3.5 When Anecdote Becomes Argument
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Making Predictions 1. Based on the title “What to Do with the Kids This Summer? Put ’Em to Work,”
who is the audience? What are your clues?
2. How might this piece of writing be different from Morrison’s and Adkison’s essays?
As You Read • Underline criticisms the author states about kids and parenting today.
• Circle unknown words and phrases. Try to determine the meaning of the words by using context clues, word parts, or a dictionary.
Learning Targets • Compare and contrast the purposes of multiple texts on the same theme.
• Analyze how an author’s claims are developed by particular language and structure choices in an argumentative text.
Preview In this activity, you will read and analyze a personal essay that includes a call to action. Then you will use the essay as inspiration as you write the script for a one-minute public service announcement.
Graphic Organizer Marking the Text Predicting
Learning Strategies
My Notes
Opening Writing Prompt Read the following list of titles. You will recognize the first two from your recent reading. The third title is a text you are about to read. Then answer the following question: How is the third title different from the first two?
• “The Work You Do, the Person You Are”
• “Drowning in Dishes, but Finding a Home”
• “What to Do with the Kids This Summer? Put’ Em to Work”
When Anecdote Becomes Argument A C T I V I T Y
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Essay
What to Do with the Kids This Summer? Put ’Em to Work by Ben Sasse
1 Summer break 1985 was defined by my 4:30 a.m. alarm. The bus rolled up at 5, and my friends and I stumbled on, fighting off sleep until we arrived at the fields. Detasseling corn was a rite of passage in this Nebraska town: In order to cross-pollinate top-notch seed corn in those days, you needed people, lots of them, to walk through the fields to pull corn tassels manually from individual rows.
2 The job stank. It’s wet and chilly in the field that early. Giant sprinklers called center pivots often got stuck and flooded acres with ankle-deep cold water. We’d start out wearing sweatshirts underneath trash bag ponchos, but by 10, as temperatures approached triple digits, we’d shed layers. For the rest of the day, our bare skin would brush against sharp corn leaves until it was marked with innumerable paper cuts.
3 We would get home covered in nasty rashes, caked in mud and bone- tired. I’d go to bed in the late afternoon and sleep straight through till the alarm sounded again, for weeks on end.
4 That was our summer vacation. What do our kids do today?
5 It’s not an idle question. Nearly a quarter-century on, when I became the president of Midland University back in this same Nebraska town, one of the
idle: valueless or purposeless
Ben Sasse (b. 1972) is a history scholar and former professor and university president who has served as a United States senator since 2015. Sasse also served as an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2007 to 2009.
Though he is not primarily a writer, Sasse believes in the importance of books and has authored two of his own on American culture and political philosophy. On the subject of reading, he wrote this in his The New York Times Bestseller The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to
Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance: “America’s Founders understood literacy as a prerequisite for freedom and our form of self-government. Once we know how to read, what we read matters.” Sasse suggests choosing books that are deeply engaging and then having conversations about them. Says Sasse, “It is not only the content of a book that changes you but the shared community of those who have read it, discussed it, argued about it.”
About the Author My Notes
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first things I noticed was how few of our students had done any hard physical work before college. Detasseling corn, like a lot of agricultural work, is now done mostly by machine.
6 And parents, on the whole, had fewer household labor needs and could afford to spare their kids the less pleasant experiences of their own childhoods, while providing them with things they wish they’d had, as well as opportunities to cultivate new skills. The time our students didn’t spend in school was mostly spent consuming: products, media and entertainment, especially entertainment.
7 Another thing I noticed was an unnerving passivity. When I saw students doing their campus jobs, they seemed to have a tough time. Over and over, faculty members and administrators noted how their students’ limited experience with hard work made them oddly fuzzyheaded when facing real- world problems rather than classroom tests.
8 I was worried. How would these kids survive once they left home for good? And how would an America built on self-discipline and deferred gratification survive?
9 Adolescence is a great thing, but we’ve made it too long. It’s supposed to be a protected space in which kids who’ve become biologically adult are not obligated to immediately become emotionally, morally and financially adult. Done right, adolescence is a greenhouse phase, but adolescence should not be an escape from adulthood; it should be when we learn how to become adults.
10 We’re parenting too much, too long. Our efforts to protect our kids from hurt feelings, tedious chores, money worries and the like are well intentioned. But many of us, perhaps especially middle-class parents, are unwittingly enabling many of our kids to not grow up.
My Notes
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11 What can we do about it—especially during these long summer months when our kids expect to be entertained? What’s the modern equivalent of detasseling corn?
12 My wife, Melissa, and I, together with our neighbors, try to create experiences for our kids that build character. We want our kids to exercise their muscles and their minds.
13 Last year, we sent our eldest child, Corrie, then 14, to spend a month working on a cattle ranch. When we dropped her off, she was nervous but eager. Between checking cows for pregnancies—a job that involves a shoulder- length glove—and bottle-feeding orphaned heifers, she loved it and hated it. But she knew that her mild suffering was also a formative experience for a lifetime.
