Reading & Annotation - Part 1

8/2/2019 Reading & Annotation - Part 1

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APPENDIX 1

Strategies for Close Reading and Critical Thinking

Appendix 1 illustrates six strategies for close reading and critical thinking: previewing: gaining knowledge about a text before reading it for the first time annotating: recording your questions, insights, and responses on the pages ofa text and looking for patterns in these annotations outlining: listing the main ideas of a text summarizing: presenting in a brief bu t coherent way the main ideas in a text synthesizing: bringing together for a particular purpose the information andideas in one text or from several texts evaluating arguments: evaluating how convincing an argument is for itsintended readers

Consider these the basic strategies for preparing to read an unfamiliar text,learning more about it after your first reading, and thinking about it moredeeply, more critically. Except for previewing, these strategies require you totake action with your pencil or keyboard- to produce writing that can lead todeeper thinking as you reflect on what you have written and seek to clarify it.This writing may also contribute directly to your completion of the essayassignment in each chapter ofWriting the World: always the writing will lead toa fuller understanding of readings, a key to your success on each assignment;and it may contribute some sentences to your essay. In every college course youtake, the close-reading and critical-thinking strategies will be useful to you.The four strategies that require writing-outlining, summarizing, synthesizing, and evaluating an argument-are introduced in the writer's notebooktasks follOwing the Supreme Court cases in Chapter 3, "Taking a Position on a

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Constitutional Issue." Should your class be assigned Chaptet'3, you wouldhave an opportunity to practice the four strategies, following the guidelines inthis appendix, and then benefit from discussion of any problems youencounter. In addition, you may use the strategies in other writer's notebooktasks. Most of these tasks throughout the assignment chapters invite informalwriting of many different kinds. Occasionally, however, when we believe thatyou can learn most about a reading by applying one of the formal strategies inthis appendix, we invite you to do so by naming the strategy exactly as it isnamed here.Before illustrating the strategies, we must define close reading and criticalthinking, the key terms of this appendix.

DEFINITIONS OF CLOSE READINGAND CRITICAL THINKING

Close ReadingConsider the difference between a first reading and subsequent readings. During a first reading, you assess the ease or difficulty of a reading. You speculateabout the writer's purpose. You gather a few ideas and make connections toyour own knowledge. You try to establish the main point. In contrast, whenyou return to a reading with a particular purpose in mind - to understand itbetter, tell someone about it, prove that you have read it, relate it to otherreadings, or write about it - you must read it more slowly and more carefullyThis kind of reading is what is meant by close reading. It is the kind of readingrequired of you in Writing the World. Primarily, you need to read closely to findconnections among readings and to write about them. You also need to readclosely so you can talk productively with classmates about the readings.Think of close readings as second, third, or subsequent readings. As youcomplete the writer's notebook tasks in a chapter, you will be giving parts of areading at least a second close reading. As you plan your essay, you will berereading closely the readings that have made the most important contributions to your thinking. As you draft your essay, you will be digging into keyreadings to select the materials that will directly support your argument andcounterargument. When you revise your essay, you will return to certain readings to search out materials that will strengthen your argument. Throughoutthese close readings-close rereadings, really-you may make good use ofthe strategies of annotating, outlining, summarizing, synthesizing, and evaluating an argument. You need not deploy them in the systematic way youwould practice them in the Chapter 3 notebook tasks and in occasional othersuch tasks throughout the book, but your knowledge of them will make yourclose readings more searching, inSightful, and productive. Your experiencewith these strategies will increase your confidence in approaching difficultnew readings in other college courses.


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Close Reading and Critical Thinking 677

