assignments 1 & 2

HW0101 Introduction to Critical Writing

Assignments

STUDENT Version

Academic Year 2013/2014 Semester 1

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HW0101: INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL WRITING Semester 1, AY2013/2014

Assignment Instructions

1. Please submit a soft copy of all assignments through the Turnitin

link in your tutorial sites AND a hard copy of the assignments to

your tutor.

2. Please copy the next two pages, add the necessary information to

the first page, and attach the 2 pages to all 3 assignments before

submission.

3. Please take note of the following penalties for late submission of

assignments:

1 day late: 1 grade down

2 days late: 2 grades down




>5 days late: C or below

The ‘late’ days include weekends and public holidays. The submission

date/time of the assignment is based on the date/time the hard copy

is received by the tutor, or the date/time the soft copy is successfully

submitted through Turnitin, whichever is earlier.

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Assignment Cover Page

HW0101 Introduction to Critical Writing

Assignment title:

Student’s (official) name:

Tutorial group number:

Tutorial day/time:

Tutor’s name:

Declaration

I have read and understood the guidelines on academic dishonesty as

found at http://www.plagiarism.org/ and the penalties for academic

dishonesty (overleaf), and declare that this assignment is my own work

and does not involve plagiarism or collusion according to the University’s

honour code and pledge. The sources of other people’s work have been

appropriately referenced. I have also not submitted any part of this

assignment for another course.

Student’s signature: Date:

Note: The assignment will not be marked unless all the above sections have been completed, with signatures.

Your lecturer is entitled to require you also to submit a soft copy of the assignment.

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Penalties for academic dishonesty

1. A student who is suspected of academic dishonesty will be requested to attend an interview conducted by the facilitator of the course and his/her tutor. If the student refuses to attend the interview, his/her assignment will receive a ‘fail’ grade.

2. If it has been established that the extent of the dishonesty is serious (i.e. a plagiarism score* of between 30% and 50%), the student’s grade for that assignment will be lowered by a letter grade.

3. In especially serious cases (i.e. a plagiarism score* equal to or higher than 50%), the assignment will receive a ‘fail’ grade.

–––––––––––––

* Note: The plagiarism score here is an adjusted one, as not all items identified by the anti-plagiarism

software may be true instances of plagiarism.

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Assignment 1: Writing a Critique

OVERVIEW

Genre: Critique

Word limit: 500 words

Weighting: 35%

Deadlines: Draft for peer review: Week of 9 Sep

Final hard copy submission (with signed assignment cover page):

Week of 16 Sep (at the tutorial)

Source article:

Final turnitin submission: Fri, 20 Sep, 5pm The content in both soft and hard copy submissions must be similar. The Turnitin submission, however, should NOT contain the assignment cover page.

Why College Isn’t For Everyone url: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-09/why-college-isnt-for-everyone

INSTRUCTIONS

This is an individual assignment. In about 500 words, write a critique of the following article: “Why College Isn’t For Everyone” (Bloomberg Businessweek, April 9, 2012) http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-09/why-college-isnt-for-everyone

Your critique must contain a rhetorical situation of the source article and your evaluation of

the arguments made by the author. You should support your evaluation with reasons

and/or evidence. Where needed, you should use informal documentation taught in the

course. The use of external sources to support your critique, though not necessary, is

allowed. However, this should be done in close relation to the ideas in the source text. You

may also critique on the language and tone of the article. You should write in an academic

style that is appropriate to your reader who is a university tutor-grader.

Assignment format and Word Count

Font: Times New Roman, Arial or Calibri, size: 12

Double-spaced lines

The beginning of each paragraph must be indented for clarity

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-09/why-college-isnt-for-everyone



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Layout: A4 size Double-sided, one-inch all round

Maximum: 500 words (including title, direct quotations, paraphrase but excluding

reference list)

Marks will be deducted if critique exceeds the word limit, or does not adhere to instructions

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

Content 35% Quality of Ideas

Thesis statement is clear and well-crafted.

Ideas are logical, engaging and insightful.

Accurate identification of the author’s main ideas

Accurate paraphrase of author’s ideas

Logic of Argument

Argument is reasonable and sound.

Argument is supported by relevant evidence.

