple of problems that need to be very specifically addressed, so I created these very specific rules to specifically direct you to do those exact things. So here is a list of things you absolutely must do in your paper.
1. Base your account of what Keenan says entirely on the actual text of Keenan's article. If Pollak says that Keenan says something, or implies that Keenan says something, do not just take his word for it, but go to Keenan's article, read it carefully, and determine for yourself whether Keenan actually says what Pollak says or implies that she says. If the words are not in Keenan's article, don't say that the words are in Keenan's article. If the words are in Keenan's article, you will be able to quote these (Keenan's) exact words in your paper. If you can't quote Keenan actually saying that Ryan has extreme views, your paper should state that she didn't say that. (If you quote from Pollak's article to document what Keenan said, you need to consult a dictionary about the definition of the word "say.")
2. Don't let Pollak (or Keenan) do your thinking for you. Think independently. If Pollak says that Keenan implies, suggests, or makes it seem that something that some false thing that she did not say is true, you should go to Keenan's article and see if there is actually anything there that, in and of itself makes it seem that this false thing that keenan didn't say is true. Remember that the answer to this question is not determined by what Pollak thinks. You have to look at the things Keenan says, and think about what a reasonably intelligent person, fluent in English, who hasn't read Pollak, would naturally think Keenan was saying. If someone who hasn't read Pollak would think what Pollak thinks, then copy Keenan's exact words into your notes, and make a note of whatever is implied or suggested by those exact words so you will be able to support your conclusion with evidence later. If a normal reader wouldn't necessarily think the same things as Pollak, you should note down that Keenan did not make it seem as if this false thing was true.
3. Don't try to protect Keenan. If you're sympathetic to Keenan's side of the argument, don't let that sway you. Your job is not to write a paper that makes Keenan come out all right. Your task is to independently and dispassionately determine if she actually did what Pollak says she did.
4. Don't try to protect Pollak. If you're sympathetic to Pollak's side of the argument, don't let that sway you. Your job is not to write a paper that makes Pollak come out all right. Your task is to independently and dispassionately determine if Keenan actually did what he says she did.
5. Do not hold Keenan responsible for any mistake that Pollak
might have made while reading Keenan's article. If Pollak says that Keenan
says something she doesn't say, or that she implies something
that her words don't actually imply, then he
is responsible for misreading Keenan's article. No writer is
responsible for readers who fail to read carefully. If Pollak
gets the meaning or implications of Keenan's article wrong, you should
attribute the error to Pollak, and not blame Keenan
for "failing to rule out" the wrong interpretation that Pollak
put upon her words. It is very, very important that you make this decision
based entirely on the actual meaning of the actual words that
Keenan actually wrote.
6. Support all your claims about Keenan with evidence taken from Keenan's article. If you say Keenan says some particular thing, you should in your paper provide an actual quote from Keenan's paper where she actually says what you say she says. If you can't provide such a quote, don't say that Keenan says that particular thing. If Pollak says she said it, and there's no quote, you should say that Pollak is wrong. If you say Keenan implies some particular thing, you should in your paper provide an actual quote from Keenan's paper that actually implies what you say it implies. If you can't provide such a quote, don't say that Keenan implies that particular thing. If Pollak says she implied it, and there's no quote, you should say that Pollak is wrong.
7. You absolutely must start your paper with a thesis. This thesis must represent a conclusion about the basic question of this assignment that you came to after considering all the issues mentioned in this prompt, and it must be the first sentence of your paper. I am aware that many English instructors teach their students to withhold basic information from their readers, and to write a bunch of unrelated and unimportant material before they state their theses, but I'm gettinng on in years, and I don't have the time to wade through nonsense to get to the stuff that actually matters. Start your paper by stating your thesis. If you haven't figured out your thesis yet, don't start writing until you've figured out which thesis is best supported by the available evidence. (For this particular assignment, your thesis could range from "Pollak proved Keenan lied when she accused Ryan of extreme anti-abortion views," through "Pollak proved that Keenan was wrong, but didn't prove she lied," through "Pollak was mistaken when he said that Keenan was wrong about Ryan," to "Pollak's accusation that Keenan lied about Ryan is completely groundless," or anything in between.)
All of these points are very, very important. If you deliberately do
things differently from these requirements, you will be deliberately
failing the assignment.
Before you start to think about what you're actually going to write, I want you to return to the original texts, and, in your notes, answer as many of the following questions as you can. I'd like you to consider these questions in the order I present them, although if you have trouble with a particular question you can skip it and (perhaps) come back to it later. Some of these questions concern the specific content of these articles, while others concern rules of logic. In questions of content, it is important that you go back to the original article to see what it actually says. It is not acceptable to assume that something is there because you believe it is there. It is not acceptable to assume that something isn't there because you feel that it's not there. Look at the words in the article and just figure out if it's actually there or not.
The relevant part of Pollak reads: "In a NARAL press release being circulated by Democrats and women’s groups, the Catholic, pro-life Ryan is accused of “extreme” anti-abortion views. NARAL isn’t simply content to disagree with Ryan’s views; it resorts to lying about Ryan." This seems to say several things:
If you think I've misinterpreted Pollak here, please discuss this in your paper. Provide textual evidence and reasoning to support your interpretation of Pollak, and be sure to discuss what this means for the specific issue we're focussing on here.
If you think Pollak is not at least implicitly accusing Keenan of dishonesty in the way that she characterizes Ryan's record as "extreme," please provide textual support or other reasoning to support the claim that Pollak accepts Keenan's characterization as reasonable, or at least as honestly mistaken.
The relevant part of Keenan reads "Rep. Paul Ryan's extreme anti-choice record shows just how serious a threat Mitt Romney's presidency would be for women," . . . "He has cast 59 votes on reproductive rights while in Congress and not one has been pro-choice. Rep. Ryan has also repeatedly voted to defund family-planning programs and supported the "Let Women Die Bill," which would allow hospitals to refuse to provide a woman emergency, lifesaving abortion care, even if she could die without it. . . . Rep. Ryan's anti-choice record includes: Repeatedly voting to deny women in the military, who defend our freedom overseas, the right to use their own, private funds for abortion care at military hospitals. Repeatedly voting to defund Planned Parenthood, which would deny millions of women access to comprehensive reproductive-health care and preventive services. Cosponsoring and repeatedly voting for the Federal Abortion Ban, a law that criminalizes some abortion services, endangers women's health, and carries a two-year prison sentence for doctors. Voting for an appropriations bill that defunded Planned Parenthood, eliminated the Title X family-planning program, and reinstated the D.C. abortion ban." (Complete text at Nancy Keenan's NARAL press release)
And here's Pollak's critique: Pollak's response to Keenan's press release
Questions to think about before you start your paper.
DO NOT TURN IN A "PAPER" THAT CONSISTS OF YOU SIMPLY ANSWERING THESE QUESTIONS, ONE AFTER THE OTHER, OFF THE TOP OF YOPUR HEAD!
The above questions are things for you to think about as you
consider your response to the question of does Pollak prove NARAL
lied about Ryan having extreme views. You are supposed to
answer the questions in your notes for this assignment. Don't
treat them as a framework for your answer. Do not
repeat them in your paper. This is a writing assignment,
and you have to write a paper to fulfil it. Nothing else will
do.
Here's what I want you
to do:
If you have figured out the answer for yourself, here's how you should write your paper:
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Suppose Senator Liberace has stated that is he is "as pro-choice as you can get," and that he has consistently voted to allow women, including minors, unrestricted access to abortion under almost all circumstances. Would an abortion opponent be lying if she said that Senator Liberace held extreme pro-abortion-rights views? Would it constitute a smear if she said this? Explain your answers.
Suppose a Democratic presidential candidate who originally supported some gun rights has in recent years switched to making harsh anti-gun statements, and saying that if he were in power he would favor laws and constitutional amendments making it extremely hard for people in the USA to own firearms, and would only allow private gun ownership in certain very, very restrictive circumstances. Suppose also that this candidate actually voted many times to restrict gun ownership, and had never voted against any gun control measure. Would a gun-rights advocate be lying (rather than, say, merely exaggerating or speaking loosely) if he said that this candidate held "extreme" anti-gun views.
I want to emphasize that this is not a "matter of opinion" in the sense that different people can have different opinions about this. This question is a matter of cold, hard fact. Either Keenan did something dishonest or she did not. If you have a feeling that Keenan is dishonest, that is not a basis for a rational judgement. If you have a feeling that Pollak isn't thinking clearly, that is not a basis for a rational judgement. You have to look at what Keenan actually says, and at what Pollak says to back up his claim that "In a NARAL press release being circulated by Democrats and women’s groups, the Catholic, pro-life Ryan is accused of “extreme” anti-abortion views. NARAL isn’t simply content to disagree with Ryan’s views; it resorts to lying about Ryan"
I should mention that this is more of a thinking exercise than a writing exercise. Your paper here may turn out to be considerably shorter than some of your previous papers. This will be okay as long as your logic is good, and all of your reasoning is clearly explained. (A paper supporting Keenan might turn out to be considerably shorter than a paper supporting Pollak, since a paper supporting Pollak will have to document and explain the evidence supporting his accusation against Keenan, and explain how this evidence supports the accusation, whereas a paper supporting Keenan would only have to assert that no such evidence exists, and explain how this lack of evidence undermines his accusation. Thus whether you write a shorter or a longer paper will probably depend on which side you decide is right, after you have thought through the issue from both sides.)
Remember, you are required to write a paper that states a thesis and then sets out the reasoning by which you support that thesis. You will be graded on how well you do this, so doing other things instead will hurt your grade.
Remember to follow the important rules:
Remember that I am not asking you to preserve any previously expressed or privately held opinions. You can change your mind about anything at any time. If you previously thought that the evidence supported one side, but now see that the evidence supports the other side, you are supposed to go with what you see the evidence saying right now. Your most important cognitive faculty is your ability to change your mind. If you think you have to stick with some previously expressed thesis, you are not exercising free will, and you are not thinking for yourself.
If you want to know more about Ryan's views as expressed after the election, you might want to read on or more of the following articles:
