Rogerian argument, toulmin logic, and oral arguments - Reading and responding to arguments

Practical argument: A text and anthology - Laurie G. Kirszner, Stephen R. Mandell 2019

Rogerian argument, toulmin logic, and oral arguments
Reading and responding to arguments

A photo shows a scene from the movie Hidden Figures.

The 2016 film Hidden Figures adapted the stories of real-life black women who worked in STEM fields at NASA in the 1960s, including mathematician Dorothy Vaughan (played in the film by Octavia Spencer).

The photo shows a large number of well-dressed African American women walking down a corridor wearing identity cards. Octavia Spencer, portrayed as Dorothy Vaughan, is holding an envelope.

AT ISSUE

Why Are So Few Women in STEM Fields?

Until fairly recently, professions such as medicine, law, dentistry, and veterinary practices were overwhelmingly male. Beginning in the 1970s, however, this began to change, and today we can see a major shift within these professions. For example, in 2017, women outnumbered men in American medical schools for the first time in history. Similar shifts can be seen in other previously male-dominated professions—but not in the disciplines referred to as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).

Despite the efforts of high schools and colleges, the percentage of women majoring in computer science and in engineering is below 20 percent. In the workplace, the numbers are even lower: only 10.7 percent of computer hardware engineers and 8 percent of mechanical engineers are women. Many people have tried to find an explanation for this disparity. In 2005, Larry Summers, the president of Harvard University, provoked a furor at a conference by suggesting that prejudice alone cannot explain the gender gap in science and math. More recently, in 2017, James Damore, an engineer at Google, wrote an internal memo that criticized Google’s diversity policy, referring to the company as an “ideological echo chamber.” Although Damore asserted that he was opposed to workplace sexism and stereotyping, he went on to claim that the male/female imbalance in STEM fields is at least partly the result of biological differences and cannot be eliminated without resorting to discrimination against men. Damore’s memo created an uproar at Google, and as a result, he was fired. Others take a more nuanced view of the situation and look for more complex explanations—for example, discrimination and lifestyle choices—to account for women’s underrepresentation in STEM fields.

Later in this chapter, you will be asked to think more about this issue. You will be given several sources to consider and asked to write an argument—using one of the three approaches discussed in this chapter—that takes a position on why women are underrepresented in STEM fields.

Understanding Rogerian Argument

The traditional model of argument is confrontational—characterized by conflict and opposition. This has been the tradition since Aristotle wrote about argument in ancient Greece. The end result of this model of argument is that someone is a winner and someone is a loser or someone is right and someone is wrong.

Arguments do not always have to be confrontational, however. In fact, the twentieth-century psychologist Carl Rogers contended that in many situations, this method of arguing can actually be counterproductive, making it impossible for two people to reach agreement. According to Rogers, attacking opponents and telling them that they are wrong or misguided puts them on the defensive. The result of this tactic is frequently ill will, anger, hostility, and conflict. If you are trying to negotiate an agreement or convince someone to do something, these are exactly the responses that you do not want. To solve this problem, Rogers developed a new approach to argument—one that emphasizes cooperation and consensus over confrontation.

A Venn diagram.

The diagram shows two overlapping circles. The first circle reads, Your opinion, and the second circle reads, Their opinion. The area of intersection of the two circles reads, Consensus. A margin note reads, Rogerian argument as a Venn diagram.

Rogerian argument begins with the assumption that people of good will can find solutions to problems that they have in common. Rogers recommends that you consider those with whom you disagree as colleagues, not opponents. Instead of entering into the adversarial relationship that is assumed in classical argument, Rogerian argument encourages you to enter into a cooperative relationship in which both you and your readers search for common ground—points of agreement about a problem. By taking this approach, you are more likely to find a solution that will satisfy everyone.

Structuring Rogerian Arguments

Consider the following situation. Assume that you bought a video game console that stopped working one week after the warranty expired. Also assume that the manager of the store where you purchased the game console has refused to exchange it for another console. His point is that because the warranty has expired, the store has no obligation to take the product back. As a last resort, you write a letter to the game console’s manufacturer. If you were writing a traditional argument, you would state your thesis—“It is clear that I should receive a new game console”—and then present arguments to support your position. You would also refute opposing arguments, and you would end your letter with a strong concluding statement.

Because Rogerian arguments begin with different assumptions, however, they are structured differently from classical arguments. In a Rogerian argument, you would begin by establishing common ground—by pointing out the concerns you and the video game console’s manufacturer share. For example, you could say that as a consumer, you want to buy merchandise that will work as advertised. If the company satisfies your needs, you will continue to buy its products. This goal is shared by the manufacturer. Therefore, instead of beginning with a thesis statement that demands a yes or no response, you would point out that you and the manufacturer share an interest in solving your problem.

Next, you would describe in neutral terms—using impartial, unbiased language—the manufacturer’s view of the problem, defining the manufacturer’s concerns and attempting to move toward a compromise position. For example, you would explain that you understand that the company wants to make a high-quality product that will satisfy customers. You would also say that you understand that despite the company’s best efforts, mistakes sometimes happen.

In the next section of your letter, you would present your own view of the problem fairly and objectively. This section plays a major role in convincing the manufacturer that your position has merit. Here, you should also try to concede the strengths of the manufacturer’s viewpoint. For example, you can say that although you understand that warranties have time limits, your case has some unique circumstances that justify your claim.

Then you would explain how the manufacturer would benefit from granting your request. Perhaps you could point out that you have been satisfied with other products made by this manufacturer and expect to purchase more in the future. You could also say that instead of requesting a new game console, you would be glad to send the console back to the factory to be repaired. This suggestion shows that you are fair and willing to compromise.

Finally, your Rogerian argument would reinforce your position and end with a concluding statement that emphasizes the idea that you are certain that the manufacturer wants to settle this matter fairly.

EXERCISE 6.1 IDENTIFYING COMMON GROUND

Read through the At Issue topics listed in this book’s table of contents. Choose one topic, and then do the following:

1. Summarize your own position on the issue.

2. In a few sentences, summarize the main concerns of someone who holds the opposite position.

3. Identify some common ground that you and someone who holds the opposite position might have.

4. Write a sentence that explains how your position on the issue might benefit individuals (including those who hold opposing views) or society in general.

Writing Rogerian Arguments

Rogerian arguments are typically used to address issues that are open to compromise. By making it clear that you understand and respect the opinions of others, you avoid an “I win/you lose” situation and demonstrate empathy and respect for all points of view. In this sense, Rogerian arguments are more like negotiations than classical arguments. Thus, in a Rogerian argument, you spend a good deal of time defining the common ground that exists between you and those with whom you disagree. Ideally, you demonstrate that it is possible to reach a consensus, one that represents the common ground that exists between opposing sides. The more successful you are in accomplishing this goal, the more persuasive your argument will be. Of course with some issues—usually the most polarizing—a consensus is difficult or even impossible to achieve. In these cases, the best you can hope for is to convince people to agree on just one or two points. With other issues, however, you will be able to demonstrate to readers how they would benefit by moving toward your position.

NOTE

Although the Rogerian approach to argument can be used to develop a whole essay, it can also be part of a more traditional argument. In this case, it frequently appears in the refutation section, where opposing arguments are addressed.

In general, a Rogerian argument can be structured in the following way:

INTRODUCTION

Introduces the problem, pointing out how both the writer and reader are affected (establishes common ground)

BODY

Presents the reader’s view of the problem

Presents the writer’s view of the problem (includes evidence to support the writer’s viewpoint)

Shows how the reader would benefit from moving toward the writer’s position (includes evidence to support the writer’s viewpoint)

Lays out possible compromises that would benefit both reader and writer (includes evidence to support the writer’s viewpoint)

CONCLUSION

Strong concluding statement reinforces the thesis and emphasizes compromise

EXERCISE 6.2 ANALYZING A ROGERIAN ARGUMENT

The following student essay includes all the elements of a Rogerian argument. This essay was written in response to the question, “Is it fair for instructors to require students to turn off their cell phones in class?” After you read the essay, answer the questions on page 198, consulting the preceding outline if necessary.

WHY CELL PHONES DO NOT BELONG IN THE CLASSROOM

ZOYA KAHN

A Student’s essay, titled ’why cell phones do not belong in the classroom,’ by ZOYA KAHN, has annotations within parentheses.

Text reads as follows:

First paragraph: Some college students think it is unfair for instructors to require them to turn off their cell phones during class. Because they are accustomed to constant cell phone access, they don’t understand how such a rule is justified. Granted, a strict, no-exceptions policy requiring that cell phones be turned off all over campus is not fair, but neither is a policy that prevents instructors from imposing restrictions. Both students and instructors know that cell phone use—including texting—during class can be disruptive (a corresponding margin note reads, Common ground). In addition, most would agree that the primary goal of a university is to create a respectful learning environment and that cell phone use during class undercuts this goal. For this reason, it is in everyone’s interest for instructors to institute policies that require students to turn off cell phones during class (a corresponding margin note reads, Thesis statement).

Second paragraph: Many students believe that requiring them to turn off their cell phones is unfair because it makes them feel less safe. Students are understandably concerned that, with their phones turned off, they will be unreachable during an emergency (a corresponding margin note reads, Reader’s view of the problem). For example, text message alerts are part of the emergency response system for most universities. Similarly, cell phones are a way for friends and family to contact students if there is an emergency. For these reasons, many students think that they should be free to make their own decisions concerning cell use. They believe that by turning their phones to vibrate or silent mode, they are showing respect for their classmates. Moreover, students need to learn how to reguLATe their own technology use, which will extend well beyond academia and graduation. As Dinesha Johnson, a student at [text continues on the next page].

The continuation of the essay, from the previous page, with annotations in parentheses.

Second paragraph continues as follows:

Henry Ford College notes in an opinion column, “Allowing students to have the freedom to practice self-discipline with their personal phone usage is necessary because when they are allowed such freedoms in the workplace they will handle it responsibly” (Johnson). Most students are honest, responsible, and courteous. However, those few students who cannot control themselves or are simply determined to misuse their phones will do so, regardless of the school’s phone policy.

Third paragraph: To protect the integrity of the school’s learning environment, instructors are justified in requiring students to turn off their phones (a corresponding margin note reads, Writer’s view of the

situation). Studies over the past several years have shown how distracting cell phones can be during a class. For example, a ringing cell phone significantly impairs students’ performance, and a vibrating phone can be just as distracting (End et al. 56—57). In addition, texting in class decreases students’ ability to focus, lowers test performance, and lessens students’ retention of class material (Tindell and Bohlander 2). More recent research suggests that more daily use of cell phones correLATe with lower grade point averages among high school students (Barnwell). Even more disturbing, cell phones enable some students to cheat. Students can use cell phones to text test questions and answers, to search the web, and to photograph exams. Although asking students to turn off their phones will not prevent all these problems, it will reduce the abuses, and this will benefit the majority of students.

Fourth paragraph: Even though students have good reasons for wanting to keep their phones on, there are even better reasons for accepting some reasonable restrictions (a corresponding margin note reads, Benefits for reader of writer’s position). First, when students use cell phones during class, they distract themselves (as well as their classmates) and undermine everyone’s ability to learn. Second, having their cell phones on gives students a false sense of security. A leading cell phone company has found that cell phones can actually “detract from school safety and crisis preparedness” in numerous ways. For example, the use of cell phones during a crisis can overload the cell phone system and make it useless. In addition, cell phones make it easy for students to spread rumors and, in some cases, cell phone use has created more panic than the incidents that actually caused the rumors (“Cell Phones”).

Fifth paragraph: (A margin note corresponding to the paragraph reads, Possible compromise) One possible compromise is for instructors to join with students to create cell phone policies that take into consideration various situations and [text continues on the next page].

The continuation of the essay, from the previous page, with annotations in parentheses.

Fifth paragraph continues as follows:

settings. For example, instructors could require students to turn off their phones only during exams. Instructors could also try to find ways to engagestudents by using cell phone technology in the classroom. For example, in some schools teachers take advantage of the various functions available on most cell phones—calcuLATors, cameras, dictionaries, and internet browsers (“Cell Phones”). In addition, schools should consider implementing alternative emergency alert systems. Such compromises would ensure safety, limit possible disruptions, reduce the potential for academic dishonesty, and enhance learning. They also would have a better chance of succeeding because students would have to buy-in to the policies. As Anita Charles, the director of Secondary Teacher Education at Bates College and a researcher who has studied this topic, states, “Negotiation, when [students] feel that they’re being listened to, benefits everybody, because the teacher finds that students become more cooperative” (McConville).

