English paper

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Topic Sheet L Temple University Placement Test Topics

Directions:

Each of the topics below quotes a writer’s position on some issue. Choose one of the two topics assigned by the online application. In an

organized essay of about 350 words, (1) explain in your own words what the writer is saying AND (2) take a position on the writer’s

argument. (Issues you might wish to address include: Do you agree or disagree totally with the writer’s opinion or only to a certain

extent? Is the evidence used to support the writer’s argument convincing or weak? If weak, can you offer a better argument? Can you

cite a personal experience that either supports or undermines what the writer has said?) As you write your essay, you should periodically

refer to statements in the passage you are discussing. However, everything you write should be in your own words except, perhaps, for a

phrase or two from the passage that you may wish to quote.

Only the first few lines of the essay topics will be displayed by the online application. Therefore, be certain to have this printed at test

time. Choose only one topic from the two assigned by the online Placement Test Website.

L1. In Orwell’s classic novel 1984, Big Brother quells dissent and uses technology to control the minds of the population—all for the public good.

Big Brother's government has its own language, "Newspeak," and critical thinking and intellectual dissent are punished as "thought crimes." The

corporatization of higher education has led to many colleges and universities coming to resemble the unsettling realities of Orwell’s text. In response to

broad concerns over both the rising price of education and the mounting level of student debt, many universities have increasingly adopted corporate

models of institutional governance. While certainly some changes to the ways universities are run is needed, the corporate model has had unexpected

and dangerous consequences regarding the very purpose of higher education. For example, in Kansas the state Board of Regents recently voted to adopt

a new social media policy, which allows Kansas state universities to fire (tenured and untenured) employees for "improper use" of social media.

"Improper use" includes inciting violence, posting confidential information about students, or posting things that are "contrary to the best interests of the

university." In other words, the university can fire a professor or staff member who blogs, tweets, or Facebooks any criticism of the university, since the

“best interests” of the university are defined by the institution itself. Far from an anomaly, the Kansas policy is sadly part of a larger pattern of viewing

education as a business. Politicians and university managers, once called administrators, are systematically undermining the foundation of American

higher education, promoting the anti-intellectual ideology of higher education as job training. The goal now is to churn out more graduates quickly and

efficiently and university budgets are shaped to meet perceived employment goals. Curricula are strategically adjusted for maximum student output

which appears to be much more important than teaching our students how to think systematically and critically. Policies to restrict academic freedom are

the disturbing end result of running universities like corporations. Vocal and critical professors who see their mission not merely to train workers but to

challenge young people to read widely, research soundly, think critically and write clearly are a threat to the political and institutional status quo. The

holders of the public "trust" in Kansas must fear informed dissent based upon solid research. Why else would they threaten to fire professors who have

the gall to challenge the "interest of the university?" Universities are not trade schools and redefining the goals of higher education primarily to create

workers is, indeed, a real-life “thought crime.”

Adapted from an article by Paul Stolleru

L2. There comes a point in nearly every episode of 16 and Pregnant, the MTV reality show, in which the main character’s sweet anticipation about

her upcoming birth gives way to teary discontent that her teenage boyfriend is not spending as much time on baby preparations, work, or Lamaze classes

as he is on “hanging with his boys.” It appears that such meltdowns have had an effect on viewers. A study from the National Bureau of Economic

Research argues that the program has reduced the teen birthrate by 5.7 percent in the 18 months after it was first introduced, accounting for about a third

of the overall decline in the birthrate during that time. Although researchers can’t prove that individual teens changed their minds about unprotected sex

after watching the show, the study found that Internet searches and tweets about birth control and abortion spiked when new episodes aired. Such

findings have led some critics to praise MTV for offering programming that yields real results with important social consequences. Indeed, the show and

its follow-ups, Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2, do an honest job of depicting the gritty side of teen pregnancy, zooming in on the family squabbles, derailed

dreams, and called-off engagements. But not all of the show’s fans see the downsides of early parenthood quite so clearly. A different study, to be

published in the journal Mass Communication and Society, provides a more dismal look at the programs' impact on teens. For the study, the researchers

asked 185 high school students about their perceptions of reality television and teen pregnancy. Exposure to the shows impacted boys and girls equally.

Researchers found that shows such as 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom lead their audiences to believe teen parents have “an enviable quality of life, a

high income and involved fathers.” In fact, heavy viewers of teen mom reality programs were more likely to think that teen moms have a lot of time to

themselves and can easily find child care so that they can go to work or complete high school than were lighter viewers of such shows. They were also

more likely to believe that teen parents “have affordable access to healthcare, finished college, and lived on their own.” In reality, nearly half of all teen

mothers fail to attain a high school diploma and earn an average of $6,500 annually over their first 15 years of parenthood. Researchers suggest that 16

and Pregnant, the initial show that documents the girls’ pregnancies and births, seemed to perform a better public service than the follow-up series, Teen

Mom, which has had a tendency to glorify their stars, paying them large sums and rocketing them to celebrity-magazine fame. Evidently, teenagers find

such celebrity status appealing, no matter the circumstances. Despite Teen Mom’s enormous popularity, MTV should cancel the program. Network

executives have a moral obligation not to cash in on the very problem their original show was intended to address.

Adapted from an article by Olga Khazan

Print this sheet and have it available when taking your online Placement Test.

