Equal Opportunity Classes :: College Education Essays

Equal Opportunity Classes There are many different ways that a college classroom can operate. The articles that will be included in this essay will show different ways classes are operated in the past, present and the future. The three essays which are explained in this essay are, "Mother Tongue," by Amy Tan; "The Ethics of Requiring Students to Write About their Personal Lives," by Susan Swartzlander, Diana Pace, and Virginia Lee Stamler; and "A Note from the Future," by Kathy Camper. These essays speak about what the author believes in. The essay's written about in this paper show that, in a "technology-rich, Twenty-first century college writing course" the professor should be unbiased toward his/her students and all students should have an equal opportunity in their college writing classes. In the essay, "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, writes about growing up with a mother who speaks "broken" English. Her parents both emigrated from China and the males in her family had passed away due to a brain tumor, leaving only herself and her mother. Tan, as a child would act like her mother when speaking with important people. Even as an adult she still occasionally speaks for her mother. While she grew up with "broken" English, Amy grasped the English language differently than most English-speaking Americans, and in her article, Tan speaks about her belief that her family life caused, in part, her to do worse in English than her other subjects. Tan believes that this is so because English is not as exact as mathematics and science. As she got older, Tan began to write stories, and when asked why there are not as many other Asian-American authors in the United States, she wonders if it is because of schoolteachers. In this essay, Tan states "...Perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me." (Tan par 15) In this statement Tan shows her belief that her teachers discouraged her from enhancing her English skills. Later, despite the factors against her, Amy Tan became a famous writer. In the article, "The Ethics of Requiring Students to Write About their Personal Lives," by Professor Susan Swartzlander and Doctors Diana Pace and Virginia Lee Stamler from Grand Valley State University, the authors write about how students feel when forced to write about their personal background.