Many schools have undergone budget cuts due to the fact that they are underfunded. The article,”Underfunded Schools Forced To Cut Past Tense From Language Programs,”The Onion uses ridicule of the school system, sarcasm and verbal irony to show how important children’s education is, even though we are cutting major subjects from the curriculum. Throughout the entire passage The Onion uses verbal irony to convey the pure idiocy of removing past tense or other parts of the curriculum. The Onion uses quotes from multiple sources of people who work in education, as well as the students. For example, David Keller, a seventh-grade student at Hampstead School, was quoted saying,”But now it’s almost like it never happens.” Which directly contradicts …show more content…
The Onion uses ridicule to express their feelings on the subject matter. An example of this is,”This was by no means an easy decision, but teaching our students how to conjugate verbs in a way that would allow them to describe events that have already occurred is a luxury that we can no longer afford,” Sam Pennock, Phoenix-area high school principal, said. This is a form of ridicule because it was said that the past tense is a “luxury”. When in reality it is not a “luxury” but a necessity to everyday human life. I believe this is what The Onion hopes to bring forth in this article. Another example of this text’s use of ridicule is,” School districts in California have been forced to cut addition and subtraction from their math departments.” This is further emphasizing the importance of not removing basic human needs from the school curriculum. Now their cutting addition and subtraction, the building blocks for any form of math. If this was to be true everyone would be ashamed. So, why would we put this in an article? To express to the reader how out of hand removing subjects from the curriculum could be. The use of ridicule in this article is very heavily expressed to the reader. Which stresses the importance of our children’s