OW14-L Page 2 of 2

Topic Sheet L Temple University Placement Test Topics

Directions:

Each of the topics below quotes a writer’s position on some issue. Choose one of the two topics assigned by the online application. In an

organized essay of about 350 words, (1) explain in your own words what the writer is saying AND (2) take a position on the writer’s

argument. (Issues you might wish to address include: Do you agree or disagree totally with the writer’s opinion or only to a certain

extent? Is the evidence used to support the writer’s argument convincing or weak? If weak, can you offer a better argument? Can you

cite a personal experience that either supports or undermines what the writer has said?) As you write your essay, you should periodically

refer to statements in the passage you are discussing. However, everything you write should be in your own words except, perhaps, for a

phrase or two from the passage that you may wish to quote.

Only the first few lines of the essay topics will be displayed by the online application. Therefore, be certain to have this printed at test

time. Choose only one topic from the two assigned by the online Placement Test Website.

L3. Once again, the recent reports on Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores have unleashed a fresh torrent o f

educational angst. According to PISA, American kids are mired in mediocrity and the rest of the world is catapulting ahead of us.

Singapore, Shanghai and South Korea are regularly cited as places that are having us for lunch. But in obsessing over how Am erican

students measure against kids in other nations, we are weighing our children instead of feeding them. News stories cite the importance of

an educated workforce in order to maintain or regain our rightful place atop the global economy. Politicians suggest that po verty would

be eradicated if only our schools were more like those in Finland. If we don't fix education—politicians and pundits proclaim—we are in

for big trouble. News flash: We don't have an education problem in America. Charter schools, Common Core, voucher programs, online

education, Teach for America... none of these initiatives will make a dent in our educational malaise, because the assumptions are wrong.

As is often the case in our "blame the victim" culture, it is generally believed that improving education will cure poverty. This invites the

inference that poor education created poverty. But it is simply not true. Poverty created poor education. It is also asserted that our place

in the global economy is threatened by the poor quality of American education. But this is also backwards. Our place in the global

economy threatens education, not the other way around. If politicians really want to “fix” education, they will start taking our economic

concerns seriously. Many folks seem to romanticize the halcyon days of American education, often the 1950s or early '60s (be fore the

hippies ruined things), when father knew best, children respected their elders and mothers joined the PTA and made yummy lunches.

When looking at the experiences of millions of today's American children, the only thing that hasn't changed is school. It's still pretty

boring, but it's not any better or worse than decades ago. But everything else has changed. In the service of economic global dominance,

we have sacrificed families and schools. According to a recent New York Times article, 54 percent of Americans have experienced or will

experience at least one year in poverty or near-poverty. Many urban and rural communities are suffering from neglect—deteriorating

infrastructure, high unemployment, eroded tax base and underfunded schools. Despite the Affordable Care Act, tens of millions of

Americans have no health insurance and inadequate health care. And children in and out of schools are highly stressed, in part because of

the persistent pressure of high stakes accountability. America has a social disease. It is as though we are starving our children to death

and trying to fix it by investing in more scales so we can weigh them constantly.

Adapted from an article by Steve Nelson

L4. In the fall of 2008, Congress passed the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA). The law was designed to protect kids worldwide

from being forced to fight the wars of Big Men. The law specifies that the State Department identify countries that coerced children into

becoming soldiers and that the U.S. cut off all military aid to these nations. But in October, as it has done every year since CSPA became

law, the White House again granted whole or partial “waivers” to five countries on the State Department’s “do not aid” list, claiming that

countries like Chad and Yemen are so vital to our national interest to justify overlooking what happens to children there. America’s

inaction on the issue of child soldiers really isn’t surprising. Why should Washington help the children of Sudan or Yemen e scape war

when it spares no expense right here at home to press our own impressionable, idealistic, ambitious American kids into military

“service”? It should be no secret that the United States has the biggest, most efficiently organized, most effective system for recruiting

child soldiers in the world. With uncharacteristic modesty, however, the Pentagon calls it the “youth development program.” Pushed by

multiple high-powered, highly paid public relations and advertising firms under contract to the Department of Defense, its major public

face is the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps or JROTC. What makes this child-soldier recruiting program so striking is that the

Pentagon carries it out in plain sight in hundreds and hundreds of private, military, and public high schools across the U.S. Unlike the

notorious West African warlords, the Pentagon doesn’t actually kidnap children and drag them bodily into battle. It seeks in stead to make

its young “cadets” what John Stuart Mill once termed “willing slaves,” so taken in by the master’s script that they accept their parts with a

gusto that passes for personal choice. To that end, JROTC works on their not-yet-fully-developed minds, instilling what the program’s

textbooks call “patriotism” and “leadership,” as well as a reflexive attention to authoritarian commands. The scheme is much more

sophisticated—so much more "civilized"—than any ever devised in Liberia or Sierra Leone, and it works. The result is the same,

however: kids get swept into soldiering, a job they will not be free to leave, and in the course of which they may be forced to commit

spirit-breaking atrocities. The JROTC program, still spreading in high schools across the country, costs U.S. taxpayers hundreds of

millions of dollars annually. It has cost some unknown number of taxpayers their children.

Adapted from an article by Ann Jone

Print this sheet and have it available when taking your online Placement Test.