Read the following paragraph and answer the questions after the paragraph.

Question

The tragic plight of our children clearly reveals our deep disregard for public well-being. About one out of every five children in this country lives in poverty, including one out of every two black children and two out of every five Hispanic children. Most of our children—neglected by overburdened parents and bombarded by the market values of profit-hungry corporations—are ill-equipped to live lives of spiritual and cultural quality. Faced with these facts, how do we expect ever to constitute a vibrant society?
One essential step is some form of large-scale public intervention to ensure access to basic social goods—housing, food, health care, education, child care, and jobs. We must invigorate the common good with a mixture of government, business, and labor that does not follow any existing blueprint. After a period in which the private sphere has been sacralized and the public square gutted, the temptation is to make a fetish of the public square. We need to resist such dogmatic swings.
—Cornell West
1. What is each paragraph’s topic sentence? Does West state his opinion about a certain issue? Is this opinion debatable?
2. Whom do you think the author is addressing in this paragraph? How did you come to this conclusion?
3. What evidence do the paragraphs provide to support their topic sentences? How would you classify it?
Evidence Type



4. How is the evidence in this paragraph organized: general to particular, particular to general, from one extreme to another?

Answer 1

1. “The tragic plight of our children reveals our deep disregard for public well-being.”
“One essential step is some form of large-scale public intervention to ensure access to basic social goods—housing, food, health care, education, child care, and jobs.”
West states his opinions on helping children, and his opinions are debatable.
2. Since West is identifying a social problem and suggesting measures to combat this problem, he is probably addressing people who have the ability to change laws.

3. Evidence
Type
one out of every five children lives in poverty
Statistic
one out of every two black children and two out
Statistic
of every five Hispanic children live in poverty

parents overburdened and bombarded by media
Fact
children ill-equipped to live lives of spiritual
Example
and cultural quality

ensure access to basic social goods—housing, food,
Example
health care, education, child care, and jobs

invigorate the common good with a mixture of
Example
government, business, and labor

4. General to particular