Humanities in Mass Academy is a breath of fresh air in a STEM-intensive school. In this course, students will be able to improve their analytical skills through reading and interpreting profound works by past authors. The teacher will help with analyzing step by step an example of the current topic; then, the students will have to meet this same level of analysis for other works, which will be assessed through an in-class essay, or an essay about the students’ chosen literatures.
One’s task is to draft an argumentative essay on the topic of the educational system. A wealth of freedom is granted in this assignment as any issues that concern education is an acceptable prompt for the essay. I chose to do mine on the issue of rubrics due to them restricting a student’s self-reliance in project-based learning, which purpose is wholly to encourage students’ independence in the discovery process. In my essay, I suggested modifying the rubric to be more about providing quality feedback rather than focusing on a grade by giving specific directions for the students to follow.
This essay is an analysis of the rhetorical devices within a satire of one’s choice. The essay will argue why the satirical work is successful or unsuccessful, or comparing it to a traditional argument and name the similarities and differences of the literary devices in the two works. For my essay, I analyzed an excerpt from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and argued why his satire was influential because of the effective usage of satirical devices. The dystopian novel is a warning about blind scientific innovations without regard to humanity.