More than a few years ago I taught history to high school seniors in a suburban Chicago school. These were smart students at a good school. One assignment required them to read an editorial from one of the major news magazines (Newsweek, as I recall). In the classroom discussion of the editorial, I was surprised to learn that the great majority of these students could not analyze and understand the point of the piece. Some of the students misinterpreted the thesis of the article; others couldn’t find the thesis; and still others had no idea of how the author attempted to support the thesis with evidence. I learned, in short, that in their 11+ years of education, no one had ever taught these students the necessity of reading texts closely, what an argument is, how a thesis must be and can be supported by relevant premises, how to outline an argumentative text, spotting rhetorical questions, and a host of related concepts and skills.
After I received my Ph.D., I was privileged to teach philosophy to college students at a very good mid-Atlantic university. By and large, I was teaching smart students who did well in high school. It soon became apparent to me that most of these students were no better prepared to analyze an argumentative text than were my high school seniors. I found myself trying to teach the works of Plato, John Stuart Mill, and other philosophers to students who did not know the basics, the nuts and bolts of reading nonfiction works that assert arguments: what an argument is, how to analyze it, why the non-argumentative parts of a text are part of the text and how those parts relate to the argument, and so on. In 12 years of primary and secondary education, no one had ever taught most of these students these essential skills for success in college.
As a teacher, this was my Apollo 13 moment – “Houston, we have a problem.”
As a commercial litigator for several decades thereafter, I was immersed in argumentative texts, in the form of memos and letters to other attorneys, in briefs to trial and appellate courts, in many articles I wrote for law reviews and other legal publications, in speeches I gave to professional congregations, and more. Because an essential component of my job was to persuade my audience, each of these texts often included salient rhetoric points alongside the arguments. In the course of all of this reading and writing, I began to think more deeply about argumentative texts and rhetoric, and how to address the challenges my former students faced when understanding such texts.
The result of that thinking is my book, Reading Argumentative Texts. I wrote this book to help you overcome these challenges successfully, to plug this gap in your education, and to help you succeed in college and in life beyond college.
As I talked to college and university educators and students over the past several years, I have come to a greater appreciation of the need for my book and the tools it teaches. High school English classes routinely teach 17th or 18th century British poetry and one or two of Shakespeare’s plays. But it is far less common that any of them teach how to analyze an editorial from the New York Times, an argument in an online magazine, or a scholarly essay on any topic.
It’s a shame. In college very likely you will be assigned to read many argumentative texts and be expected to understand them. You won’t understand these texts if you don’t know how to analyze them, and you probably won’t do a good job of analyzing them if no one has ever taught you how to do so.
Beyond college, you cannot be meaningfully engaged in any of the debates that will affect your life and our common society if you can’t make an argument and thoughtfully analyze the arguments of others. Just to mention a few of these issues that are in the news every day: how to address climate change; individual liberty vs. social order; your duties to others and their duties to you; rights to education and healthcare; what constitutes a meaningful life; what constitutes a good society, and so on.
Read and savor great literature and as much poetry as you like. These works enrich your life. The American poet William Carlos Williams had it right when he wrote:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably everyday
for lack
of what is found there
“Asphodel, That Greeny Flower” (1962)
But as much as you may gain from reading the works of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and other great fiction writers, that will not help much in your decision on who to vote for in the U.S. Senate race, or knowing whether your representative in Congress is talking out of both sides of his mouth, or knowing how to read a sociology or psychology essay.
For those and many other matters, you will better navigate the unchartered waters of your future if you know how to analyze argumentative texts and understand their meaning. My book gives you the basic tools to do that.
Reading Argumentative Texts 