Sixth paragraph: It is understandable that students want instructors to permit the use of cell phones during class, but it is also fair for instructors to ask students to turn them off. Although instructors should be able to restrict cell phone use, they should also make sure that students understand the need for this policy. It is in everyone’s best interest to protect the integrity of the classroom and to make sure that learning is not compromised by cell phone use. To ensure the success of their education, students should be willing to turn off their phones (a corresponding margin note reads, Concluding statement).

Works Cited

Barnwell, Paul. “Should Smartphones Be Banned from Classrooms?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 27 Apr. 2016, www.theatlantic .com/education/archive/2016/04/do-smartphones-have-a-place-in-the -classroom/480231/.

“Cell Phones and Text Messaging in Schools.” National School Safety and Security Services, 2012, www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/cell-phones -and-text-messaging-in-schools/.

End, Christian M., Shaye Worthman, Mary Bridget Mathews, and Katharina Wetterau. “Costly Cell Phones: The Impact of Cell Phone Rings on Academic Performance.” Teaching of Psychology, vol. 37, no. 1, 2010, pp. 55—57. Academic Search Complete, doi: 10.1080/00986280903425912.

The continuation of the cork cited section from the previous page.

Text reads as follows:

Johnson, Dinesh A. Mirror News. “Why Students Should Be Using Their Phones in Class.” Mirror News. Henry Ford College, 29 Jan. 2018, mirrornews.hfcc.edu/news/2018/01-29/why-students-should-be-using-their-phones-class.

McConville, Emily. “Why Banning Cellphones in Schools Misses the Point.” Bates Wordmark, Bates College, 23 Mar. 2018, www.bates.edu/news/2018/03/23/why-banning-cellphones-in-schools -misses- the-point.

Tindell, Deborah R., and Robert W. Bohlander. “The Use and Abuse of Cell Phones and Text Messaging in the Classroom: A Survey of College Students.” College Teaching, vol. 60, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1—9.

ERIC Institute of Education Services, eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ951966.

Identifying the Elements of a Rogerian Argument

An illustration shows a building with a triangular roof and four pillars.

The roof of the building reads, Argument, and the first pillar reads, Thesis.

1. How does the writer attempt to establish common ground? Do you think she is successful?

2. What evidence does the writer supply to support her position?

3. Other than reinforcing the writer’s position, what else is the conclusion trying to accomplish?

4. How does the concluding statement reinforce agreement and compromise?

5. How would this essay be different if it were written as a traditional argument (as opposed to a Rogerian argument)?

Understanding Toulmin Logic

Another way of describing the structure of argument was introduced by the philosopher Stephen Toulmin in his book The Uses of Argument (1958). Toulmin observed that although formal logic is effective for analyzing classical arguments, it is inadequate for describing the arguments that occur in everyday life. Although Toulmin was primarily concerned with the structures of arguments at the level of sentences or paragraphs, his model is also useful when dealing with longer arguments.

In its simplest terms, a Toulmin argument has three parts—the claim, the grounds, and the warrant. The claim is the main point of the essay—usually stated as the thesis. The grounds are the evidence that a writer uses to support the claim. The warrant is the inference—either stated or implied—that connects the claim to the grounds.

A basic argument using Toulmin logic would have the following structure.

CLAIM

Online education should be a part of all students’ education.

GROUNDS

Students who take advantage of online education get better grades and report less stress than students who do not.

WARRANT

Online education is a valuable educational option.

Notice that the preceding three-part structure resembles the syllogism that is the backbone of classical argument. (See pp. 130—133 for a discussion of syllogisms.)

NOTE

When you use Toulmin logic to construct an argument, you still use deductive and inductive reasoning. You arrive at your claim inductively from facts, observations, and examples, and you connect the grounds and the warrant to your claim deductively.

Constructing Toulmin Arguments

Real arguments—those you encounter in print or online every day—are not as simple as the preceding three-part model implies. To be convincing, arguments often contain additional parts. To account for the demands of everyday debates, Toulmin expanded his model to include the following six interconnected elements.

CLAIM

The claim is the main point of your essay. It is a debatable statement that the rest of the essay will support.

Online education should be a part of all students’ education.

GROUNDS

The grounds are the concrete evidence that a writer uses to support the claim. These are the facts and observations that support the thesis. They can also be the opinions of experts that you locate when you do research.

Studies show that students who take advantage of online education often get better grades than students who do not.

Research indicates that students who take advantage of online education are under less stress than those who do not.

WARRANT

The warrant is the inference that links the claim with the grounds. The warrant is often an unstated assumption. Ideally, the warrant should be an idea with which your readers will agree. (If they do not agree with it, you will need to supply backing.)

Online education is a valuable educational option.

BACKING

The backing consists of statements that support the warrant.

My own experience with online education was positive. Not only did it enable me to schedule classes around my job but it also enabled me to work at my own pace in my courses.

QUALIFIERS

The qualifiers are statements that limit the claim. For example, they can be the real-world conditions under which the claim is true. These qualifiers can include words such as most, few, some, sometimes, occasionally, often, and usually.

Online education should be a required part of most students’ education.

REBUTTALS

The rebuttals are exceptions to the claim. They are counterarguments that identify the situations where the claim does not hold true.

Some people argue that online education deprives students of an interactive classroom experience, but a course chat room can give students a similar opportunity to interact with their classmates.

EXERCISE 6.3 PLANNING A TOULMIN ARGUMENT

Look through this book’s table of contents, and select an At Issue topic that interests you (ideally, one that you know something about). Write a sentence that states your position on this issue. (In terms of Toulmin argument, this statement is the claim.)

Then, supply as many of the expanded Toulmin model elements as you can, consulting the preceding description of these elements.

Claim:

Grounds:

Warrant:

Backing:

Qualifiers:

Rebuttals:

Writing Toulmin Arguments

One of the strengths of the Toulmin model is that it recognizes that effective arguments often involve more than stating ideas in absolute terms. Unlike the classical model of argument, the Toulmin model encourages writers to make realistic and convincing points by including claims and qualifiers and by addressing opposing arguments in down-to-earth and constructive ways. In a sense, this method of constructing an argument reminds writers that arguments do not exist in a vacuum. They are often quite subtle and are aimed at real readers who may or may not agree with them.

In general, a Toulmin argument can be organized in the following way:

INTRODUCTION

Introduces the problem

States the claim (and possibly the qualifier)

BODY

Possibly states the warrant

Presents the backing that supports the warrant

Presents the grounds that support the claim

Presents the conditions of rebuttal

States the qualifiers

CONCLUSION

Brings the argument to a close

Strong concluding statement reinforces the claim

EXERCISE 6.4 ANALYZING A TOULMIN ARGUMENT

The following student essay, which includes all the elements of a Toulmin argument, was written in response to the question, “Are cheerleaders athletes?” After you read the essay, answer the questions on page 204, consulting the preceding outline if necessary.

COMPETITIVE CHEERLEADERS ARE ATHLETES

JEN DAVIS

A Student’s essay, titled ’Competitive cheerleaders are athletes,’ by JEN DAVIS, has annotations within parentheses.

Text reads as follows:

First paragraph: Recently, the call to make competitive cheerleading an official college sport and to recognize cheerleaders as athletes has gotten stronger. Critics of this proposal maintain that cheerleading is simply entertainment that occurs on the sidelines of real sporting events. According to them, although cheerleading may show strength and skill, it is not a competitive activity. This view of cheerleading, however, misses the point. Because competitive cheerleading pits teams against each other in physically and technically demanding athletic contests, it should be recognized as a sport. For this reason, those who participate in the sport of competitive cheerleading should be considered athletes (a corresponding margin note reads, Claim and qualifier).

Second paragraph: Acknowledging them as athletes gives them the respect and support they deserve (a corresponding margin note reads, Warrant). Many people associate cheerleading with pom- poms and short skirts and ignore the strength and skill that the competitive version requires (a corresponding margin note reads, Backing). After all, cheerleaders are supposed to be cheering on boys and men who play “real” sports, right? (A corresponding margin note reads, Ground.) Part of the problem is a stereotype from cheerleading in the National Football League, which “essentially comprises of dance routines performed by scantily clad women in glittery boots” (Pant). Not surprisingly then (and much like athletes in other female-dominated sports), cheerleaders have had to fight to be taken seriously. For example, Title IX, the law that mandates gender equity in college sports, does not recognize competitive cheerleading as a sport. This situation assumes a very narrow definition of sports, one that needs to be updated. For example, note how women’s versions of long-accepted men’s sports—such as basketball, soccer, and track—are easy for people to respect and to [text continues on the next page].

The continuation of the essay, from the previous page, with annotations in parentheses.

Second paragraph continues as follows:

support. Competitive cheerleading, however, departs from this model and is not seen as a sport even though those who compete in it are skilled, accomplished athletes. Moreover, they do so at considerable physical risk: while overall injuries in the sport are low, college cheerleaders have the highest catastrophic injury rate (Lundy).

Third paragraph: Recent proposals to rename competitive cheerleading “stunt” or “team acrobatics and tumbling” are an effort to reshape people’s ideas about what cheerleaders actually do (a corresponding margin note reads, Backing). Although some cheerleading squads have kept to their original purpose—to lead fans in cheering on their teams—competitive teams practice rigorously, maintain impressive levels of physical fitness, and risk serious injuries (a corresponding margin note reads, Grounds). Like other sports, competitive cheerleading involves extraordinary feats of strength and skill. Cheerleaders perform elaborate floor routines and ambitious stunts, including flips from multilevel human pyramids. Competitive cheerleaders also do what all athletes must do: they enter competitive contests, are judged, and emerge as winners or losers.

Fourth paragraph: Those in authority, however, are slow to realize that cheerleading is a sport. In 2010, a federal judge declared that competitive cheerleading was “too underdeveloped and disorganized” to qualify as a legitimate varsity sport under Title IX (Tigay). This ruling was shortsighted. Before competitive cheerleading can develop as a sport, it needs to be acknowledged as a sport. Without their schools’ financial support, cheerleading teams cannot recruit, offer scholarships, or host competitions. To address this situation, several national groups are asking the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to designate competitive cheerleading as an “emerging sport.” By doing this, the NCAA would show its support and help competitive cheerleading to develop and eventually to flourish. This does not mean, however, that all cheerleaders are athletes or that all cheerleading is a sport. In addition, the NCAA does have reason to be cautious when it comes to redefining competitive cheerleading. Some schools have taken sideline cheerleading teams and recategorized them just so they could comply with Title IX. These efforts to sidestep the purpose of the law are, as one expert puts it, “obviously transparent and unethical” (Tigay) (a corresponding margin note reads, Qualifiers). Even so, fear of possible abuse should not keep the NCAA from doing what is right and giving legitimate athletes the respect and support they deserve.

The continuation of the essay, from the previous page, with annotations in parentheses.

Fifth Paragraph:

Competitive cheerleaders are athletes in every sense of the word. They are aggressive, highly skilled, physically fit competitors. For this reason, they deserve to be acknowledged as athletes under Title IX and supported by their schools and by the NCAA. Biased and outdated ideas about what is (and what is not) a sport should not keep competitive cheerleading from being recognized as the sport it is. As one proponent puts it, “If someone tries to tell you that cheerleading is not a sport, send [him or her] to a college-level competition and ask if their favorite professional athlete could do that” (Ruder). It is time to give competitive cheerleaders the support and recognition they deserve (a corresponding margin note reads, Concluding statement).

Works Cited

Lundy, John. “’A Risk You Take’: Cheerleaders Face Possibility of Catastrophic Injuries.” West Central Tribune, 8 Feb. 2018, www .wctrib.com/sports/other/4399147-risk-you-take-cheerleaders-face -possibility-catastrophic-injuries.

Pant, Bhavya. “To Cheer or Not to Cheer.” Massachusetts Daily

Collegian, University of Massachusetts, 3 Apr. 2018, dailycollegian.com/2018/04/to-cheer-or-not-to-cheer/.

Ruder, Rebecca. “Cheerleading Is a Sport.” Western Courier, 15 Sept.

2017, westerncourier.com/38687/opinions/cheerleading-is-a-sport/.

Tigay, Chanan. “Is Cheerleading a Sport Protected by Title IX?” CQ

Researcher, 25 Mar. 2011, p. 276. library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2011032500.

