3 Exploratory Essay

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Exploratory Essay Assignment Guidelines

As its name implies, the Exploratory Essay allows you to explore a complex issue to not only better understand the issue itself but also to inform your readers and better situate yourself as a critical thinker within the larger cultural conversation. Because of its investigative nature, the Exploratory Essay’s purpose is informative and its tone is neutral and invitational, allowing you to build on the skills you developed in the Reading Reflection (Chapter 2).

What will you do?

For this assignment, you will write a 1,000–1,200-word essay that explores a sociocultural issue related to socioeconomic status or social class from multiple points of view. You will read several articles together with your classmates to better understand the scope and complexity of the conversations around social class in the United States; you will also supplement these sources with independent outside research. Your independent research should help you identify a more specific focus that will serve as the thematic frame for your own Exploratory Essay. Additionally, because the essay is designed to help readers understand the larger cultural conversation around your topic, your essay must include at least three sources.

To explore a sociocultural issue from multiple viewpoints, you should read a variety of sources, such as newspaper articles, editorials, and policy reports. These are not meant to be models of exploratory writing; instead, their purpose is to provide some of the core knowledge that will help you to contextualize this issue in your own essay. As you read, keep in mind the purpose of your writing: you are not arguing in favor of or against a particular stance; you are not attempting to prove which authors are right or wrong; instead, you are respectfully engaging with all authors’ ideas to present a neutral overview of the conversations happening around your topic.

To put it another way, keep the idea of an invitation in mind. When we send an invitation (to a party, for example), we are letting recipients know that they are welcome to attend, but they are in no way required to come—they can accept or decline as they see fit. Think of this essay in a similar way: you are inviting your reader to look at the different facets of an issue, but you are not requiring them to agree or disagree with any of them. They may consider what you say and form their own opinion; you are not trying to persuade them to accept a certain position. You do want them to engage seriously with your writing, though, and we will talk about strategies to help you do so without falling into argumentative or persuasive language.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of writing an Exploratory Essay is how the invitation you will extend to others extends to you, too: in the same way that you are inviting your audience to consider different perspectives, you also are inviting yourself to explore these same perspectives.

Who is your target audience?

While your instructor ultimately will assess your success in respectfully engaging the larger conversation on your topic and consistently maintaining an invitational tone, you should imagine your target audience as a reader who may have a partial, or even firmly narrow, view about the issue. Your reader might come from a different background, might have different knowledge, and/or might have experienced the world differently than the authors with whom you engage. Remember that your goal is not to convince your reader that they are wrong (or right); instead, you are inviting them to understand the many facets of a complex issue.

Learning Objectives

  • By the end of this assignment, you should be able to do the following:
  • Demonstrate your ability to respectfully examine a complex issue from multiple perspectives
  • Maintain a neutral, invitational tone
  • Show that you understand and respect the perspectives of others
  • Objectively and accurately summarize writers’ main points
  • Organize sources thematically around ideas to inform an audience about a larger conversation
  • Synthesize sources in terms of their common and diverging points
  • Effectively integrate outside sources into your essay
  • Effectively and purposefully organize your ideas to convey a clear topic focus in your writing

Rationale

An Exploratory Essay invites you to imagine, understand, and engage diverse perspectives — an important aspect of critical thinking and global citizenship, as reflected in Kansas State University’s Undergraduate Student Learning Outcomes and its Principles of Community. Such an assignment also asks you to think through how issues such as gender, race, and class impact your life in the academy and within the larger social realm. In fact, part of being an engaged student and citizen is a willingness and ability to consider not only your own perspective but also the perspectives of others. This assignment will help prepare you to consider and articulate these multiple viewpoints or angles of vision; it also will prepare you to analyze a written text and to put that text in conversation with other texts. Such analytical skills will prove crucial throughout your college career and will serve you well throughout your life.

You will also encounter “exploratory writing” in many of your classes. If you are a student in the sciences or social sciences, your professors are likely to assign a similar essay called a Review of Literature or Literature Review. This type of essay shares the informative goal of the Exploratory Essay in its quest to capture the state of research on a topic at a given point in time. Academic researchers use Literature Reviews to ground their own research projects, while professional readers might use them to stay in touch with current events in their field.

If you are a biology major, for example, you might be asked to write a Literature Review about the rise of antibiotic resistant microbes; if you’re a health and nutrition major, your topic could be diet trends such as “paleo”; and, if you’re an education major, you could work with a topic like special education inclusion models. The paper you would write, then, would not be based on your personal experience or interpretation, but instead be based on the objective presentation of data, theories, and other research material. Finally, similar to the Exploratory Essay, though the paper’s topic might be framed as a problem, the Literature Review is not solution-oriented or argumentative in nature.

In short, the Exploratory Essay is a typical academic essay, one that will help you throughout your academic career.

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Considering Social Class

Socioeconomic Class in the U.S.

In the United States, socioeconomic class can be surprisingly hard to talk about. Part of this resistance is likely tied to the investment in American individuality and the “American Dream.” Within these concepts, anyone can succeed if they work hard enough. Additionally, many middle- and upper-class Americans were raised to believe that it’s impolite to talk about issues of money and income. In Great Britain, on the other hand, social class is much more obvious. Social class determines the dialect, the words one uses (e.g., what upper-class folks call a “sofa,” working-class people call a “couch”), eating times for lunch and dinner, and even the way one makes a cup of tea. In the United States, however, class involves cultural distinctions that can be more subtle and harder to classify. Social class identity may also blend with regional identity, and it may be difficult at times to untangle working-class culture from rural, Midwestern, or Southern identities.

What complicates social class even more is that it is not directly or solely correlated with income levels, although income levels certainly impact class. In a series of articles about social class, The New York Times defines class as a status system involving such variables as occupation, education, income, and wealth.[1] Some other variables include patterns of consumption, recreation habits, language, taste – both aesthetic and culinary – and etiquette. In other words, social class is tied to the subjective perception of behaviors, dispositions, and refinement, as well as simple income. Additionally, the kind or source of income impacts social class. You might have heard the term “old money,” or “passive income,” for example, indicating that a person’s family simply “has” wealth or simply “is” wealthy. All these variables (often the “socio” part of “socioeconomic class”) help determine an individual’s status in society and influence how they are judged.

As you can already see, socioeconomic class (or social class, or sometimes just “class”) is a complicated topic. It’s made more complicated by the fact that scholars still don’t really agree on just what class is or which term or terms most aptly describe what it is we’re talking about. For example, most of us have probably heard of a three-tiered class system in which people are sorted into the upper, middle, or lower (or sometimes “working”) class. Such a system likely dates back to 19th century cultural critic Matthew Arnold’s categorizations of class. These three categories are often now broken down further into five: upper, upper- middle, middle, lower- middle, and lower.[2]

Activity

Below, you’ll find a 2008 table that employs these categories in an American context. What’s important to note is that these data are based on participants who defined themselves as “middle-class.”

While you look at these data, consider these following questions:

  • What take-away points can you make about how different groups of people represent themselves as “middle-class”?
  • How might these responses have changed since 2008?
  • What surprises you about these responses? (What might you want to explore some more in this chapter?)
  Top of the Satisfied Anxious Struggling
Class Middle Middle Middle
Gender % % % %
Male 56 45 49 37
Female 44 55 51 63
Race/Ethnicity
White, non-Hispanic 79 75 73 56
Black, non-Hispanic 10 7 10 20
Hispanic 6 12 11 19
Other 5 6 6 5
Age
18-29 16 31 13 35
30-49 46 19 59 32
50-64 30 16 26 18
65+ 8 34 3 15
Education
College or more 41 15 30 8
Some college 29 29 30 16
High school or less 30 56 40 76
Family Income
$100,000 or more 32 14
$50,000-&99,000 68 1 62
$30,000-$49,000 60 24 19
$20,000-$29,000 23 23
$20,000 or less 16 58
Marital Status
Married 69 37 67 22
Not married 31 62 32 77
Quality of Present Life
High 46 41 16 24
Medium 42 36 43 27
Low 12 23 40 47
Will Children Have Better Life Than You?
Better 49 63 44 58
Worse 17 12 28 16
Same 24 17 20 18
No Children 6 3 6 4
Figure 1. Attitudes & Demographics about Middle Class Identity in the United States, Pew Research Center. [3]

 

Activity

Here are two more recent examples to help us make sense of these categorizations. In the first, Kansas writer Sarah Smarsh describes her experience as a first-generation college student. The second is an excerpt from journalist Sarah Sugar’s (Vox) interview with author and University of Michigan lecturer, S. Margot Finn, over Finn’s 2017 book, Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution.

Sarah Smarsh: Even at a Midwestern state university, my background – agricultural work, manual labor, rural poverty, teen pregnancies, domestic chaos, pervasive addiction – seemed like a faraway story to the people I met. Most of them were from tidy neighborhoods in Wichita, Kansas City, the greater Chicago area. They used a different sort of English and had different politics. They were appalled that I had grown up with conservative ideas about government and Catholic doctrine against abortion. I was appalled that they didn’t know where their food came from or even seem to care since it had always just appeared on their plates when they wanted it.[4]

Sarah Sugar: You talk about one of the failures of the food revolution being the way it’s “helped stigmatize the foods and bodies associated with the poor,” while convincing middle- and upper-middle classes that their dietary choices mean they “deserve” their status. In the book, you say that trying to get other people to eat “higher quality” foods is a kind of bigotry, because it feeds into “pernicious social divides.” But at the same time, aren’t there reasons — environmental reasons, health reasons — you might want to try to get people to change their behavior?[5]

Smarsh begins her paragraph with a list of class descriptors – “agricultural work, manual labor, rural poverty, teen pregnancies, domestic chaos, pervasive addiction.” In what ways are we to understand how these are in tension with the “tidy neighborhoods” in the more urban places of “Wichita, Kansas City, [and] the greater Chicago area?” What class is she describing? Do your own experiences lead you to agree or disagree with her observations?