Critical ThinkingBecause your brain is designed for critical thinking, you think critically about your own personal experiences many times each day. For example, you maydecide what advice to give a friend who has asked for your help, chooseamong several alternative routes as you drive to an unfamiliar destination,solve a problem or resolve a dispute at work, or closely compare the price andquality of competing brands before you make a purchase. You have also hadexperience thinking critically about written texts. In high school, for example,you may have written a library research report taking a position on an environmental or a health issue, an essay interpreting a short story, or an argumentspeculating about how American history might have taken a different course ifa military or a political leader had made a different decision.Clearly, critical thinking means more than criticizing or finding fault. Infact, critical thinking may lead you tq praise or value something you haveread. The worrl critical in the phrase critical thinking means to analyze or evaluate a text. In this SL:'se, a critic (from a Greek word meaning "to discern orjudge") is someone who expresses a reasoned evaluation of a text. Criticalthinking, therefore, involves raising questions, making judgments, discovering connections, and drawing conclusions based on what you are learningfrom texts and on your previous knowledge and experience. It requires astance that is open to challenging new ideas. It begins with close reading tounderstand new information and ideas so that your questions and conclusionsare based on what a text actually offers rather than on what you might want itto offer or on what you believe that it does offer after only a first reading. Everyassignment and activity in Writing the World is designed to foster this kind ofclose reading. The six strategies in this appendix make an important contribution because they increase your confidence that you understand a reading wellenough to challenge the author, relate it to other readings, and enter into serious discussion with others about it - in other words, to think critically aboutthe reading.Illustrations of the strategies in this appendix are based on an argument taking a pOSition on a current issue. College instructors consider reasoned argument one of the best examples of critical thinking. Many of your opportu nities to make use of the strategies through the writers notebook tasks involve readings that make arguments. Keep in mind, too, that all but one of the essay assignments in Writing the World are argument assignments: many of the read ings make arguments, and you will write argument essays. Therefore, you will be continually engaged in the highly valued form of critical thinking known as reasoned argument.A final note: Because critical thinking requires that you understand others' ideas and arguments well, it can be enhanced by strategies like outlining and summarizing. It requires more, however-a critical perspective or frame work. Some instructors believe that students' primary goal in college should be to learn about many different critical perspectives. You come to


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college with certain perspectives that ate related to your most deeply held values and beliefs. For example, you may have a political perspective-liberal,or conservative, or some other-that influences how you see the world, oryou may h ~ v e a certain religious perspective, such as Islamic moderate,Protestant fundamentalist, traditional Catholic, or secular humanist. Thesebeliefs give you particular perspective on your reading, leading you to ask certain kinds of questions, reach certain kinds of conclusions, and so on. In college, you are able to learn about many other critical perspectives. Thislearning may confirm the perspectives you brought with you, or it may leadyou to modify them or even to take up new perspectives. For example, inChapter 4, "Evaluating Civic Stances," you can learn about three prominentcivic or political perspectives: liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism.What you learn may influence your political views; even more important,what you learn about anyone of these perspectives will allow you to adopt itor try it out more searchingly as a perspective from which to think criticallyabout political arguments. In Chapter 6, "Interpreting Popular Culture," youcan learn how to interpret tabloid television from a social perspective derivedfrom contemporary cultural studies. The important thing to keep in mind isthat when you think critically about a reading, you must make use of somecritical perspective, whether you are aware of it or not. It is best to make yourself aware of it; such an awareness inevitably involves knowledge of competing perspectives.The follOwing annotated reading illustrates the six strategies for close reading and critical thinking. It is a portion of the longer reading by Dionne inChapter 4.

THEY ONLY LOOK DEAD: WHY PROGRESSIVES WILL DOMINATE

THE NEXT POLITICAL ERA E. J. Dionne Jr.

Those who believe in government's possibilities cannot 1pretend that they share the new conservatism's view ofthe state. At the heart of the new conservatism is thebelief that government action is not only essentiallyoppressive =

excessive exercise inefficient but also i n h e r e n t l y ~ Democratico f power, weighingdown or crushing government, in this telling, has interests all its own that

have nothing to do with what the voters want. What'sespecially important about this idea is that it ultimatelysees no fundamental distinction between free govern


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ment and d i ~ t a t o r s h i p . The differences are only a matterof degree, not of kind: The more limited democraticgovernment is, the better; the more active democraticgovernment is, the more it begins to approach the evilsof Nazism or communism. "Behind our ~ a n d

@ew FrontierS]md GCat S o c i e t i ~ ' writes [conserva-tive] House majority leader Dick Armey, "you will find,with a difference only in power and nerve, the same sort ofperson who gave the world its FiveYear Plans and Great

[Emphasis added.]This is an extrao nary a ~ d f d i c ~ C effectively

equating R ~ e l t , Kennedy a d Johnson with Stalina n d ~ f the problem is stat d like this, then there isonly one choice: Preserving fre dom means having gov-ernment do as little as possi Ie. A government thatmight levy taxes to provide he lth care covera e for allor pensions for the old is see as marching the peopledown "the road to serfdom," the evocative phrase ofthe libertarian economist Frie rich A. Hayek. Better, inthis view, to have no health c re and no pensions thanto have the government em ark on this terrible path.Environmental regulations a e seen not as preservingstreams and forests for fut re generations; they areviewed as ways of interfering with the free use of privateproperty. Work safet re ula ions are no longer ways ofproviding employees with some protections againsthazardous machines or co ditions; they are seen as"interference in the right of

This sort of thinking now so common that ithas been forgotten how adically: different it is from the