Identifying the Elements of a Toulmin Argument

1. Summarize the position this essay takes as a three-part argument that includes the claim, the grounds, and the warrant.

2. Do you think the writer includes enough backing for her claim? What other supporting evidence could she have included?

3. Find the qualifier in the essay. How does it limit the argument? How else could the writer have qualified the argument?

4. Do you think the writer addresses enough objections to her claim? What other arguments could she have addressed?

5. Based on your reading of this essay, what advantages do you think Toulmin logic offers to writers? What disadvantages does it present?

Understanding Oral Arguments

Many everyday arguments—in school, on the job, or in your community—are presented orally. In many ways, an oral argument is similar to a written one: it has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion, and it addresses and refutes opposing points of view. In other, more subtle ways, however, an oral argument is different from a written one. Before you plan and deliver an oral argument, you should be aware of these differences.

The major difference between an oral argument and a written one is that an audience cannot reread an oral argument to clarify information. Listeners have to understand an oral argument the first time they hear it. To help your listeners, you need to design your presentation with this limitation in mind, considering the following guidelines:

§ An oral argument should contain verbal signals that help guide listeners. Transitional phrases such as “My first point,” “My second point,” and “Let me sum up” are useful in oral arguments, where listeners do not have a written text in front of them. They alert listeners to information to come and signal shifts from one point to another.

§ An oral argument should use simple, direct language and avoid long sentences. Complicated sentences that contain elevated language and numerous technical terms are difficult for listeners to follow. For this reason, your sentences should be straightforward and easy to understand.

§ An oral argument should repeat key information. A traditional rule of thumb for oral arguments is, “Tell listeners what you’re going to tell them; then tell it to them; finally, tell them what you’ve told them.” In other words, in the introduction of an oral argument, tell your listeners what they are going to hear; in the body, discuss your points, one at a time; and finally, in your conclusion, restate your points. This intentional repetition ensures that your listeners follow (and remember) your points.

§ An oral argument should include visuals. Visual aids can make your argument easier to follow. You can use visuals to identify your points as you discuss them. You can also use visuals—for example, charts, graphs, or tables—to clarify or reinforce key points as well as to add interest. Carefully selected visuals help increase the chances that what you are saying will be remembered.

Planning an Oral Argument

The work you do to plan your presentation is as important as the presentation itself. Here is some advice to consider as you plan your oral argument:

1. Choose your topic wisely. Select a topic that is somewhat controversial so listeners will want to hear your views. You can create interest in a topic, but it is easier to appeal to listeners if they are already interested in what you have to say. In addition, try to choose a topic that you know something about. Even though you will probably have to do some research, the process will be much easier if you are already familiar with the basic issues.

2. Know your audience. Consider your audience and its needs before you begin to plan your presentation. For example, how much do listeners already know about your topic? Are they well informed, or do they know little about it? If listeners are unfamiliar with your topic, you will have to supply background information and definitions of key terms. If they already know a lot, you can dispense with this material and discuss your subject in more depth. Also, assess your audience members’ likely response to your presentation. Will they be receptive? Hostile? Neutral? The answers to these questions will help you decide which arguments will most likely be effective (and which will not).

3. Know your time limit. Most oral presentations have a time limit. If you run over your allotted time, you risk boring or annoying your listeners. If you finish too soon, it will seem as if you don’t know much about your subject. As you prepare your argument, include all the information that you can cover within your time limit. Keep in mind that you will not be able to go into as much detail in a short speech as you will in a long speech, so plan accordingly.

A photo shows a young man demonstrating a PowerPoint presentation. A margin note reads, Visual aids can help listeners follow an oral presentation.

4. Identify your thesis statement. Like a written argument, an oral argument should have a debatable thesis statement. Keep this statement simple, and make sure that it clearly conveys your position. Remember that in an oral argument, your listeners have to understand your thesis the first time they hear it. (See Chapter 7 for more on developing a thesis statement.)

5. Gather support for your thesis. Assume that your listeners are skeptical, that is, that they are not easily convinced. Even if you think that your audience is friendly, you still need to make a persuasive case. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that listeners will automatically accept all your ideas just because they agree with your main point. For this reason, you need to support your thesis with compelling evidence if you expect listeners to conclude that your position is valid. Supporting evidence can be in the form of facts, observations, expert opinion, and statistics. Some of your support can come from your own experiences, but most will come from your research.

6. Acknowledge your sources. Remember that all of the information you get from your research needs to be acknowledged. As you deliver your presentation, let listeners know where the information you are using comes from—for example, “According to a 2020 editorial in the New York Times . . .” or “As Kenneth Davis says in his book America’s Hidden History. . . .” This strategy enhances your credibility by showing that you are well informed about your topic. (Including source information also helps you protect yourself from unintentional plagiarism. See Chapter 11.)

7. Prepare your speaking notes. Effective speakers do not read their speeches. Instead, they prepare speaking notes—often on index cards—that list the points they want to make. (Microsoft’s PowerPoint, as well as some other presentation software packages, has a section on each slide for speaking notes. Although the notes are displayed on the computer screen, they are not visible to the audience.) These notes guide you as you speak, so you should make sure that there are not too many of them and that they contain just key information. (If you use note cards, it is a good idea to number them so that you can be sure that they are in the correct order.)

8. Prepare visual aids. Visual aids help you to communicate your thesis and your supporting points more effectively. Visuals increase interest in your presentation, and they also strengthen your argument by reinforcing your points and making them easier for listeners to follow and to understand. In addition, visuals can help establish your credibility and thus improve the persuasiveness of your argument.

o You can use the following types of visual aids in your presentations:

§ Diagrams

§ Photographs

§ Slides

§ Smartboards, flip charts

§ Overhead transparencies

§ Document cameras

§ Handouts, objects

Four images show the different types of visual aids used in a presentation.

The first image shows two sheets of paper, and the second image shows six PowerPoint slides with figures and text. The third image shows an infographic, and the fourth image shows a camera.

In addition to these kinds of visual aids, you can also use presentation software, such as Microsoft’s PowerPoint or the web-based application Prezi (Prezi.com). With presentation software, you can easily create visually appealing and persuasive slides. You can insert scanned photographs or drawings into slides, or you can cut and paste charts, graphs, and tables into them. You can even include YouTube videos and MP3 files. Keep in mind, however, that the images, videos, or sound files that you use must support your thesis; if they are irrelevant, they will distract or confuse your listeners. (See pp. 216—218 for examples of PowerPoint slides.)

9. Practice your presentation. As a general rule, you should spend as much time rehearsing your speech as you do preparing it. In other words, practice, practice, practice. Be sure you know the order in which you will present your points and when you will move from one visual to another. Rehearse your speech aloud with your speaking notes and your visuals until you are confident that you can get through your presentation effectively. Try to anticipate any problems that may arise with your visuals, and solve them at this stage of the process. If possible, practice your speech in the room in which you will actually deliver it. Bring along a friend, and ask for feedback. Finally, cut or add material as needed until you are certain that you can stay within your time limit.

CHECKLIST

Designing and Displaying Visuals

· Use images that are large enough for your audience to see and that will reproduce clearly.

· Make lettering large enough for your audience to see. Use 40- to 50-point type for titles, 25- to 30-point type for major points, and 20- to 25-point type for less important points.

· Use bulleted lists, not full sentences or paragraphs.

· Put no more than three or four points on a single visual.

· Make sure there is a clear contrast between your lettering and the background.

· Don’t show your listeners the visual before you begin to speak about it. Display the visual only when you discuss it.

· Face your listeners when you discuss a visual. Even if you point to the screen, always look at your listeners. Never turn your back on your audience.

· Introduce and discuss each visual. Don’t simply show or read the visual to your audience. Always tell listeners more than they can read or see for themselves.

· Don’t use elaborate visuals or special effects that will distract your audience.

EXERCISE 6.5 PLANNING AN ORAL ARGUMENT

Look through the table of contents of this book, and select three At Issue topics that interest you. Imagine that you are planning to deliver an oral argument to a group of college students on each of these topics. For each topic, list three visual aids you could use to enhance your presentation.

Delivering Oral Arguments

Delivery is the most important part of a speech. The way you speak, your interaction with the audience, your posture, and your eye contact all affect your overall presentation. In short, a confident, controlled speaker will have a positive impact on an audience, while a speaker who fumbles with note cards, speaks in a shaky voice, or seems disorganized will lose credibility. To make sure that your listeners see you as a credible, reliable source of information, follow these guidelines:

1. Accept nervousness. For most people, nervousness is part of the speech process. The trick is to convert this nervousness into energy that you channel into your speech. The first step in dealing with nervousness is to make sure that you have rehearsed enough. If you have prepared adequately, you will probably be able to handle any problem you may encounter. If you make a mistake, you can correct it. If you forget something, you can fit it in later.

DEALING WITH NERVOUSNESS

If nervousness is a problem, the following strategies can help you to relax:

§ Breathe deeply. Take a few deep breaths before you begin speaking. Research has shown that increased oxygen has a calming effect on the brain.

§ Use visualization. Imagine yourself delivering a successful speech, and fix this image in your mind. It can help dispel anxiety.

§ Empty your mind. Consciously try to eliminate all negative thoughts. Think of your mind as a room full of furniture. Imagine yourself removing each piece of furniture until the room is empty.

§ Drink water. Before you begin to speak, take a few sips of water. Doing so will eliminate the dry mouth that is a result of nervousness. Don’t, however, drink water during your speech.

§ Keep things in perspective. Remember, your speech is a minor event in your life. Nothing that you do or say will affect you significantly.

2. Look at your audience. When you speak, look directly at the members of your audience. At the beginning of the speech, make eye contact with a few audience members who seem to be responding positively. As your speech progresses, look directly at as many audience members as you can. Try to sweep the entire room. Don’t focus excessively on a single person or on a single section of your audience.

3. Speak naturally. Your presentation should sound like a conversation, not a performance. This is not to suggest that your presentation should include slang, ungrammatical constructions, or colloquialisms; it should conform to the rules of standard English. The trick is to maintain the appearance of a conversation while following the conventions of public speaking. Achieving this balance takes practice, but it is a goal worth pursuing.

4. Speak slowly. When you give a presentation, you should speak more slowly than you do in normal conversation. This strategy gives listeners time to process what they hear—and gives you time to think about what you are saying.

5. Speak clearly and correctly. As you deliver your presentation, speak clearly. Do not drop tense endings, and be careful to pronounce words correctly. Look up the pronunciation of unfamiliar words in a dictionary, or ask your instructor for help. If you go though an entire speech pronouncing a key term or a name incorrectly, your listeners will question your competence.

6. Move purposefully. As you deliver your speech, don’t pace, move your hands erratically, or play with your note cards. Try to stand in one spot, with both feet flat on the floor. Move only when necessary—for example, to point to a visual or to display an object. If you intend to distribute printed material to your listeners, do so only when you are going to discuss it. (Try to arrange in advance for someone else to give out your handouts.) If you are not going to refer to the material in your presentation, wait until you have finished your speech before you distribute it. Depending on the level of formality of your presentation and the size of your audience, you may want to stand directly in front of your audience or behind a podium.

7. Be prepared for the unexpected. Don’t get flustered if things don’t go exactly as you planned. If you forget material, work it in later. If you make a mistake, correct it without apologizing. Most of the time, listeners will not realize that something has gone wrong unless you call attention to it. If someone in the audience looks bored, don’t worry. You might consider changing your pace or your volume, but keep in mind that the person’s reaction might have nothing to do with your presentation. He or she might be tired, preoccupied, or just a poor listener.

8. Leave time for questions. End your presentation by asking if your listeners have any questions. As you answer questions, keep in mind the following advice:

§ Be prepared. Make sure you have anticipated the obvious counterarguments to your position, and be prepared to address them. In addition, prepare a list of websites or other resources that you can refer your audience to for more information.

§ Repeat a question before you answer it. This technique enables everyone in the audience to hear the question, and it also gives you time to think of an answer.

§ Keep control of interchanges. If a questioner repeatedly challenges your answer or monopolizes the conversation, say that you will be glad to discuss the matter with him or her after your presentation is finished.

§ Be honest. Answer questions honestly and forthrightly. If you don’t know the answer to a question, say so. Tell the questioner you will locate the information that he or she wants and send it by email. Above all, do not volunteer information that you are not sure is correct.

§ Use the last question to summarize. When you get to the last question, end your answer by restating the main point of your argument.

A student is giving a presentation to a small group.