Similarly, what clues do Sugar’s interview questions provide about social class and culinary tastes? What other examples can you think of to explore this topic (i.e., think about “Lunchables” and charcuterie boards, American cheese, and the size of your grocery store’s cheese selection)?

Two old, worn-out work boots

The American Dream: Social Mobility

 Some might wonder why we worry about socioeconomic class at all. After all, it doesn’t matter what class one is born into: if you work hard, you can be successful and change your social class, right? This is what we call a classic “bootstraps narrative,” popularized by authors such as Horatio Alger. The phrase now refers to a person who improves their station with individual hard work (interestingly, it seems the phrase originally was meant to refer to something impossible—one cannot, after all, actually pull oneself up by their own bootstraps). In terms of socioeconomic class, it refers to the ability to improve one’s social class through hard work and perseverance. This is commonly referred to as economic mobility.

Scholars are somewhat divided on this topic, but most research suggests that it is difficult to move up the socioeconomic ladder. That isn’t to say that children don’t make the same amount of money as their parents—as we’ll see, they often do—but it is rare for people to actually move into a different level of socioeconomic status than that of their parents.

Additionally, because social class is marked by more than simply income, some research shows that it is nearly statistically impossible to move from one social class level to the next. Professor of Economics Gregory Clark cautions that focusing solely on changes in one factor (such as income, occupation, or education) allows us “to confuse the random fluctuations of income across generations, influenced by such things as career choices between business and philosophy, with true generalized social mobility.”[6] Instead, Clark believes we need to look across generations, analyzing larger trends as well as the variety of factors that play a role in social class. As a result of his intergenerational study of social mobility in Sweden, Clark found that when we take a variety of factors into consideration—income, occupation, education, etc.—we find that there is almost no change in social status. If your family was middle class in the 18th century, they are statistically likely to be middle class in the 19th, 20th, and 21st century. While income levels fluctuate more in the United States than they do in Sweden, Clark argues that his study shows how single-factor or single-generational studies within the U.S. actually over-inflate the possibility of sustained social mobility.[7]

Let’s take a moment to consider the implications of Clark’s findings. In short, Clark found that while individuals might move between social classes across time and generations— the daughter of a mechanic with a high school diploma might become a neurosurgeon, thereby moving up the ladder of social class in education, occupational status, income, and wealth—it is statistically much more likely that the future generations of this same family will fall within the working class than the upper-middle class. It’s also likely that not every member of that same family will move up the social ladder. Structurally, then, while there will be individual cases of members of the upper class moving down the social ladder (due to such things as stock market crashes, for example) and individual cases of members of the lower or working class moving up the ladder, across generations—across hundreds of years, in fact—most members in a family line will maintain the same class as their ancestors. If this is true, and much recent research implies that it is, then we must grapple with the fact that sheer individual hard work is rarely enough for families to break class barriers, at least not for a sustained period of time.

How Americans think about social mobility changes over time as well. According to a 2014 article using survey results from 2009, “When the Pew Economic Mobility Project conducted a survey in 2009—hardly a high point in the history of American capitalism—39 percent of respondents said they believed it was ‘common’ for people born into poverty to become rich, and 71 percent said that personal attributes like hard work and drive, not the circumstances of a person’s birth, are the key determinants of success.”[8]

But these attitudes about the “American Dream” may be shifting. Compare the results from the 2009 survey to Pew Research Center’s 2020 survey results about the same question. Note how the responses differ more sharply based upon the political affiliation of the respondent.

In your opinion, which generally has more do with?

  Why a person is rich? Why a person is poor?
They have had more advantages in life than most other people. They have worked harder than most other people. They have faced more obstacles in life than most other people. They have not worked as hard as most other people.
Total 65% 33% 71% 26%
Republican or Rep-leaning 45% 53% 55% 42%
Democrat or Dem-leaning 82% 16% 86% 12%

Social Mobility & Race

Recently, Opportunity Insights, a non-partisan research group based out of Harvard, published a report summarizing its findings of 2018 Census data as they related specifically to questions of race and social mobility:[9]

Finding #1: Hispanic Americans are moving up in the income distribution across generations, while Black Americans and American Indians are not.

Finding #2: The Black-White income gap is entirely driven by differences in men’s, not women’s, outcomes.

Finding #3: Differences in family characteristics — parental marriage rates, education, wealth — and differences in ability explain very little of the Black-White gap.

Finding #4: In 99% of neighborhoods in the United States, Black males earn less in adulthood than White males who grow up in families with comparable income.

Finding #5: Both Black and White males have better outcomes in low-poverty areas, but Black-White gaps are bigger in such neighborhoods.

Finding #6: Within low-poverty areas, Black-White gaps are smallest in places with low levels of racial bias among Whites and high rates of father presence among Blacks.

Finding #7: The Black-White gap is not immutable: Black boys who move to more affluent neighborhoods as children have significantly better outcomes.

Here are some additional findings to broaden our understanding of the relationship between social mobility and race or ethnicity in the U.S.:

  • “Black Americans and American Indians have much lower rates of upward mobility and higher rates of downward mobility than whites, leading to persistent disparities across generations.”[10]
  • “Today, income inequality in the U.S. is greatest among Asians [Asian Americans]. From 1970 to 2016, the gap in the standard of living between Asians near the top and the bottom of the income ladder nearly doubled, and the distribution of income among Asians transformed from being one of the most equal to being the most unequal among America’s major racial and ethnic groups.”[11]

Note: While this chapter is primarily about socioeconomic class, other identity factors such as race, class, region, ethnicity, and able-bodiedness impact social class. We call this “intersectionality,” a useful concept to help us better understand and explain social mobility discrepancies between demographic groups in this country. You might find this approach helpful as you decide the thematic focus of your Exploratory Essay.

Social Mobility & Education

This is not to say that hard work and perseverance never pay off. Of course, they can, and as a student in college, you are expected to work hard, to study, to take your education seriously. Why? In part, because it will result in better grades than if you had simply blown off all of your exams, essays, assignments, and responsibilities. But there is also a longer chain of effects: better grades can result in scholarships, which might result in your ability to work fewer hours to pay for college, which can result in more time to study and more time to sleep so that you’re not falling asleep in class or while studying. This can then result in, again, higher grades, maintained scholarships, maintained time to study and sleep. Additionally, it means you can list academic scholarships on your resume, as well as perhaps graduating summa cum laude. Such accomplishments can make you more competitive when applying for jobs, and your perceived investment in your education can result in stronger letters of recommendations from professors. In this way, hard work and education can help you get a good job, can help you make a decent wage, and can help you shift those New York Times scales higher on the education, occupation, income, and wealth categories. You might then find yourself having a level of education equal to or higher than your parents, making more money than your parents, and perhaps owning a nicer car or home than your parents.

In fact, according to a 2012 PEW report on social mobility, researchers found that “a four-year college degree” promotes upward mobility from the bottom and prevents downward mobility from the middle and top.

In other words, a college degree makes it easier to move up the socioeconomic ladder and harder to fall down it. More specifically, researchers found:

  • Almost one-half (47%) of those raised in the bottom quintile of the family income ladder who do not earn a college degree are stuck there as adults, compared with 10% who do earn a college degree. Similarly, 45% without a college degree are stuck in the bottom of the family wealth ladder compared with 20% with a degree.
  • Having a college degree makes a person more than three times more likely to rise from the bottom of the family income ladder all the way to the top, and makes a person more than four times more likely to rise from the bottom of the family wealth ladder to the top.
  • 39% raised in the middle of the family income ladder who do not get a college degree fall from the middle, compared with less than a quarter (22%) of those with a degree. Similarly, 39% raised in the middle of the family wealth ladder who do not earn a degree fall down the wealth ladder, compared with 19% with a degree.

decorative. Image shows coins falling in a line into a pink piggy bank.

An Extended Example: Liam & Jason

A college degree, then, makes social mobility easier, but how does a family’s social class impact education and future success? To get a sense of the possible effects of social class, imagine two high school students who are, by most visible markers, pretty similar. Liam and Jason live in the same town and attend the same high school. They have the same IQ, both are hardworking, and both plan to attend college. But Jason’s parents would be categorized as upper middle class, while Liam’s are working class. Both Jason and Liam grew up seeing at least one of their parents read the newspaper before heading off to work, but Jason’s parents had more free time in the evening and would often watch the national news and read books about politics, education, and history, in addition to some of the great classic novels. Jason was encouraged to do the same, and such books were readily available to him. Additionally, because his parents had the time to keep up with national and world events, Jason and his parents often talked about politics and history at the dinner table. Jason quickly learned the vocabulary, the concepts, and the ways to structure a persuasive argument as he listened to his parents and participated in their discussions.

Liam’s parents were also interested in world and national events, but his dad worked the night shift and wasn’t able to be around for dinner. His mom often worked two jobs and tended to be too tired for serious conversation or leisure reading when she got home. Liam spent a good amount of his time helping around the house—making meals for himself and his parents, doing the dishes, doing laundry. In other words, despite levels of interest or education, there was simply not a lot of time for heavy reading and spirited dinner conversation about that night’s news. Because his parents didn’t have much time for reading, there weren’t a lot of books in the house for Liam to pick up out of curiosity.

