Baseline Writing Assessment Honors English 11 American Literature Reading Time: 20 minutes Suggested Writing Time: 40 minutes Directions: The following prompt is based on the accompanying six (6) sources. This question requires you to integrate a variety of sources into a coherent, well-written essay. Refer to the sources to support your position; avoid mere paraphrase or summary. Your argument should be central; the sources should support this argument. Remember to attribute both direct and indirect citations. Introduction A fierce debate is currently taking place within our borders what does it mean to be an American? Questions of immigration, religion, race, values, and morality have gripped the consciousness of the average citizen and all major media outlets. Historically, though, such debate is nothing new. It has been a common, consistent theme since our nation s founding. Assignment Read the following sources (including any introductory information) carefully. Then, in an essay that synthesizes at least three of the sources for support, take a position that defends, challenges, or qualifies the claim that American identity is capable of evolving. You may refer to the sources as Source A, Source B, etc. or by their given titles; please keep such references consistent throughout your essay. Source A (Friedman, American Identity: Ideas, Not Ethnicity ) Source B (PRRI, Familiarity Breeds Respect ) Source C (Stegner, Everything Potent is Dangerous ) Source D (Franklin, Information for Those Who Would Move to America ) Source E (Munoz, Getting Angry Can Be a Good Thing ) Source F (Velez, The American Experience )
SOURCE A: American Identity: Ideas, Not Ethnicity The following text was prepared by a representative of the United States Government to provide information on American identity for people of foreign countries. If American identity embraces all kinds of people, it also affords them a vast menu of opportunities to make and remake themselves. Americans historically have scorned efforts to trade on accidents of birth, such as great inherited wealth or social status. Article I of the U.S. Constitution bars the government from granting any title of nobility, and those who cultivate an air of superiority toward their fellow Americans are commonly disparaged for putting on airs, or worse. Americans instead respect the self-made man or woman, especially where he or she has overcome great obstacles to success. The late 19th-century American writer Horatio Alger, deemed by the Encyclopedia Britannica perhaps the most socially influential American writer of his generation, captured this ethos in his many rags-to-riches stories, in which poor shoeshine boys or other street urchins would rise, by dint of their ambition, talent, and fortitude, to wealth and fame. In the United States, individuals craft their own definitions of success. It might be financial wealth and many are the college dropouts working in their parents garage in hopes of creating the next Google, Microsoft, or Apple Computer. Others might prize the joys of the sporting arena, of creating fine music or art, or of raising a loving family at home. Because Americans spurn limits, their national identity is not -- cannot be -- bounded by the color of one s skin, by one s parentage, by which house of worship one attends. From: Michael Jay Friedman. American Identity: Ideas, Not Ethnicity. U. S. Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs.
SOURCE B: Familiarity Breeds Respect This table came from a report by the Public Religion Research Institute on American attitudes towards increasing diversity in America a decade after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. From: Public Religion Research Institute. Pluralism, Immigration, Civic Integration Survey. August 2011.
SOURCE C: Everything Potent is Dangerous Wallace Stegner was an American novelist and historian who was often referred to as The Dean of Western Writers. The following text is excerpted from an essay Stegner wrote on his personal beliefs for a 1950s radio broadcast. It was re-aired in 2010. However far I have missed achieving it, I know that moderation is one of the virtues I most believe in. But I believe as well in a whole catalogue of Christian and classical virtues: in kindness and generosity, in steadfastness and courage and much else. I believe further that good depends not on things but on the use we make of things. Everything potent, from human love to atomic energy, is dangerous; it produces ill about as readily as good; it becomes good only through the control, the discipline, the wisdom with which we use it. Much of this control is social, a thing which laws and institutions and uniforms enforce, but much of it must be personal, and I do not see how we can evade the obligation to take full responsibility for what we individually do. Our reward for self-control and the acceptance of private responsibility is not necessarily money or power. Self-respect and the respect of others are quite enough. All this is to say that I believe in conscience, not as something implanted by divine act, but as something learned from infancy from the tradition and society which has bred us. The outward forms of virtue will vary greatly from nation to nation; a Chinese scholar of the old school, or an Indian raised on the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita, has a conscience that will differ from mine. But in the essential outlines of what constitutes human decency we vary amazingly little. The Chinese and the Indian know as well as I do what kindness is, what generosity is, what fortitude is. They can define justice quite as accurately. It is only when they and I are blinded by tribal and denominational narrowness that we insist upon our differences and can recognize goodness only in the robes of our own crowd. Man is a great enough creature and a great enough enigma to deserve both our pride and our compassion, and engage our fullest sense of mystery. I shall certainly never do as much with my life as I want to, and I shall sometimes fail miserably to live up to my conscience, whose word I do not distrust even when I can t obey it. But I am terribly glad to be alive; and when I have wit enough to think about it, terribly proud to be a man and an American, with all the rights and privileges that those words connote; and most of all I am humble before the responsibilities that are also mine. For no right comes without a responsibility, and being born luckier than most of the world s millions, I am also born more obligated. From: Wallace Stegner, Everything Potent is Dangerous. The Bob Edwards Show.