Four others are sitting together and watching the student explain. The student points to a diagram on the whiteboard while looking at one of the students. One of them is taking down notes. A caption reads: Remember to project confidence and control as you speak.

Composing an Oral Argument

The written text of an oral argument is organized just as any other argument is: it has an introduction that gives the background of the issue and states the thesis, it has a body that presents evidence that supports the thesis, it identifies and refutes arguments against the thesis, and it ends with a concluding statement.

In general, an oral argument can be structured in the following way:

INTRODUCTION

Presents the background of the issue

States the thesis

BODY

Presents evidence: Point 1 in support of the thesis

Presents evidence: Point 2 in support of the thesis

Presents evidence: Point 3 in support of the thesis

Refutes opposing arguments

CONCLUSION

Brings the argument to a close

Concluding statement restates thesis

Speaker asks for questions

EXERCISE 6.6 ANALYZING AN ORAL ARGUMENT

The following oral argument was presented by a student in a speech course in response to the assignment, “Argue for or against the advantages of a ’gap year’ between high school and college.” (Her PowerPoint slides appear at the end of the speech.) After you read this argument, answer the questions on page 219, consulting the preceding outline if necessary.

AN ARGUMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE “GAP YEAR”

CHANTEE STEELE

A response to “Argue for or against the advantages of a ’gap year’ by CHANTEE STEELE.

Text reads as follows:

First paragraph: College: even the word sounded wonderful when I was in high school. Everyone told me it would be the best time of my life. They told me that I would take courses in exciting new subjects and that I’d make lifelong friends. [Show slide 1 .] What they didn’t tell me was that I would be anxious, confused, and uncertain about my major and about my future. Although this is only my second year in college, I’ve already changed my major once, and to be honest, I’m still not sure I’ve made the right decision. But during the process of changing majors, my adviser gave me some reading material that included information about a “gap year.” A gap year is a year off between high school and college when students focus on work or community service and learn about themselves—something that would have benefited me. Although gaining popularity in the United States, the gap year still suggests images of spoiled rich kids who want to play for a year before going to college. According to educator Christina Wood, however, in the United Kingdom a gap year is common; it is seen as a time for personal growth that helps students mature (Wood 36 ). [Show slide 2 .] In fact, 230,000 British students take a gap year before going to college. As the rest of my speech will show, a well-planned gap year gives students time to mature, to explore potential careers, and to volunteer or travel (a corresponding margin note reads, Thesis statement).

Second paragraph: [Show slide 3 .] Apparently I’m not alone in my uncertainty about my major or about my future (a corresponding margin note reads, Evidence: Point 1 in support of thesis). The Educational Advisory Board estimates that between 75 percent and 85 percent of college students will switch majors at least once (Venit). As they go from high school to college, most students have little time to think about what to do with their lives. A gap year before college would give them time to learn more about themselves. According to Abigail Falik and Linda Frey, “The gap year has become increasingly popular with admissions leaders, who have witnessed firsthand its positive impact on students and campus culture” (Falik and Frey). A year off provides many students with the perspective they need to mature and to feel more confident about their decisions. It’s also a choice that very few students regret, as those who take time [text continues on the next page].

The continuation of the response, from the previous page, with annotations in parentheses.

Second paragraph continues as follows:

off overwhelmingly report that the experience increased their maturity and confidence (Hirsch).

Third paragraph: (A margin note corresponding to the paragraph reads, Evidence: Point 2 in 3 Support of thesis) The gap year gives students many options to explore before going to college. [Show slide 4.] This slide shows just some of the resources students can use as they prepare for their gap year. As you can see, they can explore opportunities for employment, education, and volunteer work. There are even resources for students who are undecided. The key is to make the year both “purposeful and practical” (Falik and Frey). Ideally, it should be challenging and allow students to build new skills; it should also include elements of service to others, as well as a balance between freedom and guidance from a mentor (Falik and Frey). That may include studying abroad in an exchange program or even working a full-time job to save money for tuition (Jones).

Fourth paragraph: (A margin note corresponding to the paragraph reads, Evidence: Point 3 in 4 Support of thesis) Taking a gap year can also help students to get into better colleges. According to an article by the dean of admissions at Harvard, “Occasionally students are admitted to Harvard or other colleges in part because they accomplished something unusual during a year off” (Fitzsimmons, McGrath, and Ducey). Depending on the scope of their service or work, a gap year could enable students to earn scholarships that they were not eligible for before. In fact, some colleges actually recommend that students take time off after high school. Harvard is one of several U.S. colleges that “encourages admitted students to defer enrollment for one year to travel, pursue a special project or activity, work, or spend time in another meaningful way” (Fitzsimmons, McGrath, and Ducey). Furthermore, evidence shows that a gap year can help students to be more successful after they begin in college. One Middlebury College admissions officer has calcuLATed that “a single gap semester was the strongest predictor of academic success at his school” (Bull 7). Given this support for the gap year and given the resources that are now available to help students plan it, the negative attitudes about it in the United States are beginning to change.

Fifth paragraph: (A margin note corresponding to the paragraph reads, Refutation of opposing 5 arguments) In spite of these benefits, parental concerns about “slackerdom” and money are common. Supporters of the gap year acknowledge that students have to be motivated to make the most of their experiences. Clearly, the gap year is not for everyone. For example, students who are not selfmotivated may not benefit from a gap year. In addition, parents worry about how much money the gap year will cost them. This is a real concern when [text continues on the next page].

The continuation of the response, from the previous page, with annotations in parentheses.

Fifth paragraph continues as follows:

you add the year off to the expense of four years of college (Wood 37). However, if finances are a serious concern, students can spend their gap year working in their own communities or taking advantage of a paid experience like AmeriCorps—which, as the AmeriCorps website shows, covers students’ room and board and offers an educational stipend after students complete the program. [Show slide 5.] Additionally, parents and students should consider the time and money that is wasted when a student who is not ready for college starts school and then drops out.

After considering the benefits of a gap year, I have concluded that more students should postpone college for a year. Many students (like me) are uncertain about their goals. We welcome new opportunities and are eager to learn from new experiences and may find a year of service both emotionally and intellectually rewarding. Given another year to mature, many of us would return to school with a greater sense of purpose, focus, and clarity. In some cases, the gap year could actually help us get into better schools and possibly get more financial aid. If we intend to take the college experience seriously, spending a gap year learning about our interests and abilities would help us to become better, more confident, and ultimately more focused students. [Show slide 6.] Are there any questions? (A corresponding margin note reads, Concluding statement.)

Works Cited Bull, Holly. “Navigating a Gap Year.” TeenLife, Feb. 2011, pp. 6—9. Falik, Abigail, and Linda Frey. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 June 2018, www.chronicle.com/article/The-Best-Freshman-Year-Is-a/243563. Fitzsimmons, William, et al. “Time Out or Burn Out for the Next

Generation.” Harvard College Office of Admissions, 2011, college.harvard.edu/admissions/preparing-college/should-i-take-time.

Hirsch, Leni M. G. “Ready, Set, Don’t Go.” The Harvard Crimson, 15 Apr.

2016, www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/4/15/take-a-gap-year/.

Venit, Ed. “How LATe Is Too LATe? Myths and Facts about the Consequences of Switching College Majors.” Student Success Collaborative,

Education Advisory Board, 29 Aug. 2018, www.eab.com/-/media/EAB/Technology/Student-Success-Collaborative/Success-Pages/EAB_Major%20Switching%20Myths%20and%20Facts.pd.

Wood, Christina. “Should You Take a ’Gap Year’?” Careers and Colleges,

Fall 2007, pp. 36—37.

A photo on the slide shows a young man looking at the screen of a laptop. He is supporting his head with both his hands, while his elbows are resting on the table.

A slide with text that reads, 230,000 students between 18 and 25 take a Gap year in the U. K. m dash Tom Griffiths, founder and director of Gap year dot com. (quoted in Christina Wood, open quotes Should you take a ’Gap Year’?, close quotes — Careers and Colleges, Fall 2007)

A slide with text that reads, 50 percent of students change their major at least once. M dash National Research Center for College and University Admissions.

A slide with text that is titled, A few links for the potential open quotes Gapster close quotes (links from Holly Bull, open quotes The possibilities of the Gap year, close quotes Chronicle of Higher Education 52.44 [2006])

Text below the title reads:

Employment

Cool Works: Cool Works dot com (domestic jobs)

Working abroad: Working abroad dot o r g (job overseas)

Education

Global Routes: Global routes dot o r g (semester-long courses)

Sea-mester: Sea mester dot com (sea voyage programs)

Volunteer Work

Ameri Corps: Ameri Corps dot g o v

City Year: City year dot o r g

Thoughtful Texts for Fence Sitters

Karl Haigler and Rae Nelson, The Gap-Year Advantage (Macmillan, 2005)

Colin Hall, Taking Time Off (Princeton Review, 2003)

Charlotte Hindle and Joe Bindloss, The Gap Year Book (Lonely Planet, 2005)

A slide numbered five shows the web page of Corporation for National and Community Service.

Text reads as follows:

The top left of the page reads, Corporation for National and Community Service, and the top right shows social media icons.

The tabs read, Programs, Focus Areas, Special Initiatives, Newsroom, National Service Blog, Knowledge Networks, and About C N C S. The left pane shows the following: Our Programs. Ameri Corps: Join Ameri Corps, I'm ready to serve, Ameri States/Ranking National Service Nationwide, Operation Ameri Corps, Resilience Ameri Corps, Ameri Corps 20th Anniversary: a recap, Ameri Corps N C C C, FEMA Corps, Ameri Corps VISTA, Ameri Corps State and National, Current Members, For Alumni, Segal Ameri Corps Educational Award, S T E M Ameri Corps, Ameri Corps F A Qs, Ameri Corps Week.

The center pane shows the logo of Ameri Corps with a text reading Ameri Corps State and National Competitive Grants F Y 2016. This is followed by a text with two images: one shows a man squatting and smiling, and the other shows a man and a woman in uniform showing their arm muscles. The text reads, Ameri Corps Ameri Corps engages more than 75,000 Americans in intensive service each year at nonprofits, schools, public agencies, and community and faith-based groups across the country. Since the program’s founding in 1994, more than 900,000 Ameri Corps members have contributed more than 1.2 billion hours in service across America while tackling pressing problems and mobilizing millions of volunteers for the organization they serve. Ameri Corps Programs Ameri Corps programs do more than more communities forward; they serve their members by creating jobs and providing pathways to opportunity for young people entering the workforce. Ameri Corps places thousands of young adults into intensive service positions where they learn valuable work skills, earn money for education, and develop an appreciation for citizenship. The right pane reads, Join Ameri Corps! Use this search to find Ameri Corps national service opportunities that are suited to your particular skills, interests, and circumstances. Two boxes are shown below. The first box, Tell us your interests, reads, Select Interest. The second text box, Choose where to serve, reads, Select State. Another text box labeled Find opportunities now is followed by Advanced search. An image of an envelope falling into a slit is accompanied by the text Ameri Corps Updates.

A slide numbered six shows four images of possible international activities.

The first image shows two people climbing a mountain. Many tourists standing at the foot of the mountain in mountaineering clothes watch on. A number of ropes are suspended from the mountain tops. Some of the men are holding the ropes and looking at the mountain tops.

The second image shows a portion of Lonely planet's travel book guide with images. It reads, New York City, New Zealand, Hawaii, Australia, Europe on a shoestring, South America on a shoestring, Egypt, South India.

The third image shows five people rafting, wearing life jackets and helmets.

The fourth image shows a young woman with a fully-packed backpack looking at a landscape.

Identifying the Elements of an Oral Argument

An illustration shows a building with a triangular roof and four pillars.

The roof of the building reads, Argument, and the first pillar reads, Thesis.

1. Where does this oral argument include verbal signals to help guide readers?

2. Does this oral argument use simple, direct language? What sections of the speech, if any, could be made simpler?

3. Where does this oral argument repeat key information for emphasis? Is there any other information that you think should have been repeated?

4. What opposing arguments does the speaker identify? Does she refute them convincingly?

5. How effective are the visuals that accompany the text of this oral argument? Are there enough visuals? Are they placed correctly? What other information do you think could have been displayed in a visual?

6. What questions would you ask this speaker at the end of her speech?

READING AND WRITING ABOUT THE ISSUE

Why Are So Few Women in STEM Fields?

A photo shows a scene from the movie Hidden Figures.