Rhetorical Situation ( e.g. Author, Purpose, Audience, Circumstance) is included

Organisation

30%

Introduction

Rhetorical context is included

Thesis Statement is included Body

Every paragraph contains a topic sentence Conclusion

Thesis Statement reiterated

Summary of main issues

Grammar and Mechanics

Language is precise and succinct

Tone is appropriate

Sentence structure, grammar and spelling are excellent

Choice of words is appropriate

Use of appropriate citation conventions

35%

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ARTICLE

Why College Isn't for Everyone

By Richard Vedder on April 09, 2012

A person who compares the annual earnings of college and high school graduates would no doubt conclude that higher education is a good investment—the present value of the college earnings premium (the better part of $1 million) seemingly far outdistances college costs, yielding a high rate of return. But for many, attending college is unequivocally not the right decision on purely economic grounds.

First of all, college graduates on average are smarter and have better work habits than high school graduates. Those who graduated from college were better students in high school, for example. Thus, at least a portion of the earnings premium associated with college has nothing to do with college per se, but rather with other traits.

Second, a goodly proportion (more than 40 percent) of those attending four-year colleges full-time fail to graduate, even within six years. At some colleges, the dropout rate is strikingly higher. While college students sometimes still gain marketable skills from partial attendance, others end up taking jobs that are often given to high school graduates, making little more money but having college debts and some lost earnings accrued while unsuccessfully pursing a degree.

Third, not everyone is average. A non-swimmer trying to cross a stream that on average is three feet deep might drown because part of the stream is seven feet in depth. The same kind of thing sometimes happens to college graduates too entranced by statistics on averages. Earnings vary considerably between the graduates of different schools, and within schools, earnings differ a great deal between majors. Accounting, computer science, and engineering majors, for example, almost always make more than those majoring in education, social work, or ethnic studies.

Fourth, the number of new college graduates far exceeds the growth in the number of technical, managerial, and professional jobs where graduates traditionally have gravitated. As a consequence, we have a new phenomenon: underemployed college graduates doing jobs historically performed by those with much less education. We have, for example, more than 100,000 janitors with college degrees, and 16,000 degree-holding parking lot attendants.

Does this mean no one should go to college? Of course not. First of all, college is more than training for a career, and many might benefit from the social and non-purely academic aspects of advanced schooling, even if the rate of return on college as a financial investment is low. Second, high school students with certain attributes are far less likely to drop out of school, and are likely to equal or excel the average statistics.

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Students who do well in high school and on college entrance exams are much more likely to graduate. Those going to private schools may pay more in tuition, but they also have lower dropout rates. Those majoring in some subjects, such as education or one of the humanities, can sometimes improve their job situation by double majoring or earning a minor in, say, economics.

As a general rule, I would say graduates in the top quarter of their class at a high-quality high school should go on to a four-year degree program, while those in the bottom quarter of their class at a high school with a mediocre educational reputation should not (opting instead for alternative methods of credentialing and training).

Those in between should consider perhaps doing a two-year program and then transferring to a four-year school. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, but it is important for us to keep in mind that college is not for everyone.

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Assignment 2: Position Paper

OVERVIEW

Genre: Position Paper

Word limit: 1000 words

Weighting: 45%

Deadlines: Draft for peer review: Week of 28 Oct

Final hard copy submission (with signed assignment cover page):

Week of 4 Nov (at the tutorial)

Final turnitin submission: Fri, 8 Nov, 5pm The content in both soft and hard copy submissions must be the same. The Turnitin submission, however, should NOT contain the assignment cover page.

Prescribed readings:

Kennedy, J. (2012, May 24). The death of privacy. Siliconrepublic. Retrieved 1 July 2013 from

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/strategy/item/27365-the-death-of-privacy

Rule, J.B. (2013, June 11). The price of the Panopticon. The New York Times. Retrieved

Retrieved 1 July 2013 from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/the-

price-of-the-panopticon.html?_r=2&

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INSTRUCTIONS

Ensure that you take a stand in response to the following controversial issue raised in the

prescribed readings. Make your case by advancing well-structured and logical arguments,

crafted in language favouring the conciliatory approach. You are allowed to use evidence

from any of the prescribed readings or external sources. All sources are to be documented

using the APA citation style.

CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE

The internet age and the subsequent exponential growth of social networking sites have in

recent years ignited much debate about the issue of online privacy. Commentators have

expressed concern about the data mining abuses committed by internet criminals as well as

legitimate corporations seeking user details of vulnerable and profitable demographic

sectors respectively. Such worries were thrown into sharp relief in June 2013 when an

exposé revealed that even governmental organizations are guilty of such activities; the US

National Security Agency (NSA), in the name of anti-terrorism surveillance, has been

surreptitiously collecting untold quantities of ordinary citizens’ emails, internet phonecalls,

videos, and social-networking data provided by big internet companies such as Google,

Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Skype, and Microsoft.

The reaction to the NSA exposé has largely been one of condemnation and outrage. Civil

libertarians have demanded that stricter privacy laws be legislated to protect the rights of

ordinary citizens. However, some commentators have also noted that users of the internet

and social networking sites should consider the wisdom of too freely sharing their private

information online.

Should the government enact and enforce stricter privacy laws? Or should users of the

internet and social networking sites take a more cautious approach to the sharing of their

private information online? What is the most practical way to prevent the emergence of a

veritable 21st century Panopticon?

State and defend your stand in a position paper on the issue of online privacy.

Assignment format and Word Count

Font: Times New Roman, Arial or Calibri, size: 12

Double-spaced lines.

Layout: A4 Double-sided size one-inch all round

Maximum: 1000 words (including title, direct quotations, paraphrasing, but

excluding in-text citations and References)

Marks will be deducted if the position paper exceeds the word limit, or does not adhere to instructions

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ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

Content 30% Quality of Ideas

Engagement with question shows depth and insight

Argument is sound, reasonable and free of fallacies

Assumptions underlying reasons are examined

Organization

20%

Introduction

Topic is introduced in an interesting way

Stand is stated in the Thesis Statement Body

Every paragraph contains a topic sentence

Every topic sentence is supported by appropriately selected reasons and evidence

Opposing views are acknowledged and rebuttals are offered

Conclusion

Thesis Statement is reiterated

Main issues are summarized

No new point is introduced

Conciliatory Approach

Nonthreatening language is used

Opposing views are fairly expressed

Common ground shared by opposing sides is stated

20%

Grammar and Mechanics

Language is precise and succinct

Tone is appropriate for the intended purpose and audience

Sentence structure, grammar and spelling are excellent

Choice of words is appropriate

APA citation conventions observed

30%

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PRESCRIBED READINGS

The Death of Privacy

By John Kennedy, 24 May 2012 siliconrepublic

Most civilised people would know that at its most basic level privacy means affording others the right to be left alone.

But in the past decade and over the next 10 years our notions of privacy and what constitutes privacy and safety will have become so distorted that the time is now to debate what it really means.

On the one hand hundreds of millions of people – including more than 45pc of the Irish population – are on social networking sites like Facebook, sharing our photos and videos via apps like Instagram and Viddy, and we let the world know when we’re going on holidays via Twitter.

Yet we will recoil in horror if it was suggested our private data is used by businesses or governments intent on knowing what we are doing, or if burglars or other criminals use these bits of information to steal from us.

That is the conundrum we find ourselves at in 2012.

Every year, Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner publishes an annual report and every year a who’s who of popular brand names is on that list for marketing offences alone. In 2011, the number of complaints by Irish citizens reached an historic high.

Debating Digital Rights

At a Digital Rights Forum debate last Friday at the Science Gallery, it was clear to all who attended that Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) is doing a diligent job in the face of challenges on a scale few other bodies with a similar responsibilities have to face.

For one thing, the DPC, headed by Billy Hawkes, is in the unusual position of having to police data protection of not only Irish citizens but citizens across the world. This is thanks to the presence of the international headquarters of some of the biggest internet companies in the world in Ireland, such as Google, Twitter and Facebook.

Last year’s privacy audit of Facebook that arose from 22 complaints lodged by Austrian lobby group Europe Versus Facebook sucked up 25pc of the DPC’s resources alone. In December, the DPC and Facebook agreed to 'best practice' improvements to be implemented over six months, with a formal review happening in July 2012.

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Despite the diligence with which the DPC will perform its job, you can’t help but worry about the scale of the threat facing ordinary people, from intrusive marketing to online scams.

Commissioner Billy Hawkes said the relationship with Facebook is ongoing and will evolve in the post-IPO environment and as it develops new products and complies with new European laws.

