A close relative of mine is an English professor at a university that I've never been able to locate on a map. This semester he has been stuck with some Freshman Comp courses, designed to instill good writing and research skills, as well as a measure of critical thinking.
Last week he assigned a critical and rhetorical analysis of some famous protest songs and first drafts are beginning to trickle in. He began the initial evaluation of these gestational pieces today.
It is a bad sign that I should receive an email about their content so soon.
My dear brother writes:
I'm spending the morning looking at first drafts of the song project; things aren't looking too good. I give them minimal guidance for the first drafts, hoping to see just how they've interpreted the assignment. Apparently, the idea of a thesis merging literary and rhetorical analysis escapes most of my writers. (Although I must admit, it is an odd notion indeed, smacking of a grad school assignment adapted for freshmen.)
So they tell me in very broad terms about the singer ("Marley was a Jamican who sometimes visited the island of Hadee"--No, I'm not kidding) or about the hippies roaming free during the 60s or about how Donovan wouldn't dare sing "Universal Soldier" to an audience of American patriots because as "[t]he movie 'The Punisher' said it best: 'if you want peace, prepare for war.'"
War indeed. Where do I begin?
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