The photo shows a large number of well-dressed African American women walking down a corridor wearing identity cards. Octavia Spencer, portrayed as Dorothy Vaughan, is holding an envelope.

Go back to page 191, and reread the At Issue box, which gives background about whether online education is better than classroom instruction. As the following sources illustrate, this question has a number of possible answers.

After you review the sources listed below, you will be asked to answer some questions and to complete some simple activities. This work will help you to understand both the content and the structure of the sources. When you are finished, you will be ready to develop an argument—using one of the three alternative approaches to argument discussed in this chapter—that takes a position on whether online education is better than classroom learning.

SOURCES

Olivia Nicholas, “What Are You Going to Do with That Major?,” page 221

Olga Khazan, “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM,” page 224

Stuart Reges, “Why Women Don’t Code,” page 227

Rosalind C. Barnett and Caryl Rivers, “We’ve Studied Gender and STEM for 25 Years. The Science Doesn’t Support the Google Memo,” page 237

Barbara Oakley, “Why Do Women Shun STEM? It’s Complicated,” page 242

Visual Argument: STEM PSA, page 245

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THAT MAJOR?

OLIVIA NICHOLAS

The following essay appeared in the Whitman Wire, the student newspaper of Whitman College, on February 8, 2018.

The problem is not that we have too few women in STEM; it is that we have too few men in the humanities. Increasing women’s access to STEM is an important and worthy cause, but in our efforts to improve access, we have devalued the humanities. Somehow, for once in our lives, we have forgotten to ask: what about the men?

We’ve known for a while that there is a gender divide in academic disciplines. The national response was to strive to increase the number of women in STEM. In 2011 First Lady Michelle Obama made a speech on the subject: “We need all hands on deck, and that means clearing hurdles for women and girls as they navigate careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.” This call to action is warranted, since many women have certainly been dissuaded from studying STEM, but why is no one talking about increasing the number of men studying the humanities? Because, whether we acknowledge it or not, we have concluded that STEM is more important than the humanities.

At liberal arts colleges, majors are often segmented along gender lines. Women make up a disproportionate share of the humanities majors at liberal arts colleges, while men make up the majority in the hard sciences and mathematics. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s most recent statistics, in 2008, engineering ranked third on the list of most popular majors for men in the United States and 83.2 percent of engineering students were male. Men also make up 82.4 percent of computer and information science majors. Meanwhile, men only made up about 33.8 percent of all liberal arts and sciences, humanities and general studies majors.

Whitman follows this trend. Considering currently declared majors by percentage and eliminating majors with fewer than five people, those with the highest number of men at Whitman are computer science (90 percent male), physics (73 percent), economics (72 percent) and chemistry (71 percent). Meanwhile, the majors with the lowest number of men include race and ethnic studies (0 percent), environmental science-sociology (7 percent), French (11 percent) and English (21 percent). Nine out of the top ten woman-dominated majors at Whitman are in the humanities (with the exception being sociology, which is a social science). Meanwhile, only two of the top ten male-dominated majors at Whitman are in the humanities: philosophy and German.

Paula England and Li Su in an essay from the 2010 book Gender & Society, find that women have contributed to the decrease in major segregation through their decisions to enter male-dominated fields of study, while very few men have chosen to enter woman-dominated fields. So, where are the men?

“The arts and humanities are devalued precisely because women study them.”

Evelyn Fox Keller offers one explanation in her 1985 book Reflections on Gender and Science, where she states that people often associate masculinity with objectivity and femininity with subjectivity. Those fields that are objective and therefore seen as masculine are viewed as more legitimate and worthy, while fields that are subjective and therefore seen as feminine are devalued. The arts and humanities, in other words, are devalued precisely because women study them. One might argue that perhaps men are simply more interested in more objective fields and the fact that society places greater importance on these fields is a mere coincidence. However, England and Li’s findings suggest otherwise. They found that when women do enter previously male-dominated fields, men begin to leave those fields. Men do not want to study fields that women study, not because they are not rigorous or interesting, but because they believe that what interests women is decidedly unimportant.

Currently, women are the majority in American higher education. The U.S. Department of Education states that women make up 56 percent of college students enrolled this fall 2017. As women increase in numbers in higher education, their decisions about disciplinary focus have a greater and greater impact on the colleges and universities they attend. Women’s steady decline in the humanities in favor of social sciences and STEM presents the humanities with the threat of extinction. Women’s turn away from the humanities could very likely be their kiss of death. So, again, I ask: what about the men?

AT ISSUE: WHY ARE SO FEW WOMEN IN STEM FIELDS?

1. Nicholas begins her essay by saying, “The problem is not that we have too few women in STEM; it is that we have too few men in the humanities” (para. 1). Is this statement an example of the either/or fallacy? Explain.

2. According to Nicholas, men are not going into the humanities because they “have concluded that STEM is more important than the humanities” (2). What other explanations might there be for men not studying the humanities?

3. In this essay, where does the claim appear? How is the claim qualified? How does the qualifier set up the rest of the essay?

4. Is Nicholas’s argument aimed primarily at an audience of women in STEM fields or a general audience? How do you know?

5. Throughout her essay, Nicholas supports her argument with statistics. How effective is this support?

6. Consider the following facts:

§ Computer science, biophysics, and physics tend to be male dominated.

§ Neurobiology, environmental biology, and biology of global health tend to be female dominated.

§ Social work, English, and psychology tend to be female dominated.

§ History, economics, and finance tend to be male dominated.

How would Nicholas explain these disparities? How do you?

7. Where does Nicholas address opposing arguments? How effectively does she refute them?

THE MORE GENDER EQUALITY, THE FEWER WOMEN IN STEM

OLGA KHAZAN

This piece first appeared online at TheAtlantic.com on February 18, 2018.

Though their numbers are growing, only 27 percent of all students taking the AP Computer Science exam in the United States are female. The gender gap only grows worse from there: Just 18 percent of American computer-science college degrees go to women. This is in the United States, where many college men proudly describe themselves as “male feminists” and girls are taught they can be anything they want to be.

Meanwhile, in Algeria, 41 percent of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math—or “STEM,” as it’s known—are female. There, employment discrimination against women is rife and women are often pressured to make amends with their abusive husbands.

According to a report I covered a few years ago, Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates were the only three countries in which boys are significantly less likely to feel comfortable working on math problems than girls are. In all of the other nations surveyed, girls were more likely to say they feel “helpless while performing a math problem.”

So what explains the tendency for nations that have traditionally less gender equality to have more women in science and technology than their gender-progressive counterparts do?

According to a new paper published in Psychological Science by the psychologists Gijsbert Stoet, at Leeds Beckett University, and David Geary, at the University of Missouri, it could have to do with the fact that women in countries with higher gender inequality are simply seeking the clearest possible path to financial freedom. And often, that path leads through STEM professions.

The issue doesn’t appear to be girls’ aptitude for STEM professions. In looking at test scores across 67 countries and regions, Stoet and Geary found that girls performed about as well or better than boys did on science in most countries, and in almost all countries, girls would have been capable of college-level science and math classes if they had enrolled in them.

But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries—all except Romania and Lebanon—boys’ best subject was science, and girls’ was reading. (That is, even if an average girl was as good as an average boy at science, she was still likely to be even better at reading.) Across all countries, 24 percent of girls had science as their best subject, 25 percent of girls’ strength was math, and 51 percent excelled in reading. For boys, the percentages were 38 for science, 42 for math, and 20 for reading. And the more gender-equal the country, as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, the larger this gap between boys and girls in having science as their best subject. (The most gender-equal countries are the typical snowy utopias you hear about, like Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Turkey and the United Arab Emirates rank among the least equal, according to the Global Gender Gap Index.)

The gap in reading “is related at least in part to girls’ advantages in basic language abilities and a generally greater interest in reading; they read more and thus practice more,” Geary told me.

What’s more, the countries that minted the most female college graduates in fields like science, engineering, or math were also some of the least gender-equal countries. They posit that this is because the countries that empower women also empower them, indirectly, to pick whatever career they’d enjoy most and be best at.

“Countries with the highest gender equality tend to be welfare states,” they write, “with a high level of social security.” Meanwhile, less gender-equal countries tend to also have less social support for people who, for example, find themselves unemployed. Thus, the authors suggest, girls in those countries might be more inclined to choose STEM professions, since they offer a more certain financial future than, say, painting or writing.

When the study authors looked at the “overall life satisfaction” rating of each country—a measure of economic opportunity and hardship—they found that gender-equal countries had more life satisfaction. The life-satisfaction ranking explained 35 percent of the variation between gender equality and women’s participation in STEM. That correlation echoes past research showing that the genders are actually more segregated by field of study in more economically developed places.

“There’s something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women away from math and science.”

The upshot of this research is neither especially feminist nor especially sad: It’s not that gender equality discourages girls from pursuing science. It’s that it allows them not to if they’re not interested. The findings will likely seem controversial, since the idea that men and women have different inherent abilities is often used as a reason, by some, to argue we should forget trying to recruit more women into the STEM fields. But, as the University of Wisconsin gender-studies professor Janet Shibley Hyde, who wasn’t involved with the study, put it to me, that’s not quite what’s happening here.

“Some would say that the gender STEM gap occurs not because girls can’t do science, but because they have other alternatives, based on their strengths in verbal skills,” she said. “In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less.”

Instead, this line of research, if it’s replicated, might hold useful takeaways for people who do want to see more Western women entering STEM fields. In this study, the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was still larger than the number of women who were graduating with STEM degrees. That means there’s something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women away from math and science, even when those are their best subjects. The women-in-STEM advocates could, for starters, focus their efforts on those would-be STEM stars.

Then again, it could just be that, feeling financially secure and on equal footing with men, some women will always choose to follow their passions, rather than whatever labor economists recommend. And those passions don’t always lie within science.

AT ISSUE: WHY ARE SO FEW WOMEN IN STEM FIELDS?

1. A paradox is an absurd or self-contradictory statement that could possibly be true. In what sense is Khazan’s thesis a paradox?

2. In paragraph 4, Khazan asks a question. What function does this question have in her essay?

3. Speaking of the research done by Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary, Khazan says, “The upshot of this research is neither especially feminist nor especially sad” (para. 12). What does she mean? Why, according to Khazan, are their findings controversial?

4. Should Khazan have provided more details about Stoet and Geary’s study? For example, how many children did they interview? Were the samples randomly chosen? How did they measure “overall life satisfaction” (11)? Explain.

5. In her concluding paragraphs, Kazan uses the following phrases:

§ “Some would say. . . .” (13)

§ “Instead, this line of research, if it’s replicated. . . .” (14)

§ “Then again, it could just be that. . . .” (15)

§ What do these phrases indicate about Khazan’s assessment of Stoet and Geary’s study?

6. Suppose Khazan wanted to present her ideas in a speech. What parts of the essay would you suggest she expand? What parts would you advise her to condense or delete? What visuals would you suggest she use?

7. Use Toulmin logic to analyze Khazan’s essay, identifying the argument’s claim, its grounds, and its warrant. Does Khazan appeal only to logos, or does she appeal to pathos and ethos? Explain.

WHY WOMEN DON’T CODE

STUART REGES

This essay was posted to the online magazine Quillette on June 19, 2018.

Ever since Google fired James Damore for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace,” those of us working in tech have been trying to figure out what we can and cannot say on the subject of diversity. You might imagine that a university would be more open to discussing his ideas, but my experience suggests otherwise.

For the last ten months I have been discussing this issue at the Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering where I work. I have tried to understand why Damore’s opinions generated such anger and have struggled to decide what I want to do in response. As a result of my attempts to discuss this, our mailing list known as “diversity-allies” is now a moderated list to prevent “nuanced, and potentially hurtful, discussion.” Instead, I have been encouraged to participate in face-to-face meetings that have often been tense, but which have helped me to understand where others are coming from.

I embarked on this journey because I worry that tech companies and universities are increasingly embracing an imposed silence, in which one is not permitted to question the prevailing wisdom on how to achieve diversity goals. I intend to fight this imposed silence and I encourage others to do the same. We can’t allow the Damore incident to establish a precedent. Damore’s Twitter handle briefly claimed that he had been “fired for truth,” but really he was fired for honesty. Those of us who disagree with current diversity efforts need to speak up and share our honest opinions, even if doing so puts us at risk.