As Liam and Jason entered high school, Jason found he had already read quite a few of the required novels, so those classes were relatively easy for him. Liam, on the other hand, had never encountered the kinds of language he was seeing in books by Jane Austen and Nathaniel Hawthorne, so he struggled a bit—not for lack of intelligence, but for lack of experience. Additionally, by his sophomore year Liam was working a part-time job to help pay the bills and to try to save for college, so he didn’t have as much time to devote to homework as he’d like. Because most of those books were familiar for Jason, though, he found himself in Advanced Placement classes in both English and History.

By the time Liam and Jason graduated high school, Jason had taken the AP exams in English and History, earning him college credit for the introductory courses in both subjects. His teachers thought of him as bright, dedicated, and college-bound. Liam had done well in most of his classes and his teachers liked him quite a bit, but they noticed that he hadn’t always completed all of the assignments or the reading. Jason was better prepared for the ACT exam, having read more of the expected literature and history, so he scored higher than Liam. All these factors impacted which colleges would accept each student.

Let’s imagine that both Jason and Liam get into college, but based on his ACT scores, his GPA, and a call from one of his high school teachers who happens to be an alumnus, Jason is accepted to an Ivy League school. Proud of his success, Jason’s parents buy him a car. Liam doesn’t even apply to Ivy League colleges but is quite happy to be able to attend the local state school—granted, he’s not quite sure how he’s going to pay for it. Based on his parents’ income, he qualifies for financial aid, but not enough to cover all the costs, and his parents can’t afford to help out. So, Liam gets a part time job to help cover the expense and he takes out two school loans. Because his parents make more money than Liam’s, Jason only gets a little bit of financial aid, but his grades and ACT scores qualify him for academic scholarships; his parents are able to cover the remainder of the cost. As you might imagine, Jason and Liam have similar experiences in college as they did in high school: Jason has more time to study and sleep because he’s not working to help pay the bills. Liam does relatively well, but, again, he never quite finished all those books in high school because he was working part time and just couldn’t find enough time to study, so he feels a little behind before he even gets to campus.

When the two men graduate, Jason has a degree from an Ivy League school—itself not enough to guarantee a job, but it puts Jason’s job application on the top of most piles. Jason leaves school with a car that he didn’t have to pay for, no college loans, and a degree from a nationally respected school. Liam graduates with the same degree, albeit from a less respected college, but he has car payments and now school loans to pay off. In other words, Liam starts off his post- graduate career in some steep debt with which his parents can’t help.

At this point, even if Jason and Liam get similar jobs, Jason will likely be able to buy a better car, nicer clothing, and a bigger house, simply because he is not also trying to pay off a car loan as well as school loans.

All of Jason’s income can go toward savings or purchases, whereas a good portion of Liam’s must go toward loans and debt. Jason’s credit is likely better as a result, too, and he’ll have an easier time qualifying for a home mortgage. Additionally, Jason’s parents can help with a down payment on a house if necessary, making Jason’s monthly mortgage payments lower. Not so with Liam. Even if Jason and Liam start out making the same monthly salary, Jason’s paycheck will simply go further, since he doesn’t have to make monthly payments on his school loans.

Did Jason work harder than Liam? No. He worked differently, as he could study more, sleep more, maybe even travel more with his family and see other perspectives on the world. Liam worked just as hard, but part of that time was spent at a part time job. Additionally, Liam wasn’t as practiced in what one might call scholarly debates—that’s not how his mealtimes were spent—nor did he grow up reading classic literature and discussing it with his parents. Such benefits might be the result of Jason’s parents working harder (or at least working at higher-paying jobs) and earning more money than Liam’s, but, as we see from the example of Jason and Liam themselves, it’s not simply about how hard one works, but also about the often- unseen benefits that come from being in a higher socioeconomic class. Jason wasn’t handed his high school or college degree—far from it—but the amount of time that he could devote to school coupled with the economic benefits of not accruing student debt simply put him further ahead of Liam in ways he might not have even noticed.

Granted, many of you might be thinking that money doesn’t buy happiness. Jason might be miserable and Liam might be happy. Absolutely. But let’s also keep in mind the added stress that Liam has each month when he has to not only pay the same bills Jason has, but also his student loan and his car payment. This also means that he has less of his paycheck to spend going out with his colleagues and making valuable business connections, buying groceries, and maintaining his car. All these aspects can also impact how much money Liam can put away for his own children’s education.

Simply being in a higher socioeconomic class doesn’t guarantee success, nor does it guarantee happiness, but what we hope this story shows are the real-life impacts of class status. Jason and Liam aren’t real of course—they’re hypothetical characters designed to make a point. Except that they are real, as these are the experiences of actual people in this country. They are, in fact, your experiences, as each of us is born into a socioeconomic class and there are real-life implications of that placement, a placement that you had no control over.

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Reading Strategies

Research

 For this assignment, you need at least three appropriate and credible secondary (“outside”) sources. Check the credibility of your sources by asking the following questions:

  1. Who is the author? If there’s no stated author, what is the publishing organization? What potential biases might this author or organization have? How do you know? In what ways could those biases impact the text’s conclusions?
  2. Is the piece published in a reputable source? How do you know? (Note: Remember that anyone can publish something online. Because of this, it’s better to find respectable news sources, professional sites, and editorials from reputable authors. It’s even better to find peer-reviewed scholarly journals or books.)
  3. How recent is the source? If it was published thirty years ago, the source probably does not provide the best information on socioeconomic class in the U.S.

Remember, too, that the best research is not solely someone’s discussion of personal experience on a personal blog. These types of sources, similar to Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and other online or social media platforms, may be a good place to get started, but look for more authoritative and credible sources.

As a good starting point, go to K-State’s library homepage and use the “Search It” box. Some useful key terms might be “socioeconomic class,” “class status,” and “social class.” Remember that you’ll need to read several articles to find at least three that are relevant and useful.

Your secondary sources need to be integral to your essay. Make sure that each secondary source fills an important role in your draft. What do you still not know about socioeconomic class in the U.S.? What information would help you better place your experience within a larger context? What viewpoints do you feel you’re still not familiar with? Be sure to keep an open mind as you research and be prepared to follow threads of the strongest sources by resisting the temptation to just use the first source you find, and/or to only relying upon sources compatible with your own point of view.

As you will likely be reading the secondary sources online, you will need to figure out a way to highlight and/or annotate texts, keep notes, capture important quotes, etc. An old-fashioned notebook and pen are always an option, as is keeping a running Google or Word document. If you find yourself reading sources on your phone or tablet, you might find the “Notes” feature useful as well. Finally, don’t forget that you need to cite all sources using both in-text citations (in MLA format) and a properly formatted Works Cited page.

Reading for the Conversation

We stress the importance of good notetaking for this assignment because you are not simply using or responding to just one source; instead, you will be actively searching for a variety of sources to familiarize yourself with the many perspectives that make up a complex issue. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein call this critical reading approach reading for the conversation: “Reading for the conversation is more rigorous and demanding than reading for what one author says. It asks that you determine not only what the author thinks, but how what the author thinks fits with what others think, and ultimately with what you yourself think.”[12]

There is a strong relationship between your ability to read critically and your ability to write critically, which is one of the most important goals of this class and of your entire academic experience. We can’t mature as writers without understanding that nothing happens in a vacuum: there is almost always an ongoing cultural conversation occurring for any topic you can imagine. Consider Snapchat stories, Twitter threads, Reddit lists, GroupMe messages, and TikTok trends – all examples of ongoing cultural conversations with multiple communicators, themselves possessing many experiences, values, priorities, examples, and perspectives.

When we read for the conversation, we read for these contextual clues, or behind-the-scenes reveals, just as much as we read to understand the text itself. According to Graff and Birkenstein, these three reading approaches will help you accomplish this goal:

  • Read for Background
  • Read for New Information
  • Read for the Author’s Motivation

Read for Background – Authors may explicitly provide the context for their research, usually in the introduction. For example, authors refer to previous studies, articles, authors and theorists, and statistics to help situate their own work within the larger conversation. Other writers establish context by using phrases that indicate a “gap in knowledge” or a “lack of discussion” around their issue (Graff and Birkenstein 182).

Sometimes, however, writers are not explicit about the context for their work, and you might be led to think that their ideas exist in isolation; or, their work may be republished or reposted in different online forums where the original intent becomes less clear. In these cases, you will have to do some additional work to determine context by doing the following:

  • Searching the text for clues related to time, place, and stakeholders (people, organizations, or institutions involved in the conversation) and asking yourself these questions:
    • How long has the conversation been going on? Look for dates and words such as “historically” or “currently.” Is it a well-established conversation (e.g., theories about evolution) or a newly formed, developing conversation (e.g., politicized conversations related to Critical Race Theory)?
    • What is the scale of the conversation? Is it a local, regional, national, or global concern?
    • Who are the people impacted, either directly or indirectly, within the conversation?
    • Who are the main “experts” (authors, researchers, theorists, and other stakeholders) who lead the conversation?
    • What are the main theories, ideological positions, and methods that are used to frame this conversation?
  • Tracking down and reading cited or referenced sources
  • Conducting additional research to supplement the context

Read for New Information – This is a commonsense strategy for us because it relates to understanding the overall purpose and main points of a reading. You read for many purposes, such as to discover new research contributions and research results and to learn about and explore a favorite subject. You’ll want to look for the ways in which authors and researchers separate themselves from the background and context – the previous context of the conversation that you explored in the Read for Background strategy. What is their main point? How does their main point or research findings build on previous writers? How are they similar? Most importantly, how are they different? What is the new and unique contribution they are making?

Depending upon the type of reading, authors will often signal these new contributions in their title or in the abstract; they may state their new point in the introduction, which they then emphasize and repeat at the beginning of new sections or in the conclusion. Sometimes, authors will build toward their main ideas, including them closer to the end of the piece.

