Noell Devenny
WR 121, Prof. C. Agatucci
Formal Academic Summary & Rhetorical Analysis #1
14 October 2002 

Coles, Robert.  “I Listen to My Parents and I Wonder What They Believe.” Redbook February 1980.           Rpt. The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues Across the Disciplines.  Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 8th ed.          Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003. 438-442.

Robert Coles, Psy.D., esteemed Pulitzer Prize winning author of Children in Crisis volumes 1&2,  accounts in his essay “I Listen to My Parents and I Wonder What They Believe,” numerous interviews with children regarding how they understand and deal with the world, community, and family moral issues in their daily lives. He narrates what children have described to him during personal interviews and how they emulate their parents’ moral beliefs. He states that children learn by example, what their parents show and teach them about “right and wrong.” A nine-year-old Louisiana boy states,  “God made everyone--but that doesn’t mean we all have to be living together under the same roof in the home or the school” (qtd. in Coles 440). Children are also influenced by peers, their families’ social standing in the community, and by cultural beliefs surrounding them. Sources outside the family then become especially important if the family’s moral beliefs are deficient.  A nine-year-old girl living in Texas stated:  “I saw a kid steal in a store, and I know her father has a lot of money--because I hear my daddy talk. But stealing’s wrong” (qtd. in Coles 442). Coles believes that children need parental guidance with moral issues in order to avoid the possibility of endangering themselves while seeking answers from inappropriate sources. He strongly urges parents to take an active role in responding to the moral inquiries children make thus enabling them to make proper choices about “right and wrong.”

Matt Lilley
WR 121, Prof. C. Agatucci
Formal Academic Summary & Rhetorical Analysis #1
7 October 2002 

Coles, Robert.  “I Listen to My Parents and I Wonder What They Believe.” Redbook Feb. 1980.           Rpt. The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues Across the Disciplines.  Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 8th ed.          Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003. 438-442.

Summary:

        Robert Coles discusses the importance of parents listening to their children’s moral and ethical dilemmas in “I Listen to My Parents and I Wonder What They Believe.”  He comments that parents often do not see that their children make important ethical decisions.  Parents are blinded by the notion that their children live in innocence and that they are far too young to be confronted with such issues.  Coles provides many first hand experiences that he has had with children who have been faced with events that demand great consideration of personal values.  One example involves a young girl whose father owns a coal mine where several men had been killed.  The girl has deep sympathy for those who died but at the same time she can not lose respect for her father. Another example describes a white boy’s feelings about desegregation in the South. His father hates the idea of his son going to school with black kids.  The boy, however, has had no problem with the black students and he likes them just as much as any of his white peers.  Coles concludes the essay by stating that each parent needs to begin listening more closely to their children so they may help them work out ethical dilemmas.  He also points out that the problem may in fact be rooted in the parents’ ignorance about their own personal morals and beliefs.

Rhetorical Analysis:                                                        
                                                             
        As a psychologist Robert Coles has been devoted to the study of children.  He has spent many long hours listening to the thoughts, ideas, and beliefs of young children.  Through the study of these children Coles has learned how attuned they are to moral issues in their lives.  His essay emphasizes how important he feels it is for parents to begin understanding the difficulty that children face in solving their ethical dilemmas.  He says, “It is time for us parents to begin to look more closely at what ideas our children have about the world ...before they become teenagers...and begin to remind us of how little attention we did pay to their moral development” (441).  Coles’s main purpose is to use his research to educate parents across the U.S. that children are not sheltered by “childhood innocence.”  He wants to inform parents that their children need guidance through their complex problems.

        Illustration is by far Coles’s largest development tool.  He provides detailed examples from his research to support is points.  Coles includes many long conversations with children who have dealt with very controversial issues like desegregation and workers’ rights. He uses these controversial examples as a way to make a strong impact on the reader.  Then he uses more common examples like a child’s inner debate about cheating to make children’s moral issues more personal for the parents.  By using these illustrations, Coles was able to establish the importance of his point and then make the reader feel personally affected.

        Coles’s tone is also one of his most important tools in this piece.  He chose to write his essay just as if he was going to speak to a small group of parents he knows well.  Coles uses “we”, “us”, and “our” throughout most of his essay: e.g.  “Yet some of us parents still cling to the notion of childhood innocence in another way” (438).   He stays as far away from a patronizing tone as possible.  Pointing fingers at the reader is very ineffective.  By including himself in his statements he was able to make the reader feel like it was not his/her problem alone.

Kathleen Yaeger
WR 121, Prof. C. Agatucci
Formal Academic Summary & Rhetorical Analysis #1
14 October 2002 

Mead, Margaret. "New Superstitions for Old."  A Way of Seeing. By Margaret Mead and Rhoda          Metraux. 1961-1970.  Rpt. The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues Across the Disciplines.           Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 8th ed.  Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003.  431-433.

"What is superstition?" In her article "New Superstitions for Old," Margaret Meads asks and answers this question. Superstitions "belong to the category of beliefs, practices, and ways of thinking that have been discarded because they are inconsistent with scientific knowledge"(431). We have been brought up to believe in old traditions, such as wishing on a star or making a good effort not to step on a crack so as not to break your mother’s back. Mead discusses the difference between religion and superstition: "the point of contrast is not between a scientific and a magical view of the world but between the clear, theologically defensible religious beliefs of member of civilized societies and what we regard as the false and childish views of the heathen"(432). Over the years society has changed superstitions. We now prefer a cosmetic offering to help "romance" us to our youth. Mead tells us that superstition is something that, "makes you feel safe"(432). She then describes ! ! "transitional objects"and how they "move back and forth between the extractions of everyday life and the world of wish and dream"(433) and compares them to superstitions. She concludes with the statement that "more and more of life has become subject to the controls of knowledge."(433). Therefore superstitions are less subject to random beliefs or practices.

[Rhetorical Analysis:]

Do we all to some degree believe or act upon superstitions? Mead not only defines superstitions but shows how they are not always what we think them to be. Mead begins by having her readers relate to common place superstitions prevalent in our daily lives. This approach helps readers relate personally to the topic and to Mead as an author. Her use of concrete examples helps present and emphasize her points about her subject. Mead brings to this paper her experience as an anthropologist. She has been studying this subject and others like it for many years. In fact Mead has devoted most of her life to studying people and their ways of life. This is evident as she presents superstitious practices from a wide variety of sources.

This essay can be intended for a wide variety of readers. People who are interested in psychology and human beliefs and behaviors could find this piece interesting and informative. Many readers would have prior knowledge and/or experience with this topic. Mead uses the past to explain the origins of some of our superstitions. She conjures childhood memories for most of us with, "Step on a crack, break your mother’s back"(432). This allows readers to understand her comment that "even in the most sophisticated home, something is likely to happen that evokes the memory of some old folk belief"(431). Mead compares superstitions to "transitional objects" that are explained as helping, "people pass between areas of life where sequences of events are explicable in terms of cause and effect, based on knowledge"(433). She is careful to define her terms so that the arrangement of the essay continues to flow effectively because reader understanding is insured.

Mead’s essay is well organized with an engaging beginning, a middle that provides many examples to support her thesis, and leads readers to a definite ending. Her conversational tone manifests in her list of common superstitions that adds to the reader’s delight and to an on-going rapport with Mead.

Mead concludes her essay with a happy thought that superstitions allow us to keep a certain segment of our lives, "a private world"(433), where we can pretend to have some element of control over our lives, even if it be only the momentary, passing joy of finding a penny with the head up, or avoiding the perils of a black cat’s path.