Saying controversial things that might get me fired is nothing new for me. I’ve been doing it most of my adult life and usually my comments have generated a big yawn. I experienced a notable exception in a 1991 case that received national attention, when I was fired from Stanford University for “violating campus drug policy” as a means of challenging the assumptions of the war on drugs. My attitude in all of these cases has been that I need to speak up and give my honest opinion on controversial issues. Most often nothing comes of it, but if I can be punished for expressing such ideas, then it is even more important to speak up and try to make the injustice plain.

So let me go once more unto the breach by stating publicly that I believe that women are less likely than men to want to major in computer science and less likely to pursue a career as a software engineer and that this difference between men and women accounts for most of the gender gap we see in computer science degree programs and in Silicon Valley companies.

My Diversity Work

My friends advise me that only someone who has fought for diversity can discuss the state of the movement, so let me describe some details of my 32-year career teaching computer science. I worked for ten years at Stanford managing introductory computer science courses, receiving the Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Service to Undergraduate Education along the way. I spent eight years at the University of Arizona doing similar work where I won the College of Science Distinguished Teaching Award and the Honors College Outstanding Advisor Award. For the last fourteen years I have worked at the University of Washington where I manage introductory computer science courses, winning the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014.

I have been a champion of using undergraduate TAs in introductory programming classes. I set up undergraduate TA programs at Stanford and Arizona that continue to this day and we have a thriving program at UW. I was co-author of an IEEE article entitled, “Broadening Participation: The Why and the How.” My work with introductory courses and undergraduate TAs factored into the selection in 2015 of UW as the inaugural winner of the Excellence in Promoting Women in Undergraduate Computing prize awarded by NCWIT (the National Center for Women & Information Technology).

In my years of teaching nothing has brought me more joy and sense of accomplishment than helping young people discover a love of computer science. Many of them have been men but more often they have been women. I have helped hundreds of women to learn to love computer science and for most it has been life changing.

As a result, I am absolutely convinced that for many years there have been—and even today still are—many women who have not yet discovered the bright future they can have in the field of computer science. Half of the women in our undergraduate major are “interest changers,” which means they weren’t intending to apply to the major when they started our first course. For men the figure is closer to 20 percent, so there is a big gender gap.

In short, I have always been and continue to be a strong advocate of many aspects of the diversity agenda.

The Equality Agenda versus the Equity Agenda

Arguments over diversity have been going on for decades at universities with bitter fights along the way over affirmative action, political correctness, and speech codes. These arguments have acquired renewed urgency as major tech companies have joined the fray in response to increased scrutiny from the media about the lack of diversity in their workforce.

No company has done more than Google to create and share resources in this space. They developed a popular workshop on unconscious bias that has been copied by many other organizations, and they extended those ideas to create a second workshop called “Bias Busters” that many universities have also adopted.

Like most of us who work in tech, I heard mention of these things but didn’t take the time to investigate them. But when Damore was fired, I started looking more closely at the content of these workshops and I found much to criticize. In talking to professional staff who work in this area and students and faculty who are deeply committed to this issue, I have found that there are two visions of diversity and inclusion.

I favor what I call the “equality agenda” in computer science. Advocates of the equality agenda want to see the most talented and passionate individuals joining us regardless of their life circumstances or unalterable characteristics. For us, diversity has its usual dictionary definition of having a variety of individuals, which implies racial, ethnic, and gender diversity but also political and religious diversity. Inclusion involves welcoming a broad range of individuals to consider pursuing computer science as a career. The equality agenda, then, is about encouragement and removal of artificial barriers.

Professionals and activists who work in this area tend to see it differently. For them, diversity involves a commitment to righting the wrongs of the past. Political and religious diversity are not on their list because they don’t represent the immutable characteristics previously used to justify discrimination. They may concede that Damore’s claim that Google has become an echo chamber might be an issue worth addressing, but they will deny that this is a diversity issue. By contrast, working with the LGBTQ community is important because of the historical oppression they have experienced even though there is no evidence that LGBTQ individuals are currently discriminated against in the field.

Their understanding of inclusion is also quite different. Inclusion is about culture, and in a twist worthy of Orwell, inclusion often demands the exclusion of ideas and opinions. Google’s Bias Busters workshop trains people to intervene when they hear examples of bias. Microaggression training fosters inclusion by preparing people to recognize and eliminate small slights that could make some people uncomfortable. Google CEO Sundar Pichai used the word in this sense when he justified Damore’s firing with the observation that, “It’s important for the women at Google, and all the people at Google, that we want to make an inclusive environment.”

The word “equity” has the most variability in how it is understood. For example, Steven Pinker uses the term “equity feminism” to refer to something similar to what I am calling the equality agenda. But among professionals and activists, “equity” has the specific meaning of working to dismantle existing power structures as a way to redress privilege.

I refer to this combination of ideas as the “equity agenda.” While the equality agenda focuses on equality of opportunity, the equity agenda is concerned with outcomes. Its proponents don’t demand equal outcomes but instead use unequal outcomes as evidence that there is more work to be done. So, unless or until we reach perfect gender parity, they will continue to argue for more diversity programs for women.

Why So Much Anger?

When I tried to discuss Damore at my school, I found it almost impossible. As a thought experiment, I asked how we could make someone like Damore feel welcome in our community. The pushback was intense. My question was labeled an “inflammatory example” and my comments were described as “hurtful” to women. When I mentioned that perhaps we could invite Damore to speak at UW, a faculty member responded, “If he comes here, we’ll hurt him.” She was joking, but the sentiment was clear.

One faculty member gave a particularly cogent response. She said, “Is it our job to make someone with those opinions feel welcome? I’m not sure whether academic freedom dictates that.” She argued that because we know that women have traditionally been discriminated against, perhaps it is more important to support them because the environment will not be sufficiently inclusive if they have to deal with someone like Damore. She said it “is up to us” to decide, but that, “choosing to hold a viewpoint does not necessarily give you the right to feel comfortable.”

As Damore mentions in his essay, this issue has acquired a moral dimension, which is why the response is often anger. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind, has described this as elevating certain ideas to a sacred status. In this case, suggesting that men and women are different either in interests or abilities is considered blasphemy. So let me commit some blasphemy.

Men and Women Are Different

As Sundar Pichai said in his memo to employees explaining why he fired Damore, “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.” This is a fairly egregious misrepresentation of what Damore actually wrote, but fortunately we don’t need to turn to biology or Damore for evidence that men and women are different. The gender diversity movement itself has spent the better part of 30 years cataloguing differences between men and women. Indeed, the entire goal of achieving gender diversity makes no sense unless you believe that men and women work in fundamentally different ways.

One of the earliest ideas I encountered was that men believe in their successes and discount their failures while women believe in their failures and discount their successes. If you attend almost any diversity event today you will hear that “stereotype threat” and “imposter syndrome” should be discussed with our students because women disproportionately suffer from these problems. Lack of confidence, therefore, is held to be a particular problem for women.

The diversity literature also discusses how men and women have different priorities, as in this passage from the seminal book Unlocking the Clubhouse by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher:

A critical part of attracting more girls and women to computer science is providing multiple ways to “be in” computer science. Concern for people, family, “balance in life,” novels, and a good night’s sleep should not come at the cost of success in computer science. But the full acceptance of this proposition cuts across the dominant culture of the field.

They claim that men have created a culture that matches their values and interests. How is that possible if men and women don’t differ in fundamental ways?

Diversity advocates have also started claiming that diverse teams perform better. In a CNBC interview discussing her book Own It: The Power of Women at Work, Wall Street veteran Sallie Krawcheck said, “It’s the qualities that women bring to the workforce—not better than the men, but somewhat different than the men—where our holistic decision making, our risk awareness, our relationship orientation skills that we tend to bring are becoming actually more valuable going forward, not less valuable.”

The Oppression Narrative

A dangerous narrative has been taking hold in recent years that the gender gap is mostly the fault of men and the patriarchal organizations they have built to serve their interests. Emily Chang’s new book Brotopia asserts that, “the environment in the tech industry has become toxic for women,” and that, “women have been systematically excluded from the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world and denied a voice in the rapid remolding of our global culture.”

Chang and I clearly know different people because the women I talk to who are working in Silicon Valley are enjoying their experiences as software engineers. Certainly there are bad actors and companies where the culture is broken, but the vast majority of women work at companies that make significant efforts to provide a supportive work experience.

Another example of this false narrative comes from NPR’s Planet Money, which produced a segment entitled “When Women Stopped Coding.” They identify 1984 as the year that “something changed” and they highlight a theory that around that time the personal computer revolution was affecting college campuses. Young men were arriving who had used personal computers young women lacked because families disproportionately bought computers for boys. NPR claims that, “As personal computers became more common, computer science professors increasingly assumed that their students had grown up playing with computers at home,” and includes an anecdote from a woman who had a bad experience in her introductory programming class. I don’t doubt that this woman had a bad experience, but the claim that computer science faculty were gearing their courses towards men with prior experience is simply not true.

I ran the introductory programming courses at Stanford in the 1980s and I met regularly with faculty who taught introductory programming at other schools. We were on a mission to make CS1 a universal course taken by a broad range of students. We loved Rich Pattis’s 1981 book, Karel the Robot, because it was, as it’s subtitle claimed, “A Gentle Introduction to the Art of Computer Programming.” Many schools were experimenting with new courses, new textbooks, and new programming environments, all of which were intended to make it easier for novices to learn how to program.

The NPR piece also noted that we have experienced a slow but steady decrease in women majoring in computer science since 1984. Even as women were taking a greater share of slots in medicine, law, and the physical sciences, they represented a decreasing percentage of computer science degrees. This is consistent with the idea that women simply chose to pursue other interests, but NPR chose to highlight the suggestion that professors teaching introductory courses were creating courses unfriendly to women.

It’s Complicated

The more I study the gender gap in computer science the more I become convinced that there are no simple answers. When I hear a claim or encounter a graph, I find that it takes a great deal of effort to drill down into the details and I almost always end up concluding, “It’s complicated.” This article would become a book if I were to drill down on everything, but the NPR graph provides a nice example of what you find when you dig into the data.

To better understand the level of interest by gender, I used data from the same source, the Digest of Education Statistics put out annually by the National Center for Education Statistics. I computed separate statistics for the percentage of men and women obtaining computing degrees, comparing men against other men and women against other women.

Graphing the data this way allows us to see a phenomenon that those of us who lived through these years understand all too well. Computer science has gone through two major boom and bust cycles in the last 40 years. The idea that men drove women from the field is not supported by the data. There has been no period of time when men have been increasing while women have been decreasing. In 48 of the last 50 years the trend was the same for men and women with the percentage of women going up at the same time that the percentage of men went up and the percentage of women going down when the percentage of men went down. But while the trend has been the same, the magnitude of the response has differed significantly.

In both cycles, men disproportionately reacted to the boom part of the cycle and women disproportionately reacted to the bust. And as the graph illustrates, men are once again responding faster and more forcefully to the new boom we are experiencing today. The cumulative effect of these differences has been devastating for the goal of increasing the participation of women in computer science.

We don’t yet understand why men rush in during the boom years and why women turn away during the bust years, but it seems likely that multiple factors are at work. Men disproportionately respond to economic incentives, so they are more likely to respond favorably to reports of high salaries for tech workers. Women tend, on average, to be more risk averse, and are more likely to respond strongly to negative stories about dwindling job prospects in tech. Perhaps women also react differently to changes in messaging as departments desperate to meet demand during the boom part of the cycle shift from an attitude of welcoming prospective students to one of pushing them away.

The Free Choice Explanation

I suggest a variation of Hanlon’s Razor that one should never attribute to oppression that which is adequately explained by free choice. If men and women are different, then we should expect them to make different choices. In 2010, the National Academy of Sciences published a paper entitled “Understanding Current Causes of Women’s Under-Representation in Science.” As in the NPR piece, the authors describe the great success women have had in other fields:

Since 1970, women have made dramatic gains in science. Today, half of all MD degrees and 52 percent of PhDs in life sciences are awarded to women, as are 57 percent of PhDs in social sciences, 71 percent of PhDs to psychologists, and 77 percent of DVMs to veterinarians. Forty years ago, women’s presence in most of these fields was several orders of magnitude less; e.g., in 1970 only 13 percent of PhDs in life sciences went to women. In the most math-intensive fields, however, women’s growth has been less pronounced.

But they reject discrimination as an explanation:

We conclude that past initiatives to combat discrimination against women in science appear to have been highly successful. Women’s current underrepresentation in math-intensive fields is not caused by discrimination in these domains, but rather to sex differences in resources, abilities, and choices (whether free or constrained).

