Essay Instructions: Please revise/modify this assignment: I''ll provide you with the following information:
- The Reading Assignment (Molnar''s Letter)
- The questions to the Reading Assignment
- Information on - (utilizing the perspectives)- to be applied to the questions.
- The letter I submitted for Evaluation.
- My professor''s evaluation remarks/comments.
Chapter Two Assignments:
Exact Requirements:
A. Read the Molnar Letter on pages 38-39 and answer questions 1-5 on page 37.
One of the main purposes of these exercises is practice utilizing the perspectives presented on page 26 and more fully developed throughtout Chapter Two.
Reading Assignment: (Molnar''s Letter)
If My Marine Son Is Killed...
Alex Molnar
Dear President Bush:
I kissed my son goodbye today. He is a 21-year old marine. You have ordered him to Saudi Arabia.
The letter telling us he was going arrived at our vacation cottage in northern Wisconsin by Express Mail on Aug. 13. We left immediately for North Caroline to be with him. Our vacation was over.
Some commentators say you are continuing your own vacation to avoid appearing trapped in the White House, as President Carter was during the Iran hostage crisis. Perhaps that is your reason. However, as I sat in my motel room watching you on television, looking through my son''s hastily written last will and testament and listening to military equipment rumble past, you seemed to me to be both callous and ridiculous chasing golf balls and zipping around in your boat in Kennebunkport.
While visiting my son I had a chance to see him pack his chemical weapons suit and try on his body armor. I don''t know if you''ve ever had this experience, Mr. President. I hope you never will.
I also met many of my son''s fellow soldiers. They are fine young men. A number told me that they were from poor families. They joined the Marines as a way of earning enough money to go to college.
None of the young men I met are likely to be invited to serve on the board of directors of a savings and loan association, as your son Neil was. And none of them have parents well enough connected to call or write a general to insure that their child stays out of harm''s way, as Vice President Quayle''s parents did for him during the Vietnam War.
I read in today''s Raleigh News and Observer that, like you, Vice President Quayle and Secretary of State Baker are on vacation. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Cheney is in the Persian Gulf. I think this symbolizes a Government that no longer has a non-military foreign policy vision, one that uses the military to conceal the fraud that American diplomacy has become.
Yes, you have proved a relatively adept tactician in the last three weeks. But if American diplomacy hadn''t been on vacation for the better part of a decade, we wouldn''t be in the spot we are today.
Where were you, Mr. President, when Iraq was killing its own people with poison gas?
Why, until the recent crisis, was it business as usual with Saddam Hussein, the man you now call a Hitler?
You were elected Vice President in 1980 on the strength of the promise of a better life for Americans, in a world where the U.S. would once again "stand tall." The Reagan-Bush Administration rolled into Washington talking about the magic of a "free market" in oil. You diluted gas mileage requirements for cars and dismantled Federal energy policy. And now you have ordered my son to the Middle East. For what? Cheap gas?
Is the American "way of life" that you say my son is risking his life for the continued "right" of Americans to consume 25 to 30 percent of the world''s oil? The "free market" to which you are so fervently devoted has a very high price tag, at least for parents like me and young men and women like my son.
Now that we face the prospect of war I intend to support my son and his fellow soldiers by doing everything I can to oppose any offensive American military action in the Persian Gulf. The troops I met deserve far better that the politicians and policies that hold them hostage.
As my wife and I sat in a little cafe outside our son''s base last week trying to eat, fighting back tears, a young marine struck up a conversation with us. As we parted he wished us well and said, "May God forgive us for what we are about to do."
President Bush, the policies you have advocated for the last decade have set the stage for military conflict in the Middle East. Your response to the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait has set in motion events that increasingly will pressure you to use our troops not to defend Saudi Arabia but to attack Iraq. And I''m afraid that, as that pressure mounts, you will wager my son''s life in a gamble to save your political future.
In the past you have demonstrated no enduring commitment to any principle other than the advancement of your political career. This makes me doubt that you have either the courage or the character to meet the challenge of finding a diplomatic solution to this crisis. If, as I expect, you eventually order American soldiers to attack Iraq, then it is God who will have to forgive you. I will not.
Alex Molnar is professor of education at the University of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee.
New York Times, 23 Aug. 1990.
As you can see, there are a number of questions of a multicultural nature that you can ask yourself when you read an article. As critical thinkers, we can be on the lookout for the values, the various points of view, and the ways in which multicultural perspectives get expressed.
By staying aware and attentive, we can spot underlying assumptions. We can see how such issues as ethnicity, gender, and class appear when we least expect it. Often these issues touch upon the social and political level and, that too, needs to be examined. We''ll see the relevance of multicultural perspectives to our reasoning in the chapters ahead.
***Please number answers to questions - thank you***
THE QUESTIONS:
GROUP EXERCISE
During the Persian Gulf War, Dr. Alex Molnar wrote an open letter to President Bush, speaking as the father of a young man going to fight in the war. The letter was published in the New York Times. Read the letter, titled "If My Marine Son Is Killed..."
Then, using the list of MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVES given in the box on page 26-frame of reference, power dimensions, values and beliefs, race and ethnicity, cultural background, class, gender, and language-answer these questions:
1. (Group 1): Do you see what point of view is being expressed? What is an alternative view that could be contrasted with Molnar''s?
2. (Group 2): What specific concerns are raised in this letter?
3. (Group 3): How did Molnar bring in issues related to power? Would you say that he himself feels powerful about the situation he is addressing?
4. (Group 4): What set of values does he express in his letter? What sorts of assumptions does he make? Does he bring in issues of race and class?
5. (Group 5): What would you say is the greatest strength of his letter to President Bush?
MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
FRAME OF REFERENCE:
Point of view presented
Strengths/weaknesses/omissions
Alternative points of view that could be taken
New concerns/questions raised when other points of view are taken
Results of a shift in frame of reference
POWER DIMENSIONS:
Ways power is manifested here
Authority or power figures
Possible shifts in the balance of power
Likely changes (e.g., language, style of presentation, issues, values, criteria) if the power balance shifted
VALUES AND BELIEFS:
Set of values that predominate
Alternative systems of belief that could be used
Major assumptions of the author (warranted or unwarranted)
Ways assumptions and language reflect values and beliefs
RACE, ETHNICITY, AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND:
Race of the key players
Ways race affects the way the problem or issue is perceived
How race affects the solution offered
Other racial perspectives that might be raised
Results of a shift in perspective
CLASS:
Economic class perspective that is dominant and how it is manifested
Results of a shift in perspective (to a higher or lower class)
Values that link to class
Assumptions that reflect a class bias
GENDER:
Gender of author and intended audience (and how expressed)
What is left out with a focus on only one gender
Likely result of a shift in gender focus (e.g., article''s focus, language, key arguments)
LANGUAGE:
Biased or prejudicial use of language
Ways use of language evokes images or expresses a set of values
Likely result if used different language (less technical, more casual or more formal, shift in perspective, more neutral, more or less objective)
The letter I submitted for EVALUTAION:
1. (Group 1): Molnar feels that the president of the United States is using his son''s life, and the lives of many other soldiers, as a tool to further his own political career. He feels that the United States had a shoddy foreign policy for more than a decade and, just as the pressure cooker began to explode, began to try to remedy the situation with a bandage. Molnar contends that the United States is not behaving in the best interest of the people, but is only acting to secure cheap oil-and continue using 25 to 30 percent of this natural resource. The alternative view is that the president had the welfare of the people in mind when he sent soldiers off to the Persian Gulf, and that it was necessary to send troops to the Gulf in order to avoid the possibility of an oil shortage in the United States. In his argument, Molnar omits the advantage the United States will have after defeating Saddam Hussein.
2. (Group 2): Specifically, Molnar is concerned about his son''s life and the lives of the other young men and women who were sent to the Persian Gulf. He feels that the president would call for a war in order to save his political career. He doesn''t feel that the president is taking America''s children''s lives into consideration. Molnar is against the military action and he states that he will do all he can to oppose it.
3. (Group 3): Molnar used comparisons to illustrate power. He described how he the president''s son could sit on a board that many of the young men in the military could not be appointed to. He described how most of the young soldiers do not have parents who could "pull strings" so they would be called into duty. Bush and Quayle are powerful, the young men in the military are powerless. Financial wealth was used to measure power in the open letter. Many of the marines were not from powerful families, Molnar wrote. They entered the marines so that they could earn enough money to go to college.
4. (Group 4): He believes that powerful men use poor men and women so that they can remain powerful. Molnar values life. He believes that the government devalues life. The government values money and power.
5. (Group 5): The strongest point of this letter was Molnar''s comparison between the powerful and the powerless.
My professor''s EVALUATION remarks/comments.
Molnar Letter:
1. Both of these viewpoints are clearly developed and relevant to the issue addressed by Alex Molnar in his letter to President Bush. The alternate perspective is in direct opposition to the one held by Dr. Molnar.
2. Strong critical reading skills shown here because the question asks for plural responses and you have done in the four specific concerns discussed by the author.
3. As in the preceding question, here you also explain more than one issue of power, however, you do not explain whether you think Molnar feels powerful or powerless and why.
4. a. This value of life is clear as are the values of money/power by the government. What additional values are held by Molnar?
b. Clear statements of the two assumptions.
c. What are the class issues discussed by the author? These appear to be missing.
5. To more fully explain/illustrate what you mean by Molnar''s comparison between powerful and powerless, you could include a quote to then explain its meaning/significance.
As you can see from my professor''s remarks/comments, it seems like #1 & 2 is ok, you may want to add if you wish but please let your viewpoints/ideas stay in line with the previous response I submitted for evaluation.
I think the main problems are #3, 4, & 5.
As always I''ll leave this to your good judgement, - you decide!
Thank you.
