Self Analysis

Over the course of this project, I have grown as a person, and as a thinker on the subject of closing the achievement gap. At the beginning of this project, I lacked the appropriate passion and fire that I needed to show in this blog with this type of issue. I tried to use more logical arguments rather than the necessary emotionally logical arguments that I tried to construct towards the end of my posting. I was, for lack of a better word, dry. Since this project, my thinking has changed in that now I am consumed with an urge to go out into the world right now and try to solve the problem, where as before, I was more passive to it. Over this period of blogging, not only have I learned new things, I have started to allow the information that I have learned to grow into more complex ideas. I now think for spurting out ideas about ways to solve the problem because I have matured enough to realize that there are always exceptions to every idea and solution.

When I started this project, unlike now, I felt that this problem was insurmountable; however, now I know better. There are special schools called KIPP Schools, Knowledge is Power Program, that are serving low-income minority students, with a college entry rate of nearly 80%. These schools are not without controversy, but regardless of that, they are working. When I first started this project, I though about the growing population of people who said that interracial contact was not important, but as I have grown and researched the issue, I have found lots of evidence that supports the idea that integration is good and necessary. I have found out about blogs like Acting White by James C. Collier that help me to organize my thoughts on the subject, and present new ideas that I had not thought of. I have become aware of the efforts of people, like Bill Cosby, who are trying to help fix the problem.
I have hope and faith that this problem is reversible. There are states in America that have either started to reverse the achievement gap, or are trying to figure out how to. Mike Easley, governor of North Carolina, has created a pre-school program, which is showing gains in closing the achievement gap.
I feel that over the course of my blogging career, I have become better with argumentation. I have tried to use and internalize the art of rhetorical appeals. It is imperative that when discussing an issue, one must be able to sufficiently back up there conclusions in order to aviod logical fallacies. At the beginning, I knew about logical fallacies, but I didn't realize how important it is to avoid them. I have learned that argumentation is helped by sources. From doing this project, I've learned that a lot of websites are not as reliable as others, but the "non reliable" websites also have there uses. As I conclude with the my own analysis, I have come to terms that I am happy with my progress as a thinker on this issue.