In 2013, Psychological Science published a paper that explored this question further entitled “Not Lack of Ability but More Choice: Individual and Gender Differences in Choice of Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.” The authors included Jacquelynne Eccles who is well known for a career spanning decades studying student motivation and gender differences.

They concluded that women may choose non-STEM careers because they have academic strengths that many men lack. They found that individuals with high math ability but only moderate verbal ability were the most likely to choose a career in STEM (49 percent) and that this group included more men than women (70 percent men). By contrast, individuals with both high math ability and high verbal ability were less likely to pursue a career in STEM (34 percent) and this group had more women than men (63 percent women). They write that, “Our study provides evidence that it is not lack of ability that causes females to pursue non-STEM careers, but rather the greater likelihood that females with high math ability also have high verbal ability and thus can consider a wider range of occupations.”

In 2018, another paper explored the same question from a different perspective using international data from the PISA survey (the Programme for International Student Assessment). Olga Khazan summarized the paper well in an article for the Atlantic:

The issue doesn’t appear to be girls’ aptitude for STEM professions. In looking at test scores across 67 countries and regions, Stoet and Geary found that girls performed about as well or better than boys did on science in most countries, and in almost all countries, girls would have been capable of college-level science and math classes if they had enrolled in them.

But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries—all except Romania and Lebanon—boys’ best subject was science, and girls’ was reading. (That is, even if an average girl was as good as an average boy at science, she was still likely to be even better at reading.) Across all countries, 24 percent of girls had science as their best subject, 25 percent of girls’ strength was math, and 51 percent excelled in reading. For boys, the percentages were 38 for science, 42 for math, and 20 for reading.

The study found that gender differences increased in countries that have greater gender equality as measured by the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report. They noted that countries with the highest gender equality tend to be “welfare states … with a high level of social security for all its citizens,” which they believe can (influence women’s choices. They describe this as a paradox because it implies that the more progress we make towards achieving the equality agenda, the further we are likely to be from achieving the equity agenda. As Khazan says in the conclusion to her article, “it could just be that, feeling financially secure and on equal footing with men, some women will always choose to follow their passions, rather than whatever labor economists recommend. And those passions don’t always lie within science.”

I was curious to see how this relates to computing degrees, so I checked out the data for the top ten countries in terms of gender equality. Of the eight countries that include statistics for undergraduate degrees, the average percentage of women majoring in computing was 1.9 percent versus 8.2 percent for men. Taking into account the higher number of undergraduate degrees received by women, the Nordic countries which have the highest scores for gender equality (Iceland, Norway, and Finland) are producing computing graduates who are 18.6 percent, 17 percent, and 15.9 percent female, respectively. These percentages are very close to what we see in the United States.

Where Do We Go from Here?

I believe we have reached a significant crossroads in the campaign to increase the representation of women in tech. We have harvested the low-hanging fruit by eliminating overt discrimination and revamping policies and procedures that favored men. Now we more often focus on minutia such as replacing Star Trek posters with travel posters. And yet, the campaign has stalled.

At the University of Washington, we have managed over the last ten years to increase the percentage of women taking our first course from 26 percent to 41 percent and to increase the percentage taking the second course from 18 percent to 31 percent. In the early years, we were able to go from 16 percent women in our major to 30 percent, but we have made no additional progress since. I have heard from friends at Stanford that they have been stalled for several years at 30 percent and a colleague at Princeton reports that they are stuck in the mid-30s for percentages of women. CMU and Harvey Mudd have reported percentages at or above 50 percent, but they have a highly selective student body and have put special emphasis on tweaking admissions criteria and creating special programs for women in computing.

The sad truth is that UW, Stanford, and Princeton are among the best performing schools and part of that success is likely due to being a top-10 department. For most schools, the percentage of women is much lower. Over the last ten years the percentage of undergraduate computing degrees going to women nationwide has bounced around in a tight range, varying from 17.6 percent to 18.7 percent.

“Women can code, but often they don’t want to.”

Computer science departments have never put more attention and resources into the diversity campaign than they have in the last few years, and we have seen a small but steady increase in the percentage of women choosing a computing major, going from 0.9 percent in 2008 to 1.1 percent in 2017. But at the same time, and with no special encouragement from us, the percentage of men choosing a computing major has also increased, going from 5.3 percent in 2008 to 6.4 percent in 2017.

I worry that lack of progress will make us more likely to switch from positive messages about women succeeding in tech to negative stories about men behaving badly in tech, which I think will do more harm than good. Women will find themselves wondering if they should resent men and men will feel guilty for sins committed by other men. Women are not going to find this message appealing and men will find themselves feeling even more awkward around women than they would be otherwise.

Our community must face the difficult truth that we aren’t likely to make further progress in attracting women to computer science. Women can code, but often they don’t want to. We will never reach gender parity. You can shame and fire all of the Damores you find, but that won’t change the underlying reality.

It’s time for everyone to be honest, and my honest view is that having 20 percent women in tech is probably the best we are likely to achieve. Accepting that idea doesn’t mean that women should feel unwelcome. Recognizing that women will be in the minority makes me even more appreciative of the women who choose to join us.

Obviously many people will disagree with my assessment. I have already been told that expressing such ideas is hurtful to women. But it is exactly because I care so much about diversity that I value honesty above politeness. To be effective, we have to commit ourselves to a search for the truth and that search can succeed only if everyone feels comfortable sharing their honest opinions.

In the last ten months I have taken the time to talk to those who disagree with me. I welcome such conversations. I have strong opinions, but I also realize that I could be wrong. The big question is whether there is room in tech for a James Damore or for me when we question basic tenets of the equity agenda. I believe that the uproar over Damore’s firing underscores how extreme his case was. This article will probably produce a big yawn like most of my other controversial stands over the years. If so, then I encourage all of the closet Damores out there to join the discussion and to let people know what you really think.

AT ISSUE: WHY ARE SO FEW WOMEN IN STEM FIELDS?

1. Reges begins his essay by asserting his need to address controversial ideas. He goes on to describe his “32-year career teaching computer science” (para. 6). Why do you think he includes this information before he begins to discuss the gender gap in computer science?

2. In paragraph 13, Reges says that there are “two visions of diversity and inclusion.” What are they? Which one does he favor? Why?

3. In paragraph 21, Reges says that he is going to commit “blasphemy.” To what idea is he referring? Why does he consider this idea blasphemy?

4. What is Reges’s opinion of James Damore? What is his opinion of those who disagree with Damore? What does he think of Sundar Pichai’s decision to fire him? How do you know?

5. Draw a rhetorical triangle (p. 19) that represents the importance of various appeals in this essay. Which appeal does the longest side of the triangle represent? What does the shortest side represent? Do you think this is a good balance?

6. What evidence does Reges present to support his thesis? How convincing is this evidence? Explain.

7. Suppose Reges wanted to present his ideas as a Rogerian argument. How would he have to change his essay?

WE’VE STUDIED GENDER AND STEM FOR 25 YEARS. THE SCIENCE DOESN’T SUPPORT THE GOOGLE MEMO.

ROSALIND C. BARNETT AND CARYL RIVERS

This essay was posted to the technology news website Recode on August 11, 2017.

A Google engineer who was fired for posting an online claim that women’s biology makes them less able than men to work in technology jobs has charged that he is being smeared and is a victim of political correctness.

James Damore, 28, questioned the company’s diversity policies and claimed that scientific data backed up his assertions. Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote that Damore’s 3,300-word manifesto crossed the line by “advancing harmful gender stereotypes” in the workplace. Pichai noted that “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”

Damore argued that many men in the company agreed with his sentiments. That’s not surprising, since the idea that women just can’t hack it in math and science has been around for a very long time. It has been argued that women’s lack of a “math gene,” their brain structures and their inherent psychological traits put most of them out of the game.

Some critics sided with Damore. For example, columnist Ross Douthat of the New York Times found his scientific arguments intriguing.

But are they? What are the real facts? We have been researching issues of gender and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) for more than 25 years. We can say flatly that there is no evidence that women’s biology makes them incapable of performing at the highest levels in any STEM fields.

Many reputable scientific authorities have weighed in on this question, including a major paper in the journal Science debunking the idea that the brains of males and females are so different that they should be educated in single-sex classrooms. The paper was written by eight prominent neuroscientists, headed by professor Diane Halpern of Claremont McKenna College, past president of the American Psychological Association. They argue that “There is no well-designed research showing that single-sex education improves students’ academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism.”

They add, “Neuroscientists have found few sex differences in children’s brains beyond the larger volume of boys’ brains and the earlier completion of girls’ brain growth, neither of which is known to relate to learning.”

Several major books have debunked the idea of important brain differences between the sexes. Lise Eliot, associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School, did an exhaustive review of the scientific literature on human brains from birth to adolescence. She concluded, in her book Pink Brain, Blue Brain. that there is “surprisingly little solid evidence of sex differences in children’s brains.”

Rebecca Jordan-Young, a sociomedical scientist and professor at Barnard College, also rejects the notion that, there are pink and blue brains, and that the differing organization of female and male brains is the key to behavior. In her book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences, she says that this narrative misunderstands the complexities of biology and the dynamic nature of brain development.

And happily, the widely held belief that boys are naturally better than girls at math and science is unraveling among serious scientists. Evidence is mounting that girls are every bit as competent as boys in these areas. Psychology professor Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin—Madison has strong U.S. data showing no meaningful differences in math performance among more than seven million boys and girls in grades 2 through 12.

Also, several large-scale international testing programs find girls closing the gender gap in math, and in some cases outscoring the boys. Clearly, this huge improvement over a fairly short time period argues against biological explanations.

Much of the data that Damore provides in his memo is suspect, outdated, or has other problems.

In his July memo, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber: How bias clouds our thinking about diversity and inclusion,” Damore wrote that women on average have more openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas.” And he stated that women are more inclined to have an interest in “people rather than things, relative to men.”

Damore cites the work of Simon Baron-Cohen, who argues in his widely reviewed book The Essential Difference that boys are biologically programmed to focus on objects, predisposing them to math and understanding systems, while girls are programmed to focus on people and feelings. The British psychologist claims that the male brain is the “systematizing brain” while the female brain is the “empathizing" brain.

This idea was based on a study of day-old babies, which found that the boys looked at mobiles longer and the girls looked at faces longer. Male brains, Baron-Cohen says, are ideally suited for leadership and power. They are hardwired for mastery of hunting and tracking, trading, achieving and maintaining power, gaining expertise, tolerating solitude, using aggression, and taking on leadership roles.

The female brain, on the other hand, is specialized for making friends, mothering gossip, and “reading” a partner. Girls and women are so focused on others, he says, that they have little interest in figuring out how the world works.

But Baron-Cohen’s study had major problems. It was an “outlier” study. No one else has replicated these findings, including Baron-Cohen himself. It is so flawed as to be almost meaningless. Why?

“Media stories continue to promote the idea of very different brains on little evidence.”

The experiment lacked crucial controls against experimenter bias and was badly designed. Female and male infants were propped up in a parent’s lap and shown, side by side, an active person or an inanimate object. Since newborns can’t hold their heads up independently, their visual preferences could well have been determined by the way their parents held them.

There is much literature that flat-out contradicts Baron-Cohen’s study, providing evidence that male and female infants tend to respond equally to people and objects, notes Elizabeth Spelke, co-director of Harvard’s Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative. But media stories continue to promote the idea of very different brains on little evidence.

Damore also claims that women experience more stress and anxiety than men, and that “This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high-stress jobs.”

He implies that stress and anxiety are personality traits inherent in females, but more likely they are due to the pressures and discrimination women face on the job that men do not. For example, a 2008 report sponsored by major companies, “The Athena Factor,” found that women in high positions in male-dominated fields, such as tech, suffer harsher penalties than men when they slip up. Women don’t get second chances. Men do.

One of the report’s authors, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York, notes in the Harvard Business Review that in tech firms, “the way to get promoted is to do a diving catch. Some system is crashing in Bulgaria, so you get on the plane in the middle of the night and dash off and spend the weekend wrestling with routers and come back a hero.”

But what if you don’t make the catch? “Women have a hard time taking on those assignments because you can dive and fail to catch. If a man fails, his buddies dust him off and say, ’It’s not your fault; try again next time.’ A woman fails and is never seen again.”

Add to that conundrum the fact that just getting in the door is harder for a woman than it is for a man.

