Review Of Fred Stenson's In Search Of A Modest Proposal

An essay is a powerful tool to broadcast personal thought and deliver opinions from writer to readers. Shall we generate an ideal framework in literature education for the students to help them write a “perfect” essay? A Grant MacEwan award-winning novelist, Fred Stenson, published the article “In Search of a Modest Proposal” in 2004 on Alberta Views, in which he argued that current curriculum of literature education diminish the creativity and personality of students. The author initiated his argument with ethos using his expertise in writing, raised his concerns with pathos from his own daughter’s experience, and emphasized his thesis with logos by analyzing another famous satirist’s masterpiece. As a writer, Stenson humbly emphasized his credibility in his area of expertise, as essay writing is “a topic about which I knew something”. Additionally, he smartly strengthened his status by demonstrating his knowledge of “traditions of Rousseau and Swift, and the great modern practitioners like Richler and Fussel”. In the author’s ethos about writing, an essay should firstly be genuine to make the writers speak on their own; meanwhile, an essay needs to be independent, …show more content…
To elicit the impact of current curriculum to the receiver of education, he described the “pity” look he got from his daughter after he made a constructive suggestion about the use of transitional words. Moreover, he expressed his emotional response as “cried” and speechless when he realized the framework of writing completely restrained the personality of his daughter. Finally, Stenson emphasized the helplessness of his daughter, as a representative of numerous students under the current education system, because the unchangeable infrastructure of essay writing is “a formula I have to stick to, or I will