I’ve uploded my rough draft and it need to be further refined.
Argument with the counterargument needs to be included.
Reading 2: Michaela Bieda, “My Journey to Writing” and Reading 1: Jimmy Santiago Baca, “Coming Into Language”
In his essay “Coming Into Language,” Jimmy Santiago Baca describes his experience learning to read and write during incarceration, and the ways in which his new experience of literacy impacts his identity, self-worth, and view of the world. Michaela Bieda is a student writer who provides her own literacy narrative in “My Journey to Writing,” describing her struggles with ADHD and the kinds of learning she experienced at school. While the authors of these essays come from very different backgrounds, they both describe experiences with literacy and learning that empowered them, changing how they felt about themselves and what they thought was possible in their lives. They also both describe very negative experiences with education and learning, in which they felt excluded rather than helped by formal education.
Write an essay in which you analyze and respond to the essays by Baca and Bieda in order to make your own argument about the relationship between education and empowerment. What made Bieda and Baca feel excluded in their early experiences with education, and what made their later experiences more successful? How can literacy be both empowering and disempowering? What is required to access the empowering potential of education, particularly for marginalized individuals? Consider the assigned readings as well as your own educational experiences in order to make an argument about education, how it can serve as a tool for empowerment, and the barriers that get in the way.
Further questions to consider include:
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What do Bieda and Baca’s experiences suggest about the transformative power of education, and literacy more specifically? What makes such transformations possible? Are they available to anyone?
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How does this empowerment through literacy extend to broader social issues?
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Have you had a “transformative” experience in education? Why or why not? (If yes: what made that possible? If no: what stood in the way?)
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Baca and Bieda focus on alphabetic literacy (reading and writing words), but you could also think about your experience with numeracy (mathematical literacy). Are these literacy experiences as profound? Why or why not?
MLA Format