Read for the Author’s Motivation – When we talk about evaluating a writer’s credibility and trustworthiness, we are in part talking about determining their motivation: why are they writing? Are they writing to inform readers as part of their job (i.e., journalists reporting current events or scientists publishing trial data) or to persuade readers to think or feel a certain way about a topic (i.e., editorial writers and political pundits)? Seeking to understand writers’ motivations and what they have to gain (or lose) can help you trust them (or realize you can’t trust them) and also help you see the ways in which the overall conversation matters. You may also get insights into the ideological commitments or biases that motivate them and frame the ways in which they present information and form arguments.

Though these reading strategies are time consuming, they will serve you well and save you time when you begin drafting your essay.

Summarizing

Reminders

 As you begin to find secondary sources or consider readings that your instructor provides, you’ll want to make sure you have a strong grasp over them by their finding main points and summarizing them. Recall your strategies from Chapter 2 and look at the following questions to get started:

  1. In one sentence, how would you sum up the main point of the reading?
  2. Next, note any important sub-claims. Sub-claims are smaller arguments made to support the main idea.
  3. What evidence do the authors use to support their main claim? Do they provide a few convincing examples? Statistics? Write down what you believe to be the most important points of evidence or support.
  4. What do the authors say such evidence illustrates? How does it support (or complicate) their argument?
  5. Do the authors provide any possible alternative interpretations of their examples? Do they include any important counterpoints to their argument? If so, what are they?

When you have a clear sense of the larger argument, you can start to structure your summary. Remember that a good summary, however, does not follow the same organization of the reading. In other words, you should not write down each point in the order that the authors listed them in their article. Good summaries do not follow an “and then” organization (i.e., “and then they said this, and then they said that”). Instead, effective summaries are organized hierarchically; they list the main claim first, then the most important points, then supporting points, and only the most relevant examples and evidence.

Even if the source is historical, you should write in present tense (the author claims, rather than the author claimed). You must also make it clear that you are summarizing the work of another author by first introducing the author and text, and then by using attributive tags and phrases (remembering that you should never refer to an author by first name alone):

  • [The author’s last name] goes on to claim that…
  • She provides an example…
  • Garland concludes with…
  • Mencimer argues for…

Image shows the word "summary" as a dictionary entry. The text around it is mostly blurred.

“Says” and “Does” Statements

You also have to read to understand the text, of course. While preparing for your previous major assignments, you may have discovered how difficult it is to write an accurate, thorough summary if you didn’t keep good notes, or if you skimmed the text and didn’t fully understand it. Such rushed reading might lead you to misrepresent the text or even to inadvertently plagiarize the author’s words.

To avoid such problems, we offer “says” and “does” statements as a useful strategy for summary writing. This method of analysis is borrowed from Kenneth Bruffee’s A Short Course in Writing and can be used to help you better understand something you are reading, plan your essay, and/or analyze your own writing. Remember, though, that while “does” statements help you understand the text, your summary should be primarily “says” statements.

“Says”

“Says” statements are just that. They answer the question: what is the paragraph saying? What is its main point? To write a “says” statement, you should boil down the meaning of the paragraph to its essence, its main idea, its “gist.” These “says” statements are more general than the original paragraphs, omitting specific details such as the author’s supporting details (sometimes called “particulars”). These statements should be no longer than one or two sentences. Occasionally, however, when summarizing a very short paragraph (such as those in an editorial or news article), you might find that your “says” statement is longer than the original paragraph.

“Does”

“Does” statements answer the question: what is the paragraph doing? These statements are related to the paragraph’s function in the text as a whole, including how it’s related to the paragraphs around it. Does statements, then, do not include information on the content of the paragraph. For instance, a typical “does” statement might look like this: “Paragraph 1 introduces the topic and provides some background information.” These statements help you understand how the paragraph is structured, as well as how the writer is supporting (or failing to support) their points.

How “Says” and “Does” Statements Are Different

The major distinction between “says” and “does” is that “says” statements are directly related to a paragraph’s meaning, but “does” statements are related to a paragraph’s function. A “says” statement will relate to the topic of the article and will be different for each text.

On the other hand, since “does” statements describe a paragraph’s function, they are not specifically related to the topic of the text being considered. In fact, if your “does” statement includes anything about the text’s subject, you need to try again. Instead of summarizing a paragraph’s point (as “says” statements do), “does” statements can be applied to other similar kinds of paragraphs in similar kinds of texts. The functions of a paragraph are categorizable, and you’ll find some of these possible functions in the following list. Additionally, “does” statements usually begin with verbs and verb phrases.

Here is a sampling of the terms useful for determining what a paragraph does:

introduces topic provides background information
presents a main claim / thesis provides an example in support of claim/subclaim
presents a subclaim quotes an expert in support of claim/subclaim
provides a transition summarizes an alternative argument of
forecasts the structure of the essay provides a concession to an alternative viewpoint
rebutsan alternative argument provides a definition

Below, is an example of the “Says/Does” strategy using three paragraphs from the middle of Sarah Garland’s “When Class Became More Important to a Child’s Education Than Race”[13]:

The country is far from fulfilling [Martin Luther] King?s dream that race no longer limit children?s
opportunities, but how much income their parents earn is more and more influential. According to a 2011 research study by Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon, the test-score gap between the children of the poor (in the 10th percentile of income) and the children of the wealthy (in the 90th percentile) has expanded by as much as 40 percent and is now more than 50 percent larger than the black-white achievement gap?a reversal of the trend 50 years ago. Underprivileged children now languish at achievement levels that are close to four years behind their wealthy peers.		 Says: There has been an increase in the achievement levels separating wealthy children from underprivileged children. Does: Refers to a powerful authority, Martin Luther King, and uses a sociology study
These days, middle-class children are also falling further behind their affluent peers. The test-score gap between middle-income (the 50th percentile of income) and poor children has remained stagnant; it?s the gap between the top earners and the rest that is growing rapidly. And though more poor and middle-income children are completing college these days, they can?t keep up with the growth in college graduates among the wealthiest families. A2012 study by Reardon also
found that ?more and more seats in highly selective schools have been occupied by students from high- income families.?		 Says: Wealthy students are accelerating beyond their middle- class peers as well. Does: Extends the previous point and cites a study to support the point about wealthy students.
?Income has become a much stronger predictor of how well kids do in school,? Reardon says. ?Race is about as good a predictor as it was 30 years ago. It?s more that income has gotten more important, not that race has gotten less important.? Says: Income correlates directly with school achievement. Does: Uses a quotation from a sociologist.

Activity

Using the summary strategies that were described above, choose one of the secondary sources that you are considering for your Exploratory Essay and do the following:

  1. Focus on what the author(s) said/argued and summarize their argument in approximately 250 words.
  2. Using the same general organizational strategy, summarize the argument in 100 words.
  3. Now Tweet it: In 140 characters (characters, not words) or less, summarize the main claim.

Why summarize in so many different lengths? When you write your Exploratory Essay, you’ll need to illustrate that you understand the primary texts you’re putting into conversation. But that doesn’t mean you simply drop a long summarizing paragraph into your essay. Instead, you’ll need to think rhetorically about how to use summary information: how much you need to include in order to respond, and what points are most relevant to your current purpose? Sometimes that might be a brief paragraph; other times, it might be a brief sentence or two.

 

Annotated Bibliographies

 You can also develop your summary writing skills by creating an annotated bibliography for the sources you anticipate using in the essay. Annotated bibliographies are often assigned in conjunction with literature reviews because of their value in helping writers organize their research, start to internalize what they are reading, and better see the overlap and gaps among the content of the readings. Because the bibliographies are organized by citation style, you also won’t be left scrambling to put together the references page at the end of the writing process.

Here’s an outline of how to complete an annotated bibliography for your own research.

  1. Provide the citation of the secondary source
  2. Provide an overview or summary of the source
  3. Contribute a critical analysis of the source
  4. State the usefulness of the source and/or its relationship to your own essay

You already know how to complete the first two steps – citation information and the objective summary itself – but the last two steps might be new. For the “critical analysis,” you will assess the source’s credibility as well as attempt to situate the source within the larger context of the issue (much like the critical reading strategy we discussed in the previous section). Lastly, you will use the “statement of relevance” to situate the source within the scope of your essay. How do you think it will function within your overall essay?

Example Annotated Bibliography Entry

 In the following example, the four major parts of an annotated bibliography have been showcased in different paragraphs so that you can clearly see how they serve different purposes:

Lisle, Deborah. The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

In Chapter 1, “Introduction: The Global Imaginary or Contemporary Travel Writing,” Deborah Lisle focuses her readers on one key question when it comes to contemporary travel writing: how do travel writers and commentators deal with the historical past of contemporary travel writing, which oftentimes involved crude, racist, and Orientalizing depictions of Africans, Asians, and others and showcased imperialist and colonialist strategies? According to Lisle, there are two key strategies: to reinforce a “colonial vision,” in which contemporary travel writers, such as Paul Theroux, still cling to the superiority of North Americans and Europeans (4); or, conversely, to use a “cosmopolitan vision,” in which travel writers try to project a more ethical stance when it comes to dealing with human difference.

Lisle’s argument is influential, as her book on contemporary travel writing was one of the first to examine the political potentials of travel writing published after 1975, and she provides a useful colonial/cosmopolitan binary to help future scholars confront the challenges of these texts.

For my attempts to analyze travel writing in Central Asia and China, Lisle’s introductory concepts will be a useful way to define the ethical purposes of many of the 21st century travelers. Although there are few travelers with an explicit “colonial vision” – there are many who claim that their travel is being conducted for ethical purposes and to show the cultural and social harmony that exists in a globalizing world. Like Lisle, I will need to examine closely the motivations of these travelers.

Decorative. Image shows sign of Mushroom Rock State Park.