New Deal = Ro06evelt New Frontier = Kennedy GI'Mt Society = John60n

who could 0ppo6etheee governmentaction6f

Roeenulatt al60mention6 th06eprogram6 and therlght6 uelow inparae. 5. 6

triee to make con-servative6 6eemradical and dan-gerou6

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~ 8 0 APPENDIX 1

Important con-traet: not "big"govt. but "ener-getic govt.

deepotic = govern-mente that haveunlimited powerandabueeit

triee to underminethe idea that theeize ofgovt. ie theieeue

tradition on which the United States was founded-atradition to which contemporary liberals, moderates,conservatives and libertarians all trace their roots. Asthe political philosopher Stephen Holmes has argued,the entire project of freedom going back to America'sfounders rests ~ o t on weak government, but rather onan energetic governmentJgovernment strong enough toprotect individual rights. Free government is differentin kind from@CspotI9regimes because its fundamentalpurpose-to vindicate the rights of individuals-isdifferent.

Imagine on the one side a ' - - - - - - - ; ~ ~ ~ government-provided social secu 'ty, health, welfare orpension systems of any type. t levies relatively lowtaxes which go almost entir y toward supporting largemilitary and secret police rces that regularly jail or killpeople because of t eir political views, religiousbeliefs-or for any ther reason the regime decides.Then imagine a@e-mocracpwith regular open electionsand full freedoms of speech and religion. Imagine further that its government levies higher taxes than thedictatorship to support an extensive welfare state, generous old-age pensions and a government health system. The first country might technically have a "smallergovernment," but there is no doubt that it is not a freesociety. The second country would have a "bigger government," measured as a percentage of gross domesticproduct, yet there is no doubt that it is a free society.This point might seem obvious, but i t is in fact

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obscured by the presumptions that underlie the conservative anti-government talk now so popular. Thes;ze of government is an important issue, but it is not asimportant as-and should not be confused with-the big govt. vs. kind

ofgovt.kind of government a society has.Because the anti-government of the new 5 ideology: a system

of Ideas aboutconservatism views almost all forms of government human life andcultureintervention (beyond basic police protection) with sus

picion, it misses entirely the fact that democratic governments can intervene in ways that expand ~ n d i v i d u a ( liberty and right6, (para. 3)liberty. At the extreme, it took a very strong nationalgov rnment (and very forceful intervention) to end sla energetic govt.

protect6 andand literally free four million Americans from expand6 theseexample6: endbond ge. It's worth remembering that supporters of sla 6lavery, end segre-gation, andvery s w abolitionists as "enemies of liberty" interfering expand votingwith tn "property rights" of slaveholders and imposing rlght6

the fed ral government's wishes over "the rights ofstates." 'milady, i t took a strong federal government toend se re ation in the 1960s and vindicate the right ofAfrican-A ericans to vote. Such actions were wellwithin the liberal tradition of free government which,notes Steph n Holmes, accepted that there were occasions when "only a powerful centralized state couldprotect ~ d i v i d u a l r i g ~ a g a i n s t local strongmen andreligious majoritie "

In the current cac hony of anti-government sloganeering, it is forgotten hat the ever-popular slogan

are these the"equality of opportunity" was ade real only by extensive same?-6eem togovernment efforts to offer individuals opportunitie be closely related


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my grandfatherwent through col-lege and graduate6chool on th e GIBill-money heearned pay6 60meof my college 171116

how active govt.he/p6 indivldual6

O.K., bu t whatabout govt. Ineffi-ciency (para. 2)which Dionnedoe6n't 6eem todeny? Govt. doe6wa6te money;60me program6don't work. Whatabout pork barrel6pendlng?

to develo their own ca a i t i ~ . As Holmes points out,Adam Smith, the intellectu I father of the free market,favored a publicly financed, ompulsory system of ele-mentary education. After rld War II the govern-ment's investment in the colle e education of millionsthrough the GI Bill simultaneo sly opened new oppor-tunities for individuals and p omoted an explosiveperiod of general economic grow h. As Holmes puts it:"Far from being a road to serfdo government inter-vention was meant to enhance inoividual autonom .Publicly financed schooling, as il l wrote, is 'helptoward doing without help.'" ohn Stuart Mill offershere a powerful counter to t ose who would insist thatgovernment interventio always and everywhereincreases "dependenCy./

Government also fosters libert by doing somethingso obvious that it is little noticed: It insists that certainthings cannot be bought and sold. We do not, for ex-ample, believe that justice in the courts should bebought and sold. We presume that votes and publicoffices cannot be bought (even if expensive politicalcampaigns raise questions about the depth of our com-mitment to this proposition). We now accept, thoughwe once did not, that it is wrong for a wealthy person tobuy his way out of the draft during a time of war. And,of course, we do not believe that human beings can bebought and sold.