SOURCE D: Information to Those Who Would Move to America Benjamin Franklin played an integral role in the founding of the United States of America. He was a noted writer and diplomat. The provided passage is an excerpt from a larger work aimed at people intending to immigrate to the United State. People do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but, What can he do? If he has any useful Art, he is welcome; and if he exercises it, and behaves well, he will be respected by all that know him. From: Benjamin Franklin, Information to those who would remove to America. Writings 8, 603-14. 1782.
SOURCE E: Getting Angry Can Be a Good Thing Ceclilia Munoz is an executive and social activist for the National Council of La Raza, the largest civil rights organization for Hispanics. Below are some of her thoughts as shared through the National Public Radio This I Believe radio essay project. Now this was someone who knew us, who had sat at our table and knew how American we are. We are a little exotic maybe, but it never occurred to me that we were anything but an American family. For my friend, as for many others, there will always be doubt as to whether we really belong in this country, which is our home, enough doubt to justify taking away our freedom. My outrage that day became the propellant of my life, driving me straight to the civil rights movement, where I ve worked ever since. I guess outrage got me pretty far. I found jobs in the immigrant rights movement. I moved to Washington to work as an advocate. I found plenty more to be angry about along the way and built something of a reputation for being strident. Someone once sent my mom an article about my work. She was proud and everything but wanted to know why her baby was described as ferocious. Anger has a way, though, of hollowing out your insides. In my first job, if we helped 50 immigrant families in a day, the faces of the five who didn t qualify haunted my dreams at night. When I helped pass a bill in Congress to help Americans reunite with their immigrant families, I could only think of my cousin who didn t qualify and who had to wait another decade to get her immigration papers. It s like that every day. You have victories but your defeats outnumber them by far, and you remember the names and faces of those who lost. I still have the article about the farm worker who took his life after we lost a political fight. I have not forgotten his name and not just because his last name was the same as mine. His story reminds me of why I do this work and how little I can really do. From: Ceclilia Munoz, Getting Angry Can Be a Good Thing. Morning Edition, 26 Sept. 2005
SOURCE F: The American Experience The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute provides the resources of Yale University for curricular and pedagogical development of inner-city teachers. Below is an introduction to an instructional unit on American identity. Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she with silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me I lift my lamp beside the golden door! Emma Lazarus In 1986 we celebrated the centennial of the Statue of Liberty and these words were brought to our attention once again. Maybe the words that Emma Lazarus uses to describe the meaning of this great monument seem exaggerated or melodramatic, but if we look at them carefully we see the reality of what 300 years of immigration have brought to this country. From the 1607 founding of Virginia by English colonists to fetch treasure-and enjoy-religious and happy government (7.p.88), to the present boat people and illegal immigrants hoping for a new start in life, it seems that the special destiny of America was to be a country of immigrants (10.p.2). These immigrants came from many lands, they came for many reasons, and are still coming. If we stop for a moment, we can envision how difficult this journey must have been, not only physically, but also emotionally. Little is more extraordinary than the decision to migrate, little more extraordinary than the accumulation of emotions and thoughts which finally leads a family to say farewell to a community where it has lived for centuries, to abandon old ties and familiar landmarks, and to sail across dark seas to a strange land. (7.p.4) But in spite of this emotional pain and great fear, many millions chose to leave their country and emigrate to the New World. They came for many reasons, but we know that predominantly they came for religious freedom, to escape political persecution and to overcome economic hardship. These conditions had made life in their countries harder to endure, and therefore the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness attracted them even more. However what they found here was far from the promised land. They found the freedom of expression denied to them by many of their dictators; they found the opportunity to advance their lot in life; they found the liberty to express their religion openly, but not without many hardships and losses. The freedom was here, but so were the prejudices. The economic opportunities were available, but only very few were able to accumulate the fortunes dreamed. Religion was not imposed on anyone, but certain religions were cause of downgrading and even ridicule. Therefore, although, this land promised much, the deliverance of these promises was slow to come. But the immigrants still came, and they are still coming today. From: Wanda A. Velez. The American Experience. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.