Rhetorical Analysis Of President Obama's Speech To Children Should Go To School

President Obama 's speech to school children should go to school because it can benefit their future uses rhetorical appeals to help persuade the readers and schoolchildren. One example of a rhetorical appeal that Obama used to persuade his reader was pathos. Pathos can help persuade a claim because it can cause emotions in the reader and make them feel that they can do something about it. Obama uses is when he states that, “I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s had to endure all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him longer-hundreds of extra hours- to do his school work. But he never fails. He’s heading to college this fall,”(Obama

Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things that you know aren’t right.” (Obama 17), “But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life- what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home-none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying. Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you 'll end up.” (Obama 18). In these two statements that Obama made to support his claim, he is trying to say that what environment you are in, what situation you are in should not affect your future and your education because just what you are going through does not directly affect your effort or determination to make your future different from what your future is if you give in to those hardships. Obama’s use of the rhetorical appeal of pathos helps with the supporting evidence for his claim that going to school is a benefit for student’s future, because when he uses pathos that causes emotions in the reader of his speech that of other people can go through many hardships and still get a proper education then they can do it to. It helps them believe that they can do whatever they put their mind