Course Project From Hell

Journalistic news media tend to present themselves as objective entities within out democratic society that ensure that citizens remain informed of important public issues and events, however, also as guardians who keep public officials honest. Ideals integrity, objectivity, and truthfulness are often cited as standards that govern how journalists, with respect to news stories, do their job. However, editorials are a whole different story. There is no claim of fairness or impartiality here.

Instead of a reporting of substantiated facts, figures, and events, editorials are predominantly the opinions of writers (with the political slant of the publisher determining much of the content of what appears in editorial pages). This is not to say that editorials have no positive qualities. Editorials are often entertaining, and many individuals tend to favour a particular editorialist or editorial page that reflects their own beliefs, principles, etc.

However, editorials are often characterized by the presentation of biased, opinionated, and speculative tirades that lead to many errors in logic and sound reasoning. In the course of this paper, I shall use a recent editorial by George Will in the Washington Post as an instance to analyze. The overall conclusion of the Will's editorial is two-fold.

Firstly, Will concludes that the parents of students at Bedford Central were silly to attempt to resolve what they perceived as problematic state of affairs through litigation (in both the extent of what they viewed as problematic, and the route taken to resolve the state of affair). Secondly, Will concludes that the legal decision handed down by Judge Brieant was also silly in his adjudication of the matter (specifically, how he choose to define what constitutes religion with respect to the First Amendment, and what constitutes academic freedom).

On Will's view, it was these respective silly acts that led to an overall silly state of affairs. The arguments presented in Will's editorial can be summarised and linked in the following way.

Will begins by summarizing Judge Brieant's findings in the case [argument 1]: If parental complaints about pedagogical practices are unreasonable (i.e., a reasonable person would find no overt problem with the practices), then such complaints deserve to be given short shrift [premise] Judge Brieant finds that parental complaints are unreasonable [premise] Therefore, Judge Brieant give short shrift to most of the parent's complaints [conclusion] However, Will challenges this finding by putting forward the following argument [2]: The rejection of parental complaints was warranted because the examples they cite were not in fact religious in nature [premise] There inclusion of an 'international enrichment' week (where models of Ganesha were made by students) constitutes a religious event in the curriculum [premise] Therefore, the identification of what constitutes a presence of religion in the curriculum challenges what a reasonable person would view as a problematic practice [conclusion] Will continues [argument 3]: If Judge Brieant finds 'subtle coercive pressure' in making images of Ganesha (and other such events), then he finds that such actions are devoid of any educational justification [premise] If Judge Brieant finds coercive pressure and a lack of educational justification in making images of Ganesha, then he is able to provide a demarcation between justified and unjustified educational practices [premise] Judge Brieant makes a finding than certain education practices are justified (e.g., do not violate constitutional rights) [premise] Therefore, Judge Brieant's ruling constitute acting like an education czar [conclusion; enthymematic] Will ends his editorial with [argument 4]: The inclusion of mystical/spiritual/holistic worldviews within educational practices is not necessarily unjustified [premise] Judge Brieant finds the practices of using 'worry dolls' and the teacher's assertion that the world is overpopulated to be instances of unjustified educational practices [premise] Therefore, Judge Brieant's rulings are inconsistent [conclusion; enthymematic] The above four arguments provided by Will are mostly valid, however, only some are sound.

However, it is helpful to assign truth-values to each one of his statements in the arguments above. They can be assigned as follows: Argument 1 Premise 1: False Premise 2: True Conclusion: False Argument 2 Premise 1: True Premise 2: True Conclusion: True Argument 3 Premise 1: False Premise 2: Indeterminate Premise 3: True Conclusion: False Argument 4 Premise 1: True Premise 2: True Conclusion: False There are a number of fallacies committed throughout Will's editorial.

The most prevalent fallacy committed is that of argumentum ad hominem - specially the abusive form of ad hominem in which Will attacks the judge himself and not the justification or arguments laid out in his ruling. The first instance can be found when Will calls Judge Brieant an 'education czar'. Will's comment is tantamount to a personal attack. As an educated man, one would expect Will to know that the judge is well within his defined scope to adjudicate what is at issue.

He is not constructing law as Will intimates, he is interpreting the existing statues and applying them to the case. Will's charge of such action as czar-like is unfounded and erroneous. Instead of arguing the positive law or the notion of 'educational justification' concerning the issue, Will simply calls the judge an 'education czar (or at a latter.