Methods of development & sources

Methods of development & sources

Methods of development are ways we sort out information to shape essays and articles. They can help organize an outline, or can determine the form that a paper will take. Most papers will use a combination of methods working together.

Some typical methods of development are:

narration
cause and effect
comparison and contrast
definition
description

You are going to draft a short argumentative/persuasive essay based on claims and evidence.   The topic is:

Are the web filters at your school too restrictive?

Carefully read Sources A through D (listed below). (i) Compose a thesis statement that addresses the extent to which web filters at your school too restrictive. (ii) Then, select at least three pieces of evidence from the sources to support your position, briefly explaining how each piece of evidence might be used to develop your argument, and (iii) what the best method of development to present that evidence would be. Avoid merely summarizing the sources. [(iv) Bonus: Can you spot any examples of invalid argument or fallacies?]  Upload your work.
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Source A Everyday Health (General arguments)
Source B Computerworld  (Teacher experience)
Source C The Atlantic (Student experience)
Source D Graphs
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Source A

“Censorship In Schools And The Effects On Our Children.” Everyday Health, 2017, https://www.everydayhealth.com/kids-health/censorship-schools-effects-on-our-children/.

The following is excerpted from an online magazine.

While the attempt to keep children pure for as long as possible is admirable, it takes the form of leaving gaping holes in their education, if not academically, then about life.  While parents may be tempted to shelter their children from issues that they find unfavorable or offensive, they may be restricting their child’s ability to grow and learn at the same time.

Snowball effect

Censorship in schools tends to snowball when warring factions of parents take the battle of wills to the classroom with book banning.  A small adjustment to the curriculum could lead to further demands, with the removal of a single book leading to the proposal of a library overhaul or the revision of a single point in a science class leading to a battle over the entire curriculum. There are many cases throughout “censorship history” that involve the removal of one or two books or forms of teaching to appease one group of parents, only to have another set of censorship opportunities requested by another group. The old adage “you can't please everyone” certainly rings true in this case, as a veritable “snowball effect” is a common danger of censorship in schools.

Selection versus censorship

Another difficulty in monitoring censorship is that it is against the nature of concerned parents to think that they are committing this act.  Many parents feel that by complaining against books that contain descriptions of nudity, occult references, or profanity, they are protecting the children in the school system and upholding the integrity of the community. This makes self-monitoring nearly impossible. Teachers may be enticed to censor materials because they are afraid of the reaction of parents, making the act itself invisible and difficult to trace or quantify. How do you record the number of times that a book is not ordered because of the fear of parental reaction?
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Source B

Wagner, Mitch. “How Internet Censorship Harms Schools .” Computerworld, 26 Mar. 2010, https://www.computerworld.com/article/2468073/how-internet-censorship-harms-schools.html.

The following is experiences of a teacher from an online magazine.

Last week, I wrote about how Web filtering software, designed to protect children from harmful content on the Internet, is being used in an excessively heavy-handed fashion, and frequently blocks students from accessing legitimate educational materials.

Readers took me to task -- I think correctly -- for failing to provide examples. So I went back to the source of my information in that blog, Professor Craig Cunningham, of National-Louis University, to ask for specifics.

Cunningham put out a call in July for stories about how Internet filtering hobbles education, and got an earful. For example, one teacher wanted to show students some pictures that would illustrate the effects of atomic testing. "However when I went to bring the wikipedia page up at school during class, it was blocked by our internet filter, BESS. The name of the islands? 'Bikini Atoll,'" said Cunningham, quoting the teacher.

"Teachers run up against this all the time when they're in a filtered environment. They go somewhere else. They find an alternate site," Cunningham said.
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Source C

Anderson, Melinda D. “How Internet Filtering Hurts Kids.” The Atlantic, 26 Apr. 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/internet-filtering-hurts-kids/479907/.

The following is experiences of students from a major online magazine.

Giving all children access to the Internet and computing became a rallying cry for educators and elected leaders in the 1990s. Yet that brave new world remains unconquered for many students and schools.  

Caldwell-Stone points out, students in AP biology classes blocked from accessing information needed to prepare for the AP exam; debate-team members unable to research controversial topics on school computers; and filters that routinely block websites for the National Organization for Women, the Quakers, and other “perfectly innocuous, legal, and informative content.” The American Library Association (ALA) report “Fencing Out Knowledge”—an analysis of CIPA 10 years after its enactment—found that schools’ overreach with filtering software was putting children’s education at risk, particularly children in poverty who depend on school-provided Internet access the most. “Other children are likely to have unfiltered internet access at home or through their own mobile devices,” ALA wrote.

This finding is confirmed by anecdotal and empirical evidence. In Maine, Portland Public Schools in April 2012 installed filters on high-school students’ school-issued laptops that banned access to social networks, games, and video-streaming sites. At the time, Portland was among the first districts in the state to authorize such stringent filtering on take-home school devices.

In-depth conversations with the families revealed that districts blocked YouTube at school, as well as on school-supplied devices, because some content was deemed inappropriate. And the consequences were steep. “Parents and children depended on YouTube to support homework time, including tutorials to solve math problems and to learn more about historical characters. The problem is that these platforms are multi-use, and those uses change too quickly for district [filtering] policies to easily keep up.”

“We forget [that] when we cut kids off [from social media] we limit their opportunities to succeed, explore their passions, and discover their strengths and talents.”
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Source D

The following are graphs taken from online sources.

Ken, Y-N. “Web Regulation Favoured by Two in Three Japanese.” What Japan Thinks, 20 Nov. 2008, https://whatjapanthinks.com/tag/censorship/.

• Views on Internet censorship in school of Japanese students


Angelo, J. “Censorship: History & Statistics.” College English Literature: Help and Review, 2019, https://study.com/academy/lesson/book-censorship-history-statistics-quiz.html.

• Reasons sites were censored where censoring was appealed by students, teachers, or parents