Choosing Your Issue & Focus

Follow the Research

There are two levels of focus to the Exploratory Essay: the issue itself, that falls under the broad umbrella topic of “socioeconomic status in the U.S.,” that you have chosen to pursue, and the thematic angle that emerges from your research. For example, you might have already decided that you’re interested in the broader category of education and its relationship to social class in the U.S. As you conduct research, then, you might read about student loan debt and its impact on millennial homeownership rates, about the “engagement gap” that hurts college admission rates for under privileged kids, or about the connections between affordable early childhood education and lifetime earning potential. While all of these topics relate to the overall focus of education, they don’t relate to each other in any clear and manageable way.

So, you would have to choose the angle that you find the most compelling, the most relevant, or the most unfamiliar – whatever criterion you prefer to apply for an assignment that you’ll be spending time with. Let’s say you decide to go with “engagement gap” because it’s not something you’d heard about before, and you’d like to know more. That would be your thematic angle into socioeconomic class.

Use Your Personal Interest & Experience

The Exploratory Essay is less interested in your personal experience than other types of essays, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use that experience at all; in fact, identifying your personal interests in the huge topic of socioeconomic status in the U.S. will help you narrow your focus and choose a research area and thematic angle.

Freewriting is a good way to reflect on your own experiences with social class and help you find a thematic angle. Please use the following questions to help guide your thoughts:

  • What is your major? Why did you choose it? If you don’t yet have a major, what subjects are you hoping to learn more about while at college? How do your major or academic interests relate to social class or socioeconomic status?
  • What attitudes related to work and social class do you and your family members and friends hold? How are these attitudes different? How have they changed?
  • Did you grow up in an urban, rural, suburban, or other type of setting? How did that place shape your attitudes towards work, wealth, and other similar concepts?
  • In what ways do you think your future life and lifestyle will be different from that of your parents?
  • How would you define your own social class? What is the “evidence” (i.e., facts about your life) what would help support this definition? (For example, a study about social class differentiated “upper class” families if they possessed such items as an unabridged dictionary or original art.)

Use Class Discussion

Talking about examples related to social status in the U.S. is another way to help identify areas of focus for your Exploratory Essay. For example, as a class or in small groups, you might discuss these prompts:

What are some pop culture depictions of class in the U.S.? In what ways are audiences “in on the jokes” for comedic genres that deal with class? How do they know who to root for and who to root against? How do these sociocultural messages about social class in the U.S. add to or challenge our understanding?

  • Television, g., Bob’s Burgers, Shameless, & Everyone Hates Chris
  • Music, g., Hip Hop & Country
  • Film, g., Us & The Wolf of Wall Street
  • Literature: g., The Great Gatsby & Crazy Rich Asians
  • Social Media: g., Influencer Culture & Side Hustle

You can also use the mind map below to make connections between your personal reflections (in the freewrite) and the examples you and your classmates came up with and discussed in the previous activity to determine a specific thematic focus for your Exploratory Essay.

A blue square includes the words "How do we define social class in the U.S.?: What is the real relationship between the "American Dream," hard work, and meritocracy?" in the middle. On each side of the square is a different label: Education & Health, Jobs, Region & Politics, and Race, Gender, & Ability.

For example, here are some issues that you might generate using the four major categories in the mind map.

Education and Health

  • Student Debt
  • Higher Education & Social Class
  • First-Generation College Students
  • The Digital Divide Food Insecurity

Jobs and Economy

  • The Gig Economy (no contract jobs)
  • Welfare Benefits
  • Social Mobility Meritocracy
  • Unemployment rates

Region and Politics

  • Rural Poverty, Urban Poverty
  • Income Differences in Blue States vs. Red States
  • Food Deserts
  • Poverty Rates on Native American Reservations

Race, Gender, and Ability

  • Social Class & Law Enforcement
  • Social Class & Disability
  • Single Mothers
  • Women in STEM
  • Masculinity & Social Class

Once you have narrowed the focus of your research, you should review your existing notes from shared readings, looking for useful examples and potential leads to new sources. Follow up on statistics, click on links to references, and keep an open mind.

Image shows a handmade sign hung on two door handles. The image shows a drawing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a gold crown. The text reads "Thank you RBG. We Love you."

Synthesis

Summary vs. Synthesis

 Synthesis is one of the key goals of your Exploratory Essay. Instead of only including summaries or descriptions of your secondary sources, you are being asked to place them in conversation with each other, allowing your readers to see the ways in which these sources interact, converge (i.e., make similar points), or diverge (i.e., make contrasting points).

Of course, summarizing played an important role in your Reading Reflection essay, as it served as a touchstone for your own response, and it is playing a key role in helping you track ideas and develop your own thoughts for the Exploratory Essay. Summarizing your sources helps you internalize what you’re reading and makes it less likely that you’ll inadvertently plagiarize; in short, it is good critical thinking and writing practice. But now it’s time to build on those skills by producing explanatory synthesis that helps readers learn more about the underlying perspectives on a topic related to social class in the U.S. You’ll do this by identifying similarities and differences among writers engaged in the topic and then probing those connections for meaning.

To put an even finer point on it, to be successful in your Exploratory Essay, you will need to organize your essay thematically rather than by source, putting multiple sources into conversation with each other to craft a more sophisticated approach than just a collection of source summaries. In the majority of your body paragraphs, you should be synthesizing sources around key subtopics. In other words, most of your body paragraphs should include at least 2 different sources.

How do you know when you are summarizing information versus when you are synthesizing information? Here’s a handy guide:

Summary: How to Present Information
Accurately and Fairly 		Synthesis: How to Shape Information to
Support Your Thesis
Reports others’ ideas Uses writer’s own observations about others’
ideas
Highlights important information of one source Provides a specific focus under which to categorize the information and points from
multiple sources
Remains objective in tone Guides readers through multiple perspectives
from more than one source at a time
Avoids making claims in support of or against
the source’s argument or content 		Reflects on the meaning of sources’
arguments or content
Organizes source material content hierarchically Organizes source material thematically through connections with other sources

Let’s look at an example of synthesis, borrowed from Bowling Green University professors Warwick and Clevenger (2011):

In the past, opponents of immigration raised economic, racial, religious, and nationalistic objections or questions about large-scale immigration to the United States (Jones 247-305). Today, however, experts tell us that opposition to immigration is expressed almost exclusively in economic terms. For example, Dan Lacy, a workplace consultant, business journalist, and editor, found that “research of immigration attitudes” shows that the fear that some Americans have of losing their jobs to immigrants is the main reason for opposition to immigration today (41). In the same economic vein, Thomas Muller, an economist with the Urban Institute, points out the wide spread concern among Americans that the new immigrants use welfare and other public-aid programs to such an extent that they are a ”financial burden” on government and, therefore, a financial burden on taxpayers (125-127). With these two reasons expressly conveyed, it is easy to see that most objections to immigration now fall under the economic realm.

Notice that there are three different sources in this paragraph: Jones, Lacy, and Muller.

What the writer could have done is devote a paragraph to summarizing Jones’ article, a paragraphs to summarize Lacy’s article, then a paragraph to summarize Muller’s article. However, that doesn’t help a reader better understand the complexity of an issue (one of your goals in your Exploratory Essay). It’s also pretty dull to read. Instead, the writer is synthesizing information, drawing attention to how different experts in the field contribute to a conversation around one point within the complex discussion surrounding immigration.

Let’s look at that paragraph again. This time, pay attention to the terms in bold.

In the past, opponents of immigration raised economic, racial, religious, and nationalistic objections or questions about large-scale immigration to the United States (Jones   247-305). Today, however, experts tell us that opposition to immigration is expressed almost exclusively in economic terms. For example, Dan Lacy, a workplace consultant, business journalist, and editor, found that “research of immigration attitudes” shows that the fear that some Americans have of losing their jobs to immigrants is the main reason for opposition to immigration today (41).   In the same economic vein, Thomas Muller, an economist with the Urban Institute, points out the  wide spread concern among Americans that the new immigrants use welfare and other public-aid programs to such an extent that they are a ”financial burden” on government and, therefore, a financial burden on taxpayers (125-127). With these two reasons expressly conveyed, it is easy to see that most objections to immigration now fall under the economic realm.

Notice that this entire paragraph is not just about immigration, but is about objections to immigration and the terms in bold are points of overlap between the three sources’ perspectives. The writer doesn’t spend a paragraph explaining one person’s viewpoint but, instead, puts three different voices into conversation, highlighting different reasons some people object to/oppose immigration. That’s exactly what you want to do in your Exploratory Essay.

However, there’s another, perhaps more important, point of overlap within this paragraph. Again, pay attention to the terms in bold.

In the past, opponents of immigration raised economic, racial, religious, and nationalistic objections or questions about large-scale immigration to the United States (Jones 247-305). Today, however, experts tell us that opposition to immigration is expressed almost exclusively in economic terms. For example, Dan Lacy, a workplace consultant, business journalist, and editor, found that “research of immigration attitudes” shows that the fear that some Americans have of losing their jobs to immigrants is the main reason for opposition to immigration today (41). In the same economic vein, Thomas Muller, an economist with the Urban Institute, points out the wide spread concern among Americans that the new immigrants use welfare and other public-aid programs to such an extent that they are a ”financial burden” on government and, therefore, a financial burden on taxpayers (125-127). With these two reasons expressly conveyed, it is easy to see that most objections to immigration now fall under the economic realm.

While the paragraph is about opposition to immigration, it’s more specifically about some peoples’ economic concerns with immigration. Once again, I want you to notice how this writer is putting three different sources into conversation with each other around this same topic: some peoples’ economic concerns about immigration.