Her résumé may look exactly like his, but because her name is Mary and not John, she may not get a second look. A review of studies of U.S. decision makers who have the power to hire candidates found that clearly competent men were rated higher than equally competent women. This bias is especially rampant in the high-tech industry. One study, conducted by professors at Columbia, Northwestern, and the University of Chicago, found that two-thirds of managers selected male job candidates, even when the men did not perform as well as the women on math problems that were part of the application process.

Throw in the facts that, according to research, competent men are seen as likeable, while competent women are seen as bitchy, that women get less credit for their accomplishments than men do, that men are often promoted on promise while women get elevated only on the basis of performance, and that sexual harassment is a constant problem for women in tech.

All of these are issues that males simply do not have to face. The “anxiety gap” exists for a reason, and it is not about biology.

Many of Damore’s controversial conclusions rest heavily on one recent study and much older, now-discredited research, ignoring reams of data that tell a very different story. The argument that men, especially affluent men, are more focused on their “male” breadwinner role than on their more “female” family roles, does not reflect either research data or observational data.

For example:

§ Over the past two decades, men in the U.S. are spending more and more time on housework and childcare on both workdays and weekends. Indeed, their time spent on such tasks is close to that spent by their wives, according to the National Study of the Changing Workforce.

§ The psychological well-being of employed married fathers is as closely linked to their family as to their employee roles, according to a study directed by Dr. Barnett.

§ Today, companies are offering more and more paternity leave, because male employees are clamoring for it. Generous leave policies are seen as a recruitment tool, as companies are in an arms race with competitors to attract millennials and retain their best talent.

§ In 2016, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, caused banner headlines when his daughter was born and he took a two-month paternity leave. He set an example for his employees and those of other companies.

And they seem to have noticed. According to SmartAsset.com, “in just the past year … at least 17 big employers have either introduced or expanded paid-leave options for new dads.” They include Hilton, Netflix, Spotify, Microsoft, and Fidelity.

“The rate of expansion is unprecedented,” said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values @ Work.

But many men who would opt for paternity leave hesitate, not because of innate biological dispositions, but because of fear of retribution. Cultural stereotypes exert a powerful effect, punishing men for the caring, family-oriented behavior that they desire. Damore’s article may make it even harder for such men to take the paternity leave they so clearly crave.

The recent history of Sweden’s legislation on paternity leave highlights dramatically the overwhelming role of cultural stereotypes on male parental behavior. It’s not biology at work here, but laws mandating at least two months of the nation’s well-paid, 13-month parental leave exclusively for fathers that have created profound social change.

“In perhaps the most striking example of social engineering, a new definition of masculinity is emerging,” notes the New York Times. Birgitta Ohlsson, European affairs minister, put it this way: “Machos with dinosaur values don’t make the top-10 lists of attractive men in women’s magazines anymore. Now men can have it all—a successful career and being a responsible daddy. It’s a new kind of manly. It’s more wholesome.”

Damore, on the other hand, argues for downplaying empathy in American companies.

Creating more dinosaurs doesn’t seem like a healthy way to go.

AT ISSUE: WHY ARE SO FEW WOMEN IN STEM FIELDS?

1. Why do Barnett and Rivers wait until paragraph 5 to state their thesis? What information do they provide before stating it? Why is this information necessary?

2. At what point in their essay do Barnett and Rivers appeal to ethos? What do they hope to establish with this appeal?

3. According to Barnett and Rivers, “the ’anxiety gap’ exists for a reason” (para. 27). What do they mean?

4. In paragraph 5 Barnett and Rivers say, “there is no evidence that women’s biology makes them incapable of performing at the highest levels in any STEM field.” Do they include enough facts and examples to support this assertion? Could they be accused of making a sweeping generalization? Why or why not?

5. Much of this essay is devoted to refuting James Damore’s Google memo. How do Barnett and Rivers characterize this memo? How effectively do they refute its assertions? (If you wish, go online and read Damore’s memo.)

6. Barnett and Rivers end their essay by saying, “Creating more dinosaurs doesn’t seem like a healthy way to go” (41). To what are they referring? How fair is this statement?

7. Is Barnett and Rivers’s argument primarily inductive or deductive? Why do you think that they chose this structure?

WHY DO WOMEN SHUN STEM? IT’S COMPLICATED

BARBARA OAKLEY

This essay first appeared in the July 13, 2018, issue of the Wall Street Journal.

Why do relatively few women work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics? University of Washington lecturer Stuart Reges—in a provocative essay, “Why Women Don’t Code”—suggests that women’s verbal and analytical skills lead to career choices outside STEM. Mr. Reges’s critics say he is making women feel inferior by implying they aren’t interested in tech. I’m a female engineering professor with decades of experience as well as a background in the humanities and social sciences, so perhaps I can lend some perspective to the controversy.

I’ve observed that women tend to choose disciplines other than STEM, often for the reasons Mr. Reges mentions. Yet his argument is incomplete. An important but often neglected factor is the attitudes of undergraduate professors. Not STEM professors, but professors in the humanities and social sciences.

Professors have profound influence over students’ career choices. I’m sometimes flabbergasted at the level of bias and antagonism toward STEM from professors outside scientific fields. I’ve heard it all: STEM is only for those who enjoy “rote” work. Engineering is not creative. There’s only one right answer. You’ll live your life in a cubicle. It’s dehumanizing. You’ll never talk to anyone. And, of course, it’s sexist. All this from professors whose only substantive experience with STEM is a forced march through a single statistics course in college, if that.

My colleagues in the humanities unthinkingly malign STEM in front of me. Their bias has become so deeply ingrained that they don’t think twice. My students tell me it’s worse when I’m not around. With joking asides during class or more-pointed conversations about careers, the STEM disciplines are caricatured as a gulag for creative types. Even a few untoward remarks like this to students can have profound effects. It’s too bad, because science, technology, engineering, and math can be among the most creative and satisfying disciplines.

Many studies, including a critical review by Elizabeth Spelke in American Psychologist, have shown that on average men and women have the same abilities in math and science. But as Mr. Reges notes, women tend to do better than men verbally—a consequence of early developmental advantages.

How does this alter career choice? A student named Bob might get a C in physics 101 but a D in English composition. His English professor probably won’t try to recruit him into the field. Bob’s choice to become an engineer makes sense because he’s less likely to be good at the social sciences or humanities.

Women who are average in physics classes, on the other hand, are often better at other subjects. When Sara has a C in physics 101, she’s more likely to have a B or even an A in English composition. Her English professor is more likely to recruit her. And, crucially, the “STEM is only for uncreative nerds” characterization can play well here. It can provide a mental boost for Sara to hear a powerful figure like her professor denigrate the subject she’s struggling with.

“Jerks exist in every workplace.”

Even when a professor isn’t working to recruit Sara to the social sciences or humanities, she might be recruiting herself. Grades mean something; if Sara’s working hard to get a C in calculus, but she earns an A in English with less effort, she’s going to experience a powerful pull toward the humanities.

Consider a student who gets an A in every subject. Let’s call her Nadine. She’s the type of student who could excel in whatever she chooses. Her engineering professors might be telling her that an electrical engineering degree is a great career choice that will open doors and pay well. But her non-STEM professors may be telling her something completely different: “You won’t use your fantastic writing skills. And besides, you’ll just sit in a cubicle crunching numbers.” Nadine can begin to feel she’s untrue to her full set of talents if she picks engineering. So Nadine jumps the STEM ship.

What about the women who go into STEM and discover bias in the workplace? Jerks exist in every workplace. Bullying is so prevalent in nursing, for example, that it’s the subject of dozens of studies. “Bullying behaviors fall on a continuum ranging from eye-rolling and exclusion to humiliation, withholding information, scapegoating, intimidation, and backstabbing,” a 2016 article in American Nurse Today notes. “The bully sets out to destroy the victim’s confidence and credibility as a way to gain power and control.”

If I drew a Venn diagram to see the intersection between a jerk and a sexist, it would show almost total overlap—in male-dominated disciplines, that is. It can be easy for a woman who has landed in a toxic software-development environment to say, “There’s horrible bias here!” And she’d be right. But there are toxic pockets in every discipline or field. STEM is no different.

I have experienced bias in my career, but I also would not be where I am today without the strong support of many wonderful men. Women are vitally important to STEM. Professors outside these disciplines should stop mischaracterizing to poach the best students, who are often women. And it’s time for everyone to step back, take a breath, and acknowledge that good and bad bosses and co-workers exist everywhere.

AT ISSUE: WHY ARE SO FEW WOMEN IN STEM FIELDS?

1. Explain the essay’s title.

2. Regarding STEM, how does Oakley characterize students? How does she characterize instructors? Based on your experience, are these characterizations fair? Accurate? Explain.

3. In paragraph 2, Oakley concedes an opposing argument. Why? What weakness does she go on to identify?

4. In her essay, Oakley discusses three hypothetical students. What point (or points) does she make about each one? How effective is this rhetorical strategy? Would her argument have been stronger had she used the experiences of actual students to support her argument? What other kinds of evidence could she have used?

5. Addressing the fact that women in STEM workplaces experience bias, Oakley says, “Jerks exist in every workplace” (para. 10). Should she have done more to address this issue? Explain.

6. Oakley begins her essay by saying that she is a female engineer “with decades of experience” (1). She ends her essay by saying, “I have experienced bias in my career” (12). What does she hope to accomplish by including this personal information?

7. What preconceptions about women in STEM fields does Oakley assume her readers have? How do you know?

VISUAL ARGUMENT: STEM PSA

A book cover reads, Break the stereotype. Be a role model women. Five icons are placed within the text. Four of them represent men and one of them represents a woman.

AT ISSUE: WHY ARE SO FEW WOMEN IN STEM FIELDS?

1. What is the purpose of this public-service ad? In general, do you think it is successful? Explain.

2. How do the variations in type size highlight the ad’s main points? Is the use of this visual element effective? Explain.

3. How does the ad use color to emphasize its main point? Does this use of color reinforce gender stereotypes in any way? Explain.

4. Is this ad easy to read, or does it seem crowded? If you were going to edit this ad, which elements would you change? Which would you keep the same? Why?

TEMPLATE FOR WRITING A ROGERIAN ARGUMENT

Write a one-paragraph Rogerian argument in which you argue that the drawbacks of STEM education have to be addressed before it can appeal to the majority of women. Follow the template below, filling in the blanks to create your argument.

With more and more women taking STEM courses, both the students and the colleges benefit. For example,

. In addition,

.

However, STEM education does have some drawbacks for women. For instance,

.

These problems could be easily solved. First,

. Second,

.

If these problems are addressed, both students and colleges would benefit because

.

TEMPLATE FOR WRITING A TOULMIN ARGUMENT

Write a one-paragraph Toulmin argument in which you argue in favor of changes to STEM education. Follow the template below, filling in the blanks to create your argument.

Many colleges and universities have instituted programs to encourage women to consider STEM majors. These programs are the best way

.

If colleges are going to meet the rising demand for STEM graduates, they

.

The science and math courses I took

.

Recent studies show that

. In addition,

. However, some people argue that

. They also say that

.

These arguments

.

For this reason, STEM education is

.

EXERCISE 6.7 DISCUSSING AN ARGUMENT

Discuss your ideas about STEM education with one or two of your classmates. Consider both the strengths and the limitations of these courses. What classes do you think women avoid? Why do you think this is so? What changes could be made to make majoring in STEM more appealing? Then, edit the Rogerian and Toulmin arguments that you wrote on the previous templates so that they include some of these comments.

EXERCISE 6.8 WRITING AN ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY

Write an argumentative essay on the topic, “Why are so few women in STEM fields?” Use the principles of either Rogerian argument or Toulmin logic to structure your essay. Cite sources in the Reading and Writing about the Issue section on pages 221—246, and be sure to document the sources you use and to include a works-cited page. (See Chapter 10 for information on documenting sources.)

EXERCISE 6.9 CONSIDERING THE FOUR PILLARS OF ARGUMENT

Review the four pillars of argument that are discussed in Chapter 1. Does your essay include all four elements of an effective argument? Add anything that is missing. Then, label the elements of your argument.

EXERCISE 6.10 CONSTRUCTING AN ORAL ARGUMENT

Assume that you have been asked to present the information in the essay you wrote for Exercise 6.8 as an oral argument. What information would you include? What information would you eliminate? Find two or three visuals that you would use when you deliver your speech. Then, make an outline of your speech and indicate at what points you would display these visuals.