In his article “Stop ‘Defending’ Music Education”, published in The Huffington Post, Peter Greene, an English Teacher and tailgate trombonist who has written numerous articles on the faults with America’s education system, criticizes people who try to defend music education by arguing how it helps students “do better in other classes”. He says people should stop trying to defend it that way, as music has so many reasons why it is good to have in schools, and the helping students get better grades on tests is one of the lesser reasons. He then goes on to list some of the reasons music education is important just in itself, saying, “There are so many reasons for music education. And “it helps with testing” or “makes you do better in other classes” belong near the bottom of that list.” (1)
Greene gives himself respectable credibility by including his musical background, creating a good ethos appeal, and using successful emotional appeals as well as appeals to mythos throughout his paper. However,…show more content… He says, “It is both indescribable and enormously compelling to see the many ways in which humans making music come together and connect to each other. You are part of something — something bigger than yourself and more than the sum of the parts.” Mythos is a great appeal to use when writing about music, because, to quote Jessica Voigt-Page, another author for The Huffington Post, “Music as an artform has, is and forever will be something that is greater than the sum of our thoughts and ideas.” (Voigt-Page 1)
Greene writes a paper that might win over a neutral reader, but as he falls short when it comes to logos appeal, someone who approaches his paper with an opposite mindset will not be easily persuaded. Greene could have made his article much more convincing if he had included some references to studies with credible evidence which supported his