As we’ve explained, the body of your Exploratory Essay needs to be structured around synthesis – organizing your paragraphs according to a theme or points that a variety of your sources engage with. Avoid listing, a simple organizational strategy in which writers describe or summarize one source after another, in which there is little interlinking of the different sources together.

In the two-paragraph excerpt below, the writer is offering marketing recommendations based on “generational differences” and utilizes the same source for each paragraph, a type of listing that prevents stronger analysis from developing.

Millennials are slowly taking over the workforce. They are most likely on social media so this is a great user base for LinkedIn. The first strategy to utilize when marketing to Millennials is to focus on innovation. Marketing to Millennials should take an approach that shows a new perspective on a common problem or task. This generation is easily infatuated by new things on social media. The second strategy is to use reviews. Millennials like to talk with their friends; 68% report that they won’t make a major decision until they have discussed it with other people. This is a great way to market to Millennials indirectly. The third and final strategy to utilize are radio commercials. Although this is a very old-fashioned, 93% of millennials listen to the radio for a total of around 11 hours per week. Another idea could even be to pay for an ad spot on podcasts since they are very popular in today’s society (Generational Marketing).

Generation Z is very digitally savvy. The attention span of this generation user is just eight seconds – so first impressions really count. The first strategy to utilize when marketing to Generation Z is to sell experiences, and not products. This generation is more focused on the experience they will gain. The second marketing strategy to utilize are videos. Video content is key for Generation Z. 85% of teenagers are active on YouTube every day; and this is a perfect platform to get them hooked. The third strategy is to engage with customers. Building brand trust is extremely important to Generation Z. This generation believes that the key to an authentic brand is to respond to feedback and give responsiveness. The fourth and finally strategy is offer privacy. More than 88% of Gen Zers agreed that protecting their privacy was very important. It is important to be transparent and ensure their date is safe and secure (Generational Marketing).

Conversely, in this example, the student writer makes use of four different sources in their exploration of the theme, “Community.”[14] This is an example of synthesis. The items in bold highlight the ways in which the writer is allowing the various sources to interact with each other.

Creating a sense of community is an important element of any graduate school for a variety of reasons including an increased ability of students to network and advocate for each other, a sense of teamwork created, and the bonds formed between students and faculty that lead to increased happiness of the students. Monica Moore argues that people should create programs that focus on community building among graduate students, which agrees with the interview of Anna Beyer, where she stated that more social events at the start of the MAcc would help make connections early on and also help to include students with undergraduate degrees from different colleges. Moore also challenges the idea that graduate students are not willing to give up time for orientation activities, but Beyer’s suggestion of an increase in social events at the start of the program supplements this claim, demonstrating that graduate students do care about bonding with their peers. . .

Community can be important to build within graduate school, as previously shown by Moore, for a variety of reasons. Derek Attig provides two main arguments as to why community is important to graduate school. First, Attig claims that a strong community is crucial in providing a support system for students where they can advocate for each other and provide academic, professional, and personal support and encourage growth. This statement is similar to what Dr. Terry Mason, the director of the MAcc program, expressed in his interview, stating that the program provides many opportunities for career-changing networking, and allows for strong bonds to be formed amongst the students . . . According to the K-State College of Business Administration, the college features “small classes where interactions with professors and colleagues are encouraged.”

You might be wondering, though, how to put those summaries you’ve written for your “reading for the conversation” notes and/or annotated bibliographies to good use. One answer is to create a “synthesis table” that begins with your summary, perhaps edited to its finest one- sentence clarity, and then use guiding questions to help you more clearly see the conversation in which the authors are participating. Here is an example table:

Source citation What is the primary focus or main idea of the text?
(Summary)		 What are the points of agreement among texts?
(Synthesis)		 What are the points of disagreement among texts?
(Synthesis)
Source #1
Source #2
Source #3

You can continue to analyze these three sources by extending this table with other questions, such as the following:

  • Does one author extend the research of another?
  • Does any author raise new questions or ideas about the topic?
  • Are there any author viewpoints that still need to be acknowledged?

Topic Sentences and Transitions

Once you have designed the overarching structure of your essay and begun to place your important quotes, data, and other source material in their potential paragraphs, it’s time to consider how you will move readers through your work. Remember that while you have been spending a lot of time with your sources, reading carefully and taking thoughtful notes, your own readers have not – so you must guide them on the exploratory path you’ve set. There are two writing strategies to employ for this endeavor: topic sentences and transitions.

Topic sentences are those opening lines of a paragraph that establish focus, and they also often function as transitions between sections and examples and signal the writer’s attitude.

Transitions are those linking words or phrases that highlight the nature of connection – sequence, cause/effect, contrast, similarity, in addition, etc. – between or among examples. The Purdue Online Writing Lab is a good source to expand your transition vocabulary.

Here is a student example that shows the relationship between topic sentence and transitions.

Let’s not be discouraged by the claims that social mobility is next to impossible in the U.S; it is difficult but not unachievable (topic sentence). Effective strategies require planning and perseverance, and efforts must begin somewhere, despite any reservations about the speed of progress. In a similar observation that reinforces Clark’s stance on education and social background as a legitimate mobility driver, social psychologist Wendy Johnson and fellow researchers claim (transitional phrase that identifies relationships between sources), “Previous studies have established that family social background and individual mental ability and educational attainment contribute to adult social class attainment. We propose that social class of origin acts as ballast, restraining otherwise meritocratic social class movement, and that post- secondary education is the primary means through which social class movement is both restrained and facilitated.” It would appear the best chances at real and long-lasting upward movement are achieved via intergenerational mobility coupled with self- improvement through continuing education.[15]

Here’s an example taken from the student sample essay shared later in this chapter that synthesizes source information in the useful “if, then” transitional format:

If affordability and quality of health care that Amadeo and Levey concern themselves about are truly the issues linking income and health care inequality, Diamond’s concerns about the cost and effectiveness of the solution are valid ones.[16]

You can also use those attributive tags (please see “A Note About Quoting and Paraphrasing” below) to transition from one example to another, a strategy that can also help you avoid dropped quotations (i.e., quotations that will jar readers, as they appear to be dropped in without any preparation or introduction).

The examples above demonstrate how the organizational approach that supports discursive prose allows for the writer’s analysis to be develop in a more sophisticated and thoughtful way than the listing approach.

Here’s another example of how writers shape conversations by using transitions and connecting phrases between sentences and ideas. This is our paragraph on economic objections to immigration:

In the past, opponents of immigration raised economic, racial, religious, and nationalistic objections or questions about large-scale immigration to the United States (Jones 247-305). Today, however, experts tell us that opposition to immigration is expressed almost exclusively in economic terms. For example, Dan Lacy, a workplace consultant, business journalist, and editor, found that “research of immigration attitudes” shows that the fear that some Americans have of losing their jobs to immigrants is the main reason for opposition to immigration today (41). In the same economic vein, Thomas Muller, an economist with the Urban Institute, points out the wide spread concern among Americans that the new immigrants use welfare and other public-aid programs to such an extent that they are a ”financial burden” on government and, therefore, a financial burden on taxpayers (125-127). With these two reasons expressly conveyed, it is easy to see that most objections to immigration now fall under the economic realm.

The writer uses these phrases to guide a reader, quickly and concisely explaining how these sources and experts are in conversation with each other.

For example, the paragraph starts with “In the past,” and then transitions to “Today, however.” These two sentences let a reader know that peoples’ concerns about immigration have shifted. That’s accomplished by the move from “the past” to “today,” but it’s that word “however” that tells us that something has changed. Without the word “however,” we might think that concerns have not, in fact, changed. “However,” makes it clear to us that something is different.

“For example,” lets us know that the writer is going to give us an example that illustrates the claim made in the sentence before it (that concerns are now primarily economic). “In the same economic vein,” does something similar: it lets a reader know that Muller basically agrees with Lacy about economic concerns.

These sorts of words and phrases really help improve the reading experience, and help a reader understand the way that information is fitting together.

Activity

As you read the next example, ask yourself what specific words the writer uses to:

  • identify other writers’ ideas
  • connect writers’ ideas
  • show the relationship between writers’ ideas
  • provide original analysis

While Garland and Wallace relate earnings of parents and educational opportunities for children, O’Shaughnessy and Burnsed relate SAT scores and degree fields to future earnings. Finally, the Pew Research Center manifests how earnings can, but ultimately don’t, affect economic mobility or enable the Millennial generation to change their class. While these topics may seem uncorrelated, there is a connection between all of the arguments. Because Garland suggests that income affects early educational opportunities and O’Shaughnessy argues that college readiness (by means of SAT score) in high school can indicate income, these respective conclusions can work together to form an argument that parent’s income can affect prospective earnings in the workforce. Garland also reasons that the experiences a child has can affect their educational path, which relates to Burnsed’s assertion that field of study is a great gauge for income. These separate arguments correlate in their respective logic that as Garland alludes that if a child were exposed to a STEM career or experience as a child and are led to pursue that path, which Garland indicates is likely, Burnsed would contend that this choice in career path will positively affect their income. With Garland’s argument, she would conclude that the parent’s income affected earnings. While each author argues about different aspects of education, all of the arguments are correlated in either a direct or indirect manner. All authors argue that education affects class, and class affects education.[17]

Activity: Drafting Activity & Mini-Workshop

In your notes, look for shared ideas and moments of disconnect or tension among your research, but make sure that you’re not stretching to make a connection that’s not relevant to the material or your theme or thesis. Then, using what you’ve learned about synthesis, write one body paragraph for your Exploratory Essay that includes three (the required minimum) sources and puts them into conversation with each other around common themes.

When you have completed your synthesis paragraph, exchange your paragraph draft with a classmate, or as the instructor directs, and use these questions to help each other achieve strong synthesis.

