TEXAS PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE DE-EMPHASIZING ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE IN FAVOR OF UNPROVEN FADS

In this opinion piece by Bill Ames from the Texas insider the author focuses on the message of Texas public schools changing their emphasis on core academics in certain school districts. The author uses the example of  Richardson ISD to convey his main point that it will have a negative impact to adopt this new wave TASA way of teaching core values to the children of Texas public schools. The shift of importance in certain subjects causes a decline of scores and overall intelligence results and readiness for further education and the workplace. He adds to his credibility by listing various examples and statistics that aid his belief this new wave of education will cause negative impact on kids standardized test scores. The author's intended audience is all those that seek to amend legislation and to stop this new wave of education before it consumes all public schools in the state of Texas. He includes in the end the exact legislative action he would like to see happen. His evidence to support his opinion seem credible, but he lacks to provide a digression of some of the positive aspects of this new program. To really persuade an audience all sides should be shown not just those that support your point of view. The author makes the pitfall of not including an ounce of positive aspects of this new wave of education and thus he is now unable in readers eyes to fully discredit his opposition. This makes the author lose credibility in my mind and also there is a loss of logical appeal to the reader. He logically provides examples that strengthen his point, but does not allow the reader to weigh both sides of the argument. His own academic background is not mentioned in the article that reduces his credibility. His persuasion is effective, but not calculated and frankly a bit too one sided.                               

Critique an editorial or commentary from a Texas newspaper

In this article entitled “IN TEXAS, TRADE IS NOT A DIRTY WORD” by: U.S. Senator John Cornyn the author talks about how “free trade” has taken heat in the recent presidential race he then proves this to be wrong by providing evidence of Texas’s usage of free trade as a substantial benefit to the state’s prosperity and its people. The credibility of the author is established by his U.S senator status. He then begins to throw around values and statistics to support his claim of how much of a positive impact free trade can have on everyone,but fails to provide proper citation to where he gets these values and statistics. This dilutes his credibility in the reader's eyes. He makes the claim that trade doesn't just benefit major companies and actually benefits small and family-owned businesses ,but he proceeds to never give any examples of small business positively affected by free trade. His statistics on trade evoke emotional importance , but lack of examples fall flat. He also fails to provide the counter argument or any kind of regression to help strengthen his argument. Without a counter it is hard to prove why free trade is more important than lack thereof. The senator shows Texas to be an example for the right kind of prosperous trade in hopes that the country will follow our example. The author then doesn't show the many differences the nation faces that Texas does not thus weakening his claim. Towards the end of the article the author explains how Texas is a gateway of trade due to its location in relations to Latin America. The author uses this to further exemplify Texas’s trade policies, but fails to show obvious differences that face the nation and other states that do not face Texas.          

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