Friday, June 8, 2007

Wrestling with Title IX

Carrie Egging
Jen Moskowitz
June 8, 2007
Analysis

Title: John Irving grabs the attention of readers immediately with his title “Wrestling with Title IX. This title gives away a little of what the essay is going to talk about. It introduces that Irving is going to discuss Title IX and that there is some sort of drama involved with this law. It is also interesting that he uses the word wrestling when he uses the sport of wrestling numerous numbers of times in his essay.

Thesis: The main point of Irving’s essay is that Title IX has become blown out of proportion and instead of discriminating again women it almost discriminates against men because of the proportionality laws that have been put in place.

Purpose: The purpose of Irving’s essay is obviously to persuade people that Title IX with is proportionality law has far overstepped its original purpose of allowing women to be able to compete in athletics. He says “good for the original Title IX!” in response to the law Congress passed in 1972 to end sex discrimination in schools. He argues that with the proportionality laws placed on Title IX, now the men are discriminated against.

Method: The principle method that Irving uses in his essay is giving examples. Through the examples that he used he really able to clarify his point and show to people what he is talking about. Although he doesn’t cite his sources, it would be easy to check them because he stated what schools his examples came from. He also used a sport that he was very familiar with and very passionate about. Thus giving him a little more authority on that subject.

Irving also suggests different ways that Title IX with the proportionality laws could be gotten around. Here he argues that there is no set way to determine how Title IX is supposes to be used and that it is unfair how men who want to compete are unable to because of these new laws.

Irving also uses a statistical method to help drive home his point of how the laws are unfair. He gives percentages of women in school and women who actually want to compete at a college level, compared to men in school and men who want to compete at the collegiate level.

Persona: Irving presents himself as a former athlete who has suffered from these new proportionality laws. He argues from a standpoint that he has lived through it and doesn’t think that people should have to. That it is not fair to men or women athletes to have these sorts of restrictions put on their love of athletics.

Closing Paragraph: In Irving’s closing paragraph he leaves it very short and concise. He says, “Keep Title IX: eliminate proportionality. Play fair.” This summarizes that he believes that Title IX was a good law when it was first drafted in 1972, but with its revisions in 1979 and 1996 it is not addressing its original purpose. It summarizes the part of the law that he thinks needs to be removed thus being proportionality. He also adds in a little spirit of his personality and again ties in the athletic theme when he adds on the words “play fair.”

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