  • What has the writer done to identify each source’s ideas?
  • What has the writer done to connect sources’ ideas to each other?
  • What specific words has the writer used to show the relationship between sources’ ideas?
  • Do you see the writer’s own analysis among the connections being made?

Organizational Approach

When you’re ready to outline or otherwise plan your Exploratory Essay, you will use a topical or thematic approach (synthesis) rather than a chronological or methodological pattern you might see in a science-related Literature Review. Organizing by theme helps you build on the thesis you’ve developed and stay focused on central ideas more so than particular writers or texts and is the most common approach for humanities-based work. This means that the body of your Exploratory Essay should not read as a list of summarized material, but as a cohesive “conversation” on the topic you’ve chosen.

The Exploratory Essay will consist of these three main sections. Under each are some suggestions for what kinds of information you might include.

Introduction

    •  Provide a title that highlights the overall focus of your issue or conversation.
    •  Introduce your overall issue or conversation, its importance, and its complexity.
    • Highlight your controlling main idea or claim; however, do not offer an argumentative claim or conceive of your issue as a problem-to-be- solved; instead, you are using your thesis to invite your readers to explore the multiple perspectives (i.e., your sources) that make up your conversation.
    • Tell your readers what you hope they’ll learn from your Exploratory Essay and why you think it matters.
    • Forecast what you will be doing in your Exploratory Essay.

Body

    •  Let your readers know about the multiple perspectives that make up the conversation.
    • Organize according to the main points, themes, or content of the conversation.
    • Incorporate your secondary sources and synthesize them, bringing the sources into conversation with each other within paragraphs; your writers should be able to tell, at the very least, what is similar and what is different about these perspectives.
    • Use topic sentences and transitions to explicitly tell your readers what you are doing and what to expect.
    • When appropriate, state what is important or significant about your secondary sources and about what you are doing.

Conclusion

    • Provide a brief overview or summary of your most significant points.
    • Indicate what perspectives might not have been included in your essay and what they might have added.
    • Discuss the implications of your essay: what does this new understanding help us recognize about this topic.

Tone & Style: Invitational Approaches

A black and white ink sketch of two people who are frowning and angry at each other. The one on the left seems to be a man and the one on the right appears to be a woman. Each has a cloud with lightning coming out of it where their brain would be. Above them both are three dark storm clouds. There is rain, lightning, a skull and crossbones, exclamation points, and some symbols suggesting swear words. Between them, arrows are drawn pointing both ways.

What does it mean to say that you should take an invitational (i.e., neutral and engaging) approach as the tone and style of your Exploratory Essay? You know that you are not making an argumentative claim around the topic, such as “We can solve the problem of housing in the U.S. by doing a, b, and c.” You know, instead, that you are making an informative claim on the issue or conversation, such as “We can learn more about the problem of housing in the U.S. by looking at a, b, and c.”

Because of this neutral, informative purpose, your introduction plays a crucial role in establishing tone. Here’s a student example:

Minimal Costs or Not?

 Currently, the fifteen-dollar minimum wage is a hotly debated topic. Workers are holding strikes in a “Fight for Fifteen” all over the United States. The question must be raised, is raising the federally mandated minimum wage the solution to poverty, or will it negatively affect employment, hurting those it is meant to help? While everyone would agree higher wages would greatly benefit the poor, there is disagreement about whether a minimum wage is the most effective approach. To gain an informed understanding, we must look at the ripple effects of minimum wage on workers, businesses, and the labor market as a whole. By having a conversation, learning from the views of others, and acting in one accord, we can learn and achieve more than by competing against each other.[18]

Notice the choices this student writer has made in this introduction, starting with the title itself, written as a question, to establish an invitational tone for the essay. Specifically, consider how they use questions to engage readers and model learning together. We should also note how the writer has established a clear issue on which to focus – the relationship between minimum wage and poverty – under the larger topic of socioeconomic status in the U.S.

Overall, the following list offers a variety of strategies you can employ to create and maintain an appropriate tone for your Exploratory Essay.

  • Make the conversation clear and engaging
    • Establish an explicit purpose for the
    • Ask questions to interact with
    •  Make comparisons or contrasts between two or more sources (i.e. synthesis).
      • Utilize transitional words and phrases that highlight the relationship between examples.
    • o Reflect on what you have learned, or come to realize, in the course of researching-for-and-writing this
  • Demonstrate your own fairness and neutrality
    • Summarize sources accurately and
    • Choose specific and accurate words to describe the
    • Use a variety of sources to prove your ability to see the topic from multiple
    • Show the common ground between different
    • Offer your own perspective, likely in the conclusion, as a way of supporting the significance of the of the conversation.

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A Note about Quoting and Paraphrasing

As you work to summarize your sources for this essay, you’ll want to keep in mind when to paraphrase and when to quote directly. You should only quote directly when the exact wording is important to your purpose. When you do directly quote a source, you need to use the exact words from the original source. Those words MUST also be in quotation marks and you must   include citation information either in the signal phrase, in the parenthetical citation, or a combination of the two.

However, often you simply need to summarize or paraphrase the information. In fact, using too many direct quotes can result in other peoples’ words taking over your essay. You’ve been practicing summarizing, which is, in many ways, just another word for paraphrasing. When you paraphrase source material, you must be true to the content of the original source material, but you must change the wording and the sentence structure. To properly paraphrase, you need to put the source material into your own words. Paraphrased material should not be in quotation marks but you still MUST include the citation information (the author, the name of the source text, and the page number) either in the signal phrase, in the parenthetical citation, or a combination of the two.

Below are examples of improper and proper paraphrasing.

Original source material

 “Millennials are also the first in the modern era to have higher levels of student loan debt, poverty and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income than their two immediate predecessor generations (Gen Xers and Boomers) had at the same stage of their life cycles” (Pew Research 149–150).

Improper Paraphrasing

Millennials are the first in the recent years to have more college debt, fewer jobs, and less money than the previous generations had at the same time in their lives (Pew Research 149–150).

While we have changed some of the words, we haven’t changed the sentence structure. Instead, we’ve just plugged synonyms into the original sentence structure. Even though we’ve included the citation information, this paraphrase would be considered (unintentional) plagiarism because it’s too close to the original source material.

Improper Paraphrasing

People from my generation (called Millennials) are the first generation to be doing better than the generations before them (Pew Research 149–150).

In this case, while we’ve changed the words and sentence structure, we’ve lost the actual meaning of the original text. In fact, we’ve completely misrepresented the content of the original source material.

Proper Paraphrasing

According to the Pew Research Center, Millennials are the first group to be doing worse than the two generations that have gone before them. More specifically, Millennials tend to be less likely than previous generations to have good jobs and the wealth that accompanies those jobs. They also find themselves further in debt (especially in regard to school loans) than their parents and grandparents were (149–150).

Here we’ve kept the same information as the original source material, but we’ve changed the wording and the sentence structure. We’ve included the information about the author in the signal phrase, letting a reader know where the paraphrase/ summary starts and we’ve included the page numbers in the parenthetical information at the end, which lets a reader know where the paraphrase ends.

In-Text Citations & Attributive Tags

 You must also remember to include citations for all outside source information, whether that information is directly cited or paraphrased, and to make clear for readers where/from what source that information is coming. We do this by including parenthetical citations and attributive tags/introductory phrases that provide source identification.

You can see an example of the parenthetical citation in the “Original Source Material” example above: (Pew Research 149–150). These citations coordinate with the Works Cited page and offer readers an easy way to follow-up on your sources.

You can see an example of an attributive tag in the “Proper Paraphrasing” example above: “According to the Pew Research Center.” Such tags work to differentiate your words from your sources and help build and maintain credibility with your readers.

If the author of your source is a person, you would use their last name (or, in the case of multiple writers, last names) in the citation along with the page number of the referenced material; the attributive tag uses the author’s full name upon first reference and then only the last name in subsequent citations.

Workshop

Use the following workshop guide to interact with drafts of the Exploratory Essay as directed by your instructor. Reviewing the assignment guidelines from the beginning of the chapter is helpful before you start reading. Treat your classmate’s draft just as carefully as you’ve been treating your own writing process: thoughtful engagement and specific example are necessary for a productive workshop.

Purpose/Focus

  • Even though the writer should not be making an explicit argument in this essay, the essay should still have a clear sense of purpose and focus. Where does the writer establish purpose in the introduction? What would you add or takeaway?
  • As you read, underline any parts of the essay that do not seem to fit within the larger focus and purpose of the essay.

Development

  • Pay close attention to how the writer uses their required three outside sources.
    • Do you, as a reader, get enough information to understand the gist of the outside sources? Does the writer include too much or too little summary information? Why do you think so?
    • Where is the writer using synthesis to show the relationship among sources? In what ways is the synthesis effective or ineffective?
  • If the writer has included personal experience or observation, does it help you as a reader better understand the topic and/or the topic’s significance? Does it support the exploratory nature of the essay, or detract from the overall effectiveness of the essay?

Organization

  •  Is there a recognizable structure to the essay with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion? How can you tell?
  • Has the writer relied too much on the list approach rather than using synthesis as an organizational tool? Why do you think so?
  • Do the topic sentences and transitions help guide you from one moment to the next? Point out one clear positive example and note any weaknesses.

Tone/Style

  •  Keeping a neutral and engaged tone is crucial to this essay. Highlight any words or phrases within the draft that could be read as aggressive or dismissive or could make a reader feel defensive.
  • Has the writer achieved an invitational tone? What makes you think so?

Overall

  •  On your separate sheet of paper, explain the two strongest parts of the draft. Keeping the assignment objectives in mind, why are these the two strongest parts of the essay? How do they help meet important objectives?
  • On your separate sheet of paper, explain the two areas of the essay that the writer should most focus on in revision. Keeping the objectives in mind, why are those two areas the most important for revision?

