Rhetorical Analysis

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Can Students Have Too Much Tech?: Rhetorical Analysis

By Erin Valade
When was the last time you had an assignment online? Its not a common question, but
the common answer would probably be somewhere between yesterday and 10 minutes ago.
Technology in education has become a fundamental component of individuals everyday life, and
in recent years, their life in the classroom. Can Students Have Too Much Tech by Susan Pinker
is an article written for powerful people in both the technological and educational world who
fund technology in the classroom, but is also relevant to almost anyone who reads it. Pinker is a
developmental psychologist and columnist with the goal to educate people about how technology
is not always a positive and how it widens the class divide in education when certain students
have more access than others, which also affects peer confrontation and overall learning. Pinker
does so by employing strong rhetorical strategies to target the attention of this audience of
powerful people to the problems concomitant with the integration of technology in the
classroom. Pinker creates an impact on this particular audience through the combination of
appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos, which will effectively convince readers of the dangers of
technology while presenting a procedural claim to keep technology in the classroom in a healthy
and intellectual way.
Before investigating the rhetorical devices used by Pinker, it is crucial to understand her
reasoning for this call for action. President Obama vowed to protect a free and open Internet
and extend its reach to every classroom and every community, but Susan Pinker thinks this is
incorrect (Obama). Pinker notes how technology in the classroom is not progressive. She
believes that students who spend more time on electronic devices will struggle with learning and

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socializing with other students. Also, if students are given too much opportunity to use
technology in a pedagogical sense, the class divide will be widened, in opposition to what
President Obama says. Pinker proclaims that the only effective way for technology to work in the
classroom is by effectively training teachers. It is presented through data that the most operative
way to do this and move towards successful educational technology is by using the money spent
on electronics on teacher training programs instead. She sets out to educate the people funding
education, specifically technology. Pinker addresses how there is such thing as too much
technology in the classroom, even as innovative as it is to our society. The next step is to use
funding for teachers and recognize that technology is equally detrimental as it is progressive,
maybe even worse when education is in discussion.
The ethos of this issue is very clearly established through Pinkers call to action,
especially in her last paragraph, where she addresses the audience as we. She says we still
have no proof that the newly acquired, tech-centric skills that students learn in the classroