The Art of Persuasion

This is a post by Ms. Victoria.

Last year, I made two speeches to two very different audiences at my college, Lehigh University. The first was a speech to first year students when they first arrived on campus to start their college education. It is the first speech above entitled Freshman Rally. The second speech, below, was given to an audience of third and fourth year students who had earned good grades and were attending an honors convocation preceding graduation.

 

As I look at the two speeches, I see how different and how similar they are. The first uses comedy, a comparison between college and the magical life of Harry Potter and his friends at Hogwarts. The second is much more serious, and uses personal experiences that relate to what I am arguing.

Although, the tone, the audience, and the type of evidence are very different in these two speeches, the argument that is being made is the same: be active. The message of the first speech is to seize the day, to try new things, and to make college the best it can be by being active. The message of the second speech is to make a difference, to be active in the future and be the change you wish to see in the world.

Persuading two different audiences of the same thing is not always easy. The types of evidence that will persuade them may be very different, and it is up to you to decide what evidence (facts, comparisons, statistics, or personal experiences) will be most effective. When we look at the political speeches of the 2012 campaign, we see both President Obama and Mitt Romney using different evidence depending on where they are speaking. For example, they may use some facts when talking to environmentalists, but other facts when they are talking to people employed by energy companies.

Do you think the use of different supporting evidence is important to their argument? Or do you think that using different evidence for the same argument makes Americans on the whole believe or accept what they say less?

Animal Abuse in Dog Sledding

The following persuasuive writing speech was written by Braiyana S. of Higher Achievement's 7th grade class.

120 dogs have died since 1973 in the Iditarod Dog Race. I believe that this is animal abuse. The Iditarod Race is a race in Alaska, run from Anchorage to Nome. In the race, mushers push the dogs harder and harder to win the race. 35 mushers attempted the first race in 1973, but only 22 finished. This shows that dogs are not getting enough rest and are getting hurt before finishing.

"When you go up the mountains it is complicated and a challenge," said Ms. Victoria, an expert on dog sledding. "Sometimes, even for me, it feels like I will never really finish and escape from the cold and exhaustion." Cruelty has been around for a long time. So what? It does not have to be a part of our future.

Be positive!

My Favorite Poem

The Butterfly


The Butterfly Project at the Holocaust Museum Houston
 collects handmade butterflies to remember the 1.5
million children who perished in the Holocaust.

The last, the very last,

So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.

Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing

against a white stone. . . .

Such, such a yellow

Is carried lightly 'way up high.

It went away I'm sure because it wished to

kiss the world good-bye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here,

Penned up inside this ghetto.

But I have found what I love here.

The dandelions call to me

And the white chestnut branches in the court.

Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one.

Butterflies don't live in here,

in the ghetto.

My grandfather, Siegfried Herrmann, was 14 when World War II started in 1939, and 19 when he was taken to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1944. He was very close in age to Paval Friedman, a Jewish Czechoslovak poet who wrote the poem above, The Butterfly, at age 21 in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. I first read the poem when I was young, perhaps 11 or 12, but I have held it close to me throughout the years; it is my favorite poem.

The poem reminds me of how beautiful humanity can be even in the darkest of times. Paval wrote this poem while he was watching his friends and family be taken away from him. He dreamed of yellow butterflies and dandelions in the disturbingly horrifying atmosphere of a Nazi ghetto. Although the poem ends in a foreboding tone, it inspires me that Paval was able to still dream, to still create humbling, humane beauty while being surrounded by such desolation.

Paval died in Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1944, along with my grandfather's mother, father, and brother. But his words, and his inspiration, live on through his lyrical interplay of diction and syntax. It reminds us all that no matter how dark the future may seem, or how horrifying the actions of today are, we as humans have the power to bring light by creating beauty - with words, art, dance, song, speeches, policy, science, and math. In a time when our country faces a strong divide in the weeks before the Presidential Election, and when our world faces much violence, we all must remember that we too can be like Paval. We too can create beauty in the dark.