 

Student Example

Organic Agriculture and Social Class

Callista Moore

Callista Moore wrote this exploratory essay in Tolu Daniel’s ENGL 100 class.

The growing divide between the public and the agricultural industry has led to an abundance of disagreements and differing opinions between both consumers and producers. In recent years, there has been an increase in the demand for organic products. Consumers who can afford it are willing to pay a higher price for these organically produced foods due to their perception of them. According to Kylee Sigmond, an honors student in the Bumpers College of Agricultural Food and Life Sciences, in her thesis, “Consumer Perceptions of Organic, Natural, and Conventional Products When Provided at the Same Price,” most consumers would choose natural or organic products over conventional products if price were not a factor, but many consumers are unaware of what qualifies a product to be considered either natural or organic. Sigmond says that most consumers perceive organic or natural products as better than conventional products because they have made a connection between these agricultural practices and health and food safety. She explains the differences between natural and organic foods as well as how consumers can recognize these differences on their labels. She also acknowledges the fact that consumers want to know where their food comes from but are not sure how to find out more. Sigmond encourages the agricultural industry to bridge this gap between consumer and producer and give those with no agricultural ties access to the industry.

In “Fashionable Food: A Latent Class Analysis of Social Status in Food Purchases,” Marco A. Palma et al. explore how food connects to social class and what impact this has on food choices. They conducted experiments to see how consumer perception of food would affect what they buy and how much they are willing to spend. Palma et al. found that members of lower classes purchased prestigious foods, such as organic products, to appear higher in class whereas members of upper classes purchased these prestigious foods as an attempt to separate themselves from lower classes. In this study, they also saw evidence which connects food choice and quality with income, showing that those with higher income are able to have a higher quality diet and wider variety of food choice.

The main point Palma et al. are trying to convey is that food choices are linked with socioeconomic class and that more prestigious products such as organic food are associated with a higher socioeconomic class. On the one hand, Sigmond says that consumers make food choices based on health and food safety. She connects consumer ignorance to a disconnect from the agricultural industry and a confusion surrounding food labels. On the other hand, Palma et al. state that consumer food choices are driven by social class and prestige. They believe that those who purchase organic products are doing so in an attempt to boost their social status or detach themselves from lower social classes. Despite their differing views on consumer motivation behind purchasing organic foods, both Sigmon and Palma et al. agree that many buyers perceive organic or natural products as the better option when purchasing food.

One of the most controversial aspects of this conversation is whether or not organic farming will be able to support the world’s growing population. Most researchers accept that changes need to be made in order to feed the increasing population, but that is where the agreement ends. In his article “Why Organic Farming is not the Way Forward,” Holger Kirchmann says that there is little scientific evidence to back the removal of synthetic mineral fertilizers from production and argues that a complete conversion to organic farming will not be able to feed the world. He provides statistics which state that organic agricultural practices produce 35% less total yield than conventional agricultural practices. He goes on to say that making up for this difference would require a 50% increase in arable land. Kirchmann also examines the emission rates from both conventional and organic practices and provides research showing that organic farming produces significantly more greenhouse gas emissions per equal yield to conventional farming. His main purpose is to provide data to show the negative impacts of organic agriculture and why it is not feasible for only organic agriculture to support the world’s increasing population. Although Kirchmann focuses on differences in production and environmental impact, and Sigmond focuses on consumer perception of different agricultural practices, both would agree that the general public should be given more access to the agriculture industry as a whole. In other words, they believe that consumers should be able to easily acquire scientific information from the agricultural industry so that they can make better educated decisions when it comes to purchasing agricultural products.

Ocean Robbins, CEO of Food Revolutions Network, would disagree with Kirchmann’s position on organic agriculture feeding the world. In his article “Is Organic Food Worth the Cost?” Robbins argues that if the entire population were to cut meat out of their diet or at least cut back on meat consumption, then calories going towards animal feed could be redirected to humans, which would be more than enough to support the growing population. He acknowledges the higher cost of organic food and explains that it is due to the certification process that organic farms have to go through. Robbins continues this point by implying that if similar policies were put into place for conventional practices, then conventional products would cost more, too. He also explores the dangers of pesticides and addresses which conventionally grown products carry the most pesticides. Robbins’s main purpose is to encourage those who can afford it to buy organic products while affirming to those who cannot afford organic that it is okay to buy conventional products.

As we have seen, Robbins places an emphasis on purchasing organic products due to health and safety reasons, which is similar to the reason given by Sigmond to explain why consumers buy organic food rather than conventional products. However, Robbins also discusses the higher prices of organic products and would agree with Palma et al. that it is much easier for those in higher classes to purchase organic foods than those in lower classes. With that being said, this might be a big issue when it comes to the idea of completely replacing conventional agriculture with organic methods as suggested by Robbins. The higher cost of organic products may be difficult for members of lower classes to pay for which would create a whole new problem. On the flip side, continuing the expansion of conventional agriculture as suggested by Kirchmann could lead to many issues within crops such as less variability and decreased drought toleration.

 

If organic farming is going to become more dominant in the world, then the cost differences between conventional and organic production need to be addressed. Whether it be through Robbins’s suggestion of lowering the price of certifying an organic farm or some other method, something needs to be done to make organic products accessible to members of all socioeconomic classes. Ignoring these issues for any longer will only cause organic foods to become more representative of higher classes and make it increasingly difficult for organic products to be available to lower classes. Although it may seem impossible, by looking at organic agriculture costs through a variety of perspectives, researchers can work together to come up with a solution and make organic products obtainable for everyone.

Works Cited

Kirchmann, Holger. “Why Organic Farming is Not the Way Forward.” Outlook on Agriculture, vol. 48, no. 1, 2019, pp. 22–27.

Sigmon, Kylee. “Consumer Perceptions of Organic, Natural, and Conventional Products When Provided at the Same Price,” Agricultural Education, Communications and Technology Undergraduate Honors Theses, May 2019.

Robbins, Ocean. “Is Organic Food Worth the Cost?” Food Revolution Network, Apr. 2021. Palma, Marco A., et al. “Fashionable Food: A Latent Class Analysis of Social Status in Food

Purchases.” Applied Economics, vol. 49, no. 3, 2017, pp. 238–50.

 

  1. These articles are available at www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html. ↵
  2. Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. Touchstone, 1983. p. 27. ↵
  3. 3 Morin, Rich. “America’s Four Middle Classes.” Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends, Pew Research Center, 29 July 2008. Pew Research Center, www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/07/29/americas-four-middle-classes/. ↵
  4. Smarsh, Sarah. Heartland. Scribner, 2018. ↵
  5. Sugar, Rachel. “‘Good Taste’ is All About Class Anxiety.” Vox, 26 Sept. 2019, https://www.vox.com/the- goods/2019/9/26/20873938/good-taste-class-anxiety-s-margot-finn. ↵
  6. Swansburg, John. “The Self-Made Man: The Story of America’s Most Pliable, Pernicious, Irrepressible Myth.” Slate, 29 Sept. 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2014/09/ the_self_made_man_history_of_a_myth_from_ben_franklin_to_andrew_carnegie.html ↵
  7. Chetty, Raj, et.al. “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States,” Non-technical summary pdf, Opportunity Insights, May 2020, https://opportunityinsights.org/paper-category/race/. ↵
  8. Swansburg, John. “The Self-Made Man: The Story of America’s Most Pliable, Pernicious, Irrepressible Myth.” Slate, 29 Sept. 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2014/09/ the_self_made_man_history_of_a_myth_from_ben_franklin_to_andrew_carnegie.html. ↵
  9. Chetty, Raj, et.al. “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States,” Non-technical summary pdf, Opportunity Insights, May 2020, https://opportunityinsights.org/paper-category/race/. ↵
  10. Chetty, Raj, et al. “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective.” Abstract. Unites States Census Bureau, Sept. 2018, https://www.census.gov/library/working- papers/2018/adrm/CES-WP-18-40R.html. ↵
  11. Cilluffo, Anthony and Rakesh Kochhar. “Income Inequality in the U.S. Is Rising Most Rapidly Among Asians.” Pew Research Center, July 12, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/07/12/income-inequality-in-the- u-s-is-rising-most-rapidly-among-asians/. ↵
  12. Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say, I Say. 5th ed. W. W. Norton, 2021. ↵
  13. Garland, Sarah. “When Class Became More Important to a Child’s Education Than Race,” The Atlantic, 28 Aug 2013, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/when-class-became-more-important-to-a-childs- education-than-race/279064/. ↵
  14. You will find this student example in Chapter 4: Hannah Schneider’s “Strength and Impact of Community Factors on Graduate Students in the Kansas State University Master of Accountancy Program.” ↵
  15. This paragraph is from Rodney Tsoodle’s “Post-Secondary Education, the Root of Upward Mobility in America,” written in Anna Goins’ Fall 2019 ENGL 100. ↵
  16. This paragraph is from Sheldon Wilson’s “Wealth Determines Health,” which you will find at the end of this chapter (pp. 43-47). ↵
  17. This paragraph is from Gracie Danner’s “Education in the United States,” which she wrote in Cailin Roles’ ENGL 100 class. Danner’s essay appeared in the 2018 Prairie Lights (Expository Writing Program, Kansas State University). ↵
  18. From Nathan Featherstone’s “Minimal Costs or Not?” (Re)Writing Communities and Identities, 5th ed., pp. 173- 176. ↵

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(Re)Writing Communities and Identities Copyright © by Phillip Marzluf, Cindy Debes, Anna Goins, Stacia Gray, A. Abby Knoblauch, Cameron Leader-Picone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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