Week 3 Perfect Crime, Church-State, No Child Left Behind

Perfect Crime: I didn’t really like this essay. Cheung tries to explain both sides of Napster. He tries to define words/phrases such as file sharing, stealing, downloading, theft, and intellectual property. The one part of the essay that I liked was rhetorical questions he asked in the middle of the essay. If you found yourself humming a song or singing it aloud considered stealing? He does a good job of explaining both sides of the argument and not taking a position on it. In his conclusion he summarizes the main points of disagreement and what he predicts will happen in the future.

Church-State: This essay just bored me. It started of with past history about how the “religion of the state was the religion of its ruler.” Feldman tries to explain both sides of the problem. He also explains some common ground between the different arguments. He states, “despite the differences, each approach, values evangelicalism and legal secularism, is trying to come to terms with the same fundamental tension in American life.” This is important because not only does he provide examples to explain the different sides of the argument but also find areas where both sides agree on the issue.

No Child Left Behind: I like this essay only because the author uses Wikipedia. All through school, whenever we had to write essays using outside sources, teachers always told us never to use Wikipedia because it was not reliable. This author broke the rules and went ahead and used the dreaded Wikipedia. In this essay, she presents both sides of the argument behind the school systems. But they both agree that progress must be made to help improve the quality of the school’s test scores. In her conclusion she says that only “time will tell whether No Child Left Behind is viewed as an ‘historic initiative’… or as ‘just an empty promise.’”

In our opposing positions essay, we have to present two sides of the argument. We have to write an unbiased and opinionated paper about our topic. In our conclusion we are not allowed to take a side on the issue. We have to put all the facts on the paper for the reader to make their own decision. On our next paper we will be able to pick a side and argue why that is the better of the two sides.