Linking Readings Together

Linking Readings Together

                     

Post potential topic, audience, and stance for LT 1 

The topic I plan to address in my essay pertains to hidden inequalities in large scale government educational programs that promote upward social mobility.  My targeted audience are educators, parents, and politicians.  The purpose of this paper is to form an argument about how government educational programs promote equal access to all, but does not necessarily provide equal opportunity for all to benefit.  As a future educator, I find it important to address the issue of students having limited access to technology.  When I was a child, I attended a school district that had limited access to technology in my schools.  I personally have experienced the challenges of not being taught how to manipulate certain technologies and I see the importance of having students become technology literate.  I graduated from high school twenty-two years ago and I see how my message is still relevant, because there are students in poor school districts that still do not have access to technology.  The limited access hinders social mobility.

Jonathan Alexander Summary

Cultural norms constrain and condemn voices who want to speak openly about their sexuality. In the article, Out of the Closet and Into the Network, Johnathan Alexander invites his audience to think about how discussing sexual orientation in an anonymous computerized network classroom can give the homosexual community a voice to safely to express themselves without being persecuted for their sexuality by heterosexuals.  Because Alexander is an openly gay male, he has experienced the alienation of being a homosexual in a heterosexual society.  His own personal experiences shape his argument of being mistreated and isolated because of his sexuality.  Alexander really drove home the point that “identity is related to sexual orientation” and it “is socially construed, constructed, and controlled (212).