But these do not exhaust the instances in which afree people might decide to limit the writ of money andthe supremacy of the market. As the political philoso-


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pher Michael Walzer has argued, one of the centralissues confronting democratic societies concerns whichrights and privileges should not be put up for sale. Asan abstract proposition, we reject the notion that awealthy person should be able to buy extra years of lifethat a poor person cannot, since life itself ought not bebought and sold. Yet the availability of health careaffects longevity, and by making health care a purelymarket transaction, we come close to selling life anddeath. This was the primary a r g u m ~ n t for Medicare andremains the central moral claim made by advocates ofnational health insurance. Similarly, we do not believethat children should be deprived of access to food, med-icine or education just because their parents are poor.As Holmes puts it, "Why should children be hopelesslysnared in a web of underprivilege into which they wereborn through no fault of their own?"

The current vogue for the superiority of marketsover government carries the risk of obscuring the basicissue of what should be for sale in the first place. In asociety characterized by growing economic inequality,the dangers of making the marketplace the sole arbiterof the basic elements of a decent life are especially large.Doing so could put many of the basics out of the reachof many people who "work hard and play by the rules."The interrelationship between the moral and economiccrises can be seen most powerfully in families where theneed to earn enough income forces both parents tospend increasing amounts of time outside the home.One of the great achievements of this century was "the


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family wage," which allowed the vast majority of work-ers to provide their families with both a decent livingand the parental time to give their children a decentupbringing. The family wage was not simply a productof the marketplace. It was secured through a combina-tion of economic growth, social legislation and union-ization. If the marketplace becomes no t simply themain arbiter of income, as it will inevitably be, but theonly judge of living standards, then all social factors,including the need to strengthen families and improvethe care given children, become entirely irrelevant inthe world of work.

Two questions are frequently confused in the current 10debate: whether marketplace mechanisms might be use-fully invoked to solve certain problems, and whetherthe solution of the problems themselves should be leftentirely to the market. This confusion afflicts Progres-sives and conservatives alike.

On the one hand, applying marketplace logic to gov-ernment programs can be highly useful. One of themost telling criticisms of government is that it does notlive by the diSciplines of the market, and can thus- intheory at least-deliver services as shoddily as itchoQses, with as large a bureaucracy as it wishes. Thisargument can become a parody of itself, denying thatthere are, in fact, good public schools, fine police forces,excellent public parks, great public libraries and thelike. But the argument does point fairly to certain limitson the government's capacities. . . . There are instanceswhen it is more efficient for government to give each

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citizen a voucher to purchase services in a competitive marketplace than to provide the services directly. The GI Bill, for example, did not prescribe where veteranswould go to college. It let them choose and gave themthe means to pay for the education of their choice. Clinton's housing secretary, Henry Cisneros, proposedscrapping federal subsidies for local public housingagencies and turning federal aid into housing vouchersthat would go directly to poor people. If a given publichousing project was so crime-infested and run-downthat poor people would choose not to live in it, it couldbe closed and sold off. An abstract fear of marketplacelogic should not impede experiments of this sort.

But supporting market-oriented solutions to prob lems is not the same as suggesting that the market itself, left to its own devices, will solve all problems. I f the government had not given the education vouchers to the GIs, many of them would never have gone to col lege. The market can break down, recessions can throw people out of work, families can lose their health insur ance, poor people can lack the money to buy food and shelter for their children. The answer to the most rabid free-market advocates is that the free market is a wonderful instrument that also creates problems and leaves others unsolved. To assert as a flat rule, as Repre sentative Armey does, that "the market is rational and the government is dumb" is to assume that it is rational to accept problems created by unemployment, low wages, business cycles, pollution and simple human failings; and dumb to use government to try to


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lessen the human costs associated with them. Mr.Armey might believe that; most Americans do not.

The difference between this era's conservatives andthe American Progressive tradition lies in the distinction between two phrases, "freedom from" and "freedom to." Free-market conservatives are very much aliveto the importance of what the philosopher Isaiah Berlincalled "negative liberty," defined as freedom from coercion by the state. American Progressives and liberalsshare this concern for n e g a ~ i v e liberty, which is whythey accept with the conservatives the need for limitedgovernment. Historically, however, Progressives havebeen more alive to the promise of "positive liberty" andto free government's capacity for promoting it. To be themaster of one's own fate-a fair definition of libertymeans no t simply being free from overt coercion(though that is a precondition); it also involves beinggiven the means to overcome various external forcesthat impinge on freedom of choice and self-sufficiency.It means being free to set one's course.