14 Not everyone lives in a big cattle state, and younger kids require more parental supervision. I also don’t romanticize agrarian life—there’s too much manure around for it to be truly idyllic—but meaningful work for kids is less about any particular task than the habits the hours teach. The effort involved and the struggles, once overcome, become the scar tissue of future character.
15 Look around your neighborhood and see what ways your kids could serve their community. Even in this digital age, lawns need to be mowed and lemonade stands can break even.
16 Older folks will benefit from the help, and your kids will gain from the perspective of people who’ve been on the planet longer than they have. Younger kids can work alongside Mom and Dad, too (just know that everything will take twice as long). The point isn’t how perfect your neighbor’s lawn looks; the point is that your kids can learn to work toward making a contribution to their community.
17 We should also encourage our kids to travel. I’m not talking about the grand European tour or the Chevy Chase road trip. Travel is simply an opportunity to help our kids to get out of their comfort zones, learn to see different social and economic arrangements. I remember my wife (then my college girlfriend) tugging me along to volunteer on a re-entry preparation program for Boston inmates.
18 Start close to home and visit a different neighborhood—you don’t have eyes to see your own community until you’ve visited another. Travel need not be about changing locations, but reaching across generations to break out of the artificial age segregation of our era. Getting out of one’s own bubble can be dramatic.
19 Few experiences help our kids discover the distinction between needs and wants like the great outdoors. It doesn’t have to be a hike through the Yukon, but just living out of a backpack for a long weekend where they take an active role in planning meals, buying food, picking a site and setting up the tent. The key thing is not to have been passive consumers on someone else’s trip. They’ll have been the planners, the decision makers and the
My Notes
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risk calculators, while you’re still there to make sure nothing goes too far off the rails.
20 We also want our kids to travel into literature. So we work with our children to build reading lists of books that they will wrestle with and be shaped by for the rest of their lives. Becoming a reader grows our horizons, our appetite for the good, the true and the beautiful, and our empathy.
21 Not everything will work for every family. The challenge of adolescence is not going to be solved in a single summer. The health of our republic depends on shared principles like the First Amendment, but it is also built on the Teddy Roosevelt-like vigor of its citizens and local self-reliance. This should be a gift of these long summer days to our children.
22 My grandfather had a saying from the farm that “every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours of sleep after midnight.” I don’t know about the science of that, yet I know what he meant: that you should get up and out to work early enough that you’re tired enough to feel the value of being able to get to bed early again.
23 I learned that lesson in 1985. If my kids get nothing else from this summer, I hope they learn it, too.
My Notes
Allusion The phrase Teddy Roosevelt- like vigor alludes to Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. Theodore Roosevelt, whose nickname was Teddy, is remembered not only for the role he played in American history but also for the energy and persistence with which he pursued interests, such as boxing and horseback riding. When people think of Teddy Roosevelt, they think of someone who was bold and action-oriented.
WORD CONNECTIONS
Making Observations • What kinds of work does the author think today’s teenagers should be
encouraged to do?
• What does the author think is the value of work for teenagers?
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Returning to the Text • Return to the text as you respond to the following questions. Use evidence from the text to
support your responses.
• Write any additional questions you have about the essay in your Reader/Writer Notebook.
3. Before reading, you made a prediction about the audience of “What to Do with the Kids This Summer? Put ’Em to Work.” How did your reading confirm or contradict your prediction?
4. How is the purpose of “What to Do with the Kids This Summer? Put ’Em to Work” similar to those of Morrison’s and Adkison’s essays? Explain your answer.
5. How is the purpose of “What to Do with the Kids This Summer? Put ’Em to Work” different from those of Morrison’s and Adkison’s essays? Explain your answer.
Working from the Text 6. The following chart divides Sasse’s essay into seven sections. Work with your classmates to
complete the chart.
Paragraphs What the Author Says and Does
1–4 Says
Does
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Paragraphs What the Author Says and Does
5–7 Says
Does
8 Says
Does
9–10 Says
Does
11 Says
Does
12–20 Says
Does
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Paragraphs What the Author Says and Does
21–23 Says
Does
Main Argument:
7. At what point in the argument does Sasse get to his claim?
8. Which words best state Sasse’s claim?
Write a Public Service Announcement 9. Reread paragraphs 12–20 of “What to Do with the Kids This Summer? Put
’Em to Work.” In these nine paragraphs, Sasse gives a call to action to fellow parents. Use Sasse’s parenting advice as inspiration for a minute-long public service announcement that answers the following question: “What to do with the kids this summer?” As you write the script, be sure to:
• Include a call to action.
• Give reasons and examples that support or explain your call to action.
• Use language that will appeal to your audience.
• Incorporate some of the catchiest sound-bite-like phrases from Sasse’s essay.
Check Your Understanding Quickwrite: How would Sasse respond to the question, “What is the value of work for teenagers?”
ACADEMIC A sound bite is a short excerpt from the recording of a speech or piece of music. The purpose of a sound bite is to capture the essence of the longer recording. Speakers or writers can plant sound bites in their arguments so their audience can walk away and pass the message along.
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