“If you multiply that against other internet players with their European presence in Ireland, we do have a massive job on our hands, and we have to deal with the things that ordinary Irish people are concerned about, such as employers, schools, etc.”

Hawkes said that across Europe concerns about social networking rate higher among ordinary people. “Asked last year who was responsible for protecting their privacy in relation to social networks, 65pc of Irish people replied ‘I am’, whereas the figure was lower across Europe. So Irish users are among the world’s biggest users of social media yet believe they alone are responsible for their privacy settings. Elsewhere in Europe, people look to the regulators.”

Boards.ie founder Tom Murphy said that protection of privacy begins with the ordinary citizen. “Will it take security cameras right outside your front door? How far are you willing to go to subvert your own freedoms before society can operate in a safe fashion?

“This is something that hasn’t been addressed and is being forced on us and is going to cause tension.

“A much deeper question is how far are we willing to go to allow companies, corporates, governments and each other invade our privacy in order to secure society for ourselves?”

Privacy Breaches

Murphy pointed out to Hawkes that it is arguable that not only are ordinary citizens threatened by snooping and intrusive marketing by private organisations but that instruments of State in Ireland may also be guilty of privacy breaches.

Several years ago, lottery winner Dolores O’Mahony was the victim of cyber snooping when social welfare officers were accused of looking through her files and selling the information on to the newspapers. In the UK, more than 1,000 civil servants were disciplined last year for accessing social security records.

Among Irish businesses, an Amárach study revealed one in 10 Irish employees admit to having taken the contact list from their previous job.

Murphy said: “Hasn’t Ireland’s Government just created the largest smash and grab on data in taking ESB data to use it for a purpose it was never intended – the household charge? That to me seems to be a blatant and gross breach of data protection.”

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Hawkes agreed that in his view the move was a breach of data protection principles because people who signed up for ESB or Bord Gáis didn’t expect their data to be used to get them to pay a household charge.

“Ultimately that decision came down to the Oireachtas and it being written into a law that the State can access that data.”

Hawkes said he wasn’t consulted on the move and had to insist on a protocol whereby the only the minimum amount of information such as name and address could be accessed.

Murphy warned it is one thing to try and enforce laws against corporations and fine them and have different rules for government. “Somehow they are the very people I do want to protect my data against and they have shown disdain for it.”

Paul C Dwyer, a cyber security expert who works with law enforcement agencies and the International Cyber Threat Taskforce, told the debate that ordinary people are lambs to the slaughter in the face of some of the privacy threats we increasingly face online.

“As humans we are social – we like to chat, communicate, but the bottom line is we have a basic human right to be left alone and not to be contacted if we don’t want to be contacted.

“I’m a particular fan of social media. I use it a lot, but it effectively comes with risk and challenges. On Facebook alone there are more than 900m users, some 300m photos a day are uploaded onto Facebook. It has people speaking 70 different languages and some 30m apps are activated every day.

“A lot of them are crimeware and they want to steal from you. Information about you has an intrinsic value.”

Dwyer said that there are 500m mobile users of Facebook alone and this is increasing exponentially. “Criminals go where the people go. Facebook is essentially the third-biggest country in the world.”

Smartphones at risk

Dwyer warned that smartphones, in particular, present a serious risk to privacy and safety. “The average ANGRY BIRDS game on an iPhone sends 650 requests to a mobile network every hour. The same game on an Android phone sends 2,500 or so requests. Why? Because it is taking down ads and chewing up your data service and bandwidth.”

More dangerous, Dwyer said, are the type of apps out there that are free. “Targeted at certain demographics these apps are used to sell location details of children to paedophiles and this was for sale within free games. It’s an uncomfortable subject but this is happening.

“Every single piece of information about you has value to the bad guys.”

He said smartphones are in effect mini computers and malicious code is being inserted into text messages and free games. “The dangers are that you could get stuck with a child porn

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infection on your device or fall victim to SMS fraud. Some 35pc of traffic on Twitter is capable of causing virus downloads, according to Irish company Adaptive Mobile.”

Into the future Dwyer warned that the threats to privacy won’t just come from cyber-criminals but from legitimate organisations based on what we ourselves share.

In the US this year, there was outrage when people in job interviews and in schools were asked to hand over their Facebook passwords. Dwyer said that in the future and with the arrival of the semantic web and linkable data there is a danger that insurance companies may be able to find out if applicants had done a search for keywords like cancer stretching back 15 years.

“The internet should be free for people to use but as (world wide web inventor) Tim Berners-Lee and others point out, it is only at its starting point. The internet is humanity connected but it’s also a benign monster. Hopefully we can control that monster without controlling people online.”

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The Price of the Panopticon

By James B. Rule, 11 June 2013 The New York Times

BERKELEY, Calif. — THE revelation that the federal government has been secretly gathering records on the phone calls and online activities of millions of Americans and foreigners seems not to have alarmed most Americans. A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center over the four days immediately after the news first broke found that just 41 percent of Americans deemed it unacceptable that the National Security Agency “has been getting secret court orders to track telephone calls of millions of Americans to investigate terrorism.”

We privacy watchers and civil libertarians think this complacent response misses a deeply worrying political shift of vast consequence. While President Obama has conveniently described the costs of what appears to be pervasive surveillance of Americans’ telecommunications connections as “modest encroachments on privacy,” what we are actually witnessing is a sea change in the kinds of things that the government can monitor in the lives of ordinary citizens.

The N.S.A. dragnet of “connection data” — who communicates with whom, where, how often and for how long — aims at finding patterns between calls or messages, and between parties with given characteristics, which correlate with increased odds of terrorist activity. These patterns can in turn cue authorities to focus attention on possible terrorists.

The success rate in these operations is a matter of intense speculation, given the authorities’ closemouthed stance on the matter. But no serious analyst can doubt that such steps may be helping to pinpoint terrorist acts in advance, as supporters, like Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, have insisted.

The question, though, is what comes next? Government planners have apparently invested billions of dollars to develop these new surveillance capabilities. Given the open-ended nature of this country’s relentless campaign against terrorism and other declared evils, it would be naïve to imagine that the state’s grip on “big data,” achieved at such cost, would be allowed to atrophy in the foreseeable future. It is far more likely that new uses — and, inevitably, abuses — will be found for these surveillance techniques.

This is true even if the Obama administration’s goals are benign. Institutions and techniques predictably outlive the intentions of their creators. J. Edgar Hoover went before Congress in 1931 to declare that “any employee engaged in wiretapping will be dismissed from the service of the bureau.” A few decades later, F.B.I. agents were in full pursuit of alleged Communist sympathizers, civil rights workers and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — using wiretapping, break-ins and other shady tactics.

We must also ask how far we want government to see into our private lives, even in the prevention and punishment of genuine wrongdoing. The promise that one especially

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egregious sort of crime (terrorism) can be predicted and stopped can tempt us to apply these capabilities to more familiar sorts of troublesome behavior.

Imagine that analysis of telecommunications data reliably identified failure to report taxable income. Who could object to exploiting this unobtrusive investigative tool, if the payoff were a vast fiscal windfall and the elimination of tax evasion? Or suppose we find telecommunications patterns that indicate the likelihood of child abuse or neglect. What lawmaker could resist demands to “do everything possible” to act on such intelligence — either to apprehend the guilty or forestall the crime.

Using surveillance for predictive modeling to prevent all sorts of undesirable or illegal behavior is the logical next step. These possibilities are by no means a fantastical slippery slope — indeed, the idea of pre-empting criminals before they act was envisioned by Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Minority Report,” later a movie starring Tom Cruise.

Some privacy watchers have dismissed N.S.A. activities as surveillance boondoggles, unlikely to significantly prevent terrorism. That is not my view. Terrorism is an authentic danger — as are dangerous driving, communicable diseases, gun violence and countless other behaviors and tendencies that could, in principle, be combated by closer monitoring of Americans’ communication.

But do we need, and should we tolerate, a government so powerfully and deeply embedded in our once private lives as to spot manifestations of such evils anywhere and everywhere, perhaps even before they occur? How ready and able are we to fend off the overextension and abuse of that knowledge? Who watches the watchers? And how are we to weigh the prospective losses to communal bonds and trust in our communities and our institutions, in a world without the buffer against state intervention that privacy affords?

American life has swung before between repressive and permissive climates. The swing toward surveillance, begun by George W. Bush, has only continued under his successor. But even those Americans who think the supposed trade-off between privacy and security is “worth it” need to ponder all the likely consequences.

James B. Rule is a sociologist and a scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

assignments 1 & 2

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