Analysis Of Tom Philpott's School Garden

School gardens are apparently controversial issues. Spurred on by a passionate essay written by Caitlin Flanagan, and published in The Atlantic, Tom Philpott published his opinions on the matter. Overall, Philpott had a much more effective argument than Flanagan. In his very first paragraph, Philpott establishes why anyone should even bother to listen to his point of view: he was a teacher at Austin Community College for several years and was directly involved with students who had lackluster educational backgrounds (426). Philpott emotionally connects with his readers by telling how his students in remedial classes would actually become passionate about learning new things when he found a concrete way to connect what they were learning …show more content…
One piece of substantial evidence that Flanagan uses to prove her point, that school gardens are damaging to students grades, is quoted at length by Philpott. The gist of the passage is that Hispanic students at King Middle School, a school with a garden, perform well below the state average in English and math while Hispanic students from gardenless Cal Prep excel in similar academic tests (427). While this may be a statistic that seems to back up Flanagan's position, it is really an example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc-- just because one school performs better than the other doesn't mean it has anything at all to do with whether or not the school has a garden. Numbers may show that students perform better academically at Cal Prep when they don't have a garden to tend, but many other factors could play into such a large difference in grades. However, considering that only two schools are being compared, this could also be considered a hasty generalization. In addition to the above-mentioned fallacies, this one example is also a false dilemma because it is stated in a way that makes it seem like schools only options are to either do poorly with a garden or do well without