Rhetorical Analysis Of The Schools Are Destroying Freedom Of Speech

Political conservatives in America vastly hold true the original traditions and freedoms in America and rarely compromise with change. One such prominent conservative, John W. Whitehead, in his essay, “The Schools Are Destroying Freedom of Speech,” argues that the modern day public educational system has inflicted unconstitutional restrictions of freedom on its students. Throughout his essay, Whitehead attempts to build his credibility by utilizing the Bill of Rights and different examples to appeal to the ethos, logos, and pathos aspects of his audience – the American citizens; however, Whitehead’s apparent bias, shown through his strong conservative values and passionate tone, causes him to disregard the deeper meaning of the educational

That dream is no longer true” (Whitehead 354). Whitehead’s aggressive tone to introduce his essay not only allows his audience to immediately recognize his definitive stance on this issue, but also informs them what will be discussed throughout the essay as well. In spite of Whitehead’s early aggressiveness, he begins to transition to a softer tone by discussing the inadequate knowledge students have of the U.S. Constitution. By applying this less contentious tone, Whitehead gives his audience on the opposing side of the argument reasoning to continue interest in his essay rather than quickly rejecting it. Whitehead includes multiple statistics to support his argument on constitutional education in public

On the other hand, given that Whitehead’s only source for this data is “a national survey of high school,” it may be deemed skeptical by Whitehead’s audience causing him to lose credibility for the lack of an authentic source; however, incorporating this data into his essay allows his audience to contemplate another aspect of his argument. Furthermore, considering that Whitehead made the lack of constitutional education clear to his audience begs the question of how this information contributes to the main idea of his essay. Through the reason that the quality of education students receive directly correlates with their teacher, Whitehead shows the significance of how poorly schools are educating students about the freedoms and liberties stated inside the U.S. Constitution by using these statistics. This information appears to contribute to Whitehead’s argument by leading his audience to believe that the educational system has become equivocal when educating students on the constitution, therefore restricting students to fully comprehend the freedoms and liberties inside the U.S. constitution. Whitehead, however, fails in one extremely important aspect of the statistics he gave: none of them are directly associated to freedom of speech in the First Amendment. While each statistic relates to a certain section in the U.S. Constitution, not one