From the beginning, therefore, the Progressive project has involved the use of government to give menand women the tools needed for achieving positive liberty, beginning with free elementary and secondaryeducation and moving in the Depression and postwarera to Social Security, unemployment compensationand access to college and to health insurance. (The Progressives, beginning with women's suffrage, were also atthe forefront in expanding the realm of freedom forwomen.) ...

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In our era, conservatives have monopolized the con- iscept of liberty and given it a particular and largely negative definition. Progressives have been cast - and havesometimes foolishly cast themselves-as defenders ofcoercion and bureaucracy, of government for government's sake. The imperative for Progressives is to rediscover their own tradi tion as the party of liberty. In a freesociety all parties to the debate should be arguing aboutthe best ways to enhance and advance human freedom.For Progressives, that is and always has been the centralpurpose of government.

PREVIEWINGWhen you preview a text, you attempt to gain knowledge about it before youread it the first time . Two or three minutes spent previewing a text like one ofthe relatively brief readings in Writing the World can make your first attemptsto read it more focused and productive. If you take time to preview, you canknow the beginning of an argument and its outcome, identify most of the keyterms, glimpse a few turns in the argument, and track the overall plan andsequence.For example, to preview the reading in Chapter 4 by E.]. Dionne Jr., 'TheyOnly Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era," firstturn to the headnote that immediately precedes it. Anthologies of readings,like this book, often include such headnotes, which provide valuable information about the author and a brief orientation to the reading. From the headnote, you learn that E. J. Dionne Jr. is a prominent, prize-winning author whowrites for one of the most influential daily newspapers in the United States,the Washington Post. These facts may lead you to respect his authority as acommentator on political matters. If you know, in addition, that the Post is aliberal-progressive newspaper, you will not be surprised that Dionne takes theposition he does in the ongoing debate between conservatives and liberals.The headnote also provides information about the purpose and focus of thereading, relating it to other readings through key questions.Next move to the text itself to attempt to get an overview. An overviewbegins with reflections on the title. The title of the Dionne reading implies anargument-an answer to the implied "why" question in the title-and itmakes clear Dionnes position on whether progressivism is dead. Conservatives may be dominating politics in the 1990s, but Dionne believes that


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progressives will rise again soon, in the "next political era," a p h r a s ~ 7 h a t allows him to sidestep naming a particular year, presidential term, or evendecade. From the title alone, you can anticipate that Dionne will argue to support his p o ~ t i o n - a n d perhaps also counterargue conservative positions.After examining the headnote and the title, preview the text itself by reading the first and last paragraphs and the first sentences of the other paragraphs. The first paragraph focuses on conservative views Dionne will attemptto discredit; the last paragraph also criticizes conservatives while stating in ageneral way what progressives must do to shake their image as proponents ofbig government. First sentences of paragraphs introduce most of the keyterms in Dionne's argument and show how the argument is organized, giving areader an invaluable head start toward understanding on first reading whatthe text has to offer.Guidelines for Previewing

Follow these steps to orient yourself to an unfamiliar reading:OVERVIEW. Consider the title carefully. What are its key terms? How might ithelp you anticipate the subject matter of the reading?In a book, carefully read the introduction and examine the entire table ofcontents. Note the date of publication and any information about the authors.In a book-length collection of readings or in a textbook with readings likeWriting the World, headnotes usually offer information about authors.In a magazine, examine the statement of purpose, if there is one; skim editorials or editors' columns; and survey titles of articles to assess the intendedreadership and political slant. (Your college library offers two valuable references that identify the political slant of current periodicals: Gale Directory ofPublications and Broadcast Media [1990] and Magazines for Libraries [1992].) Abrief description of the author of an article may appear at the end of the article.SKIM. Skim the book chapter, magazine article, or journal report. First, readthe opening and closing paragraphs. Then look at any headings and subheadings and at any graphics. Finally, read the first sentence of each paragraphor, if the reading is relatively long, the first sentence of several paragraphs,particularly those in the first and final paragraphs of subsections marked byheadings.IDENTIFY THE TYPE OF TEXT. Try to identify the purpose of the text you will bereading. Does it, for example, aim to convince you of something, explain somesubject to you, or present personal experiences and observations?REFLECT ON PRIOR KNOWlEDGE. Pause to reflect on what you already know aboutthe subject of the reading.

Reading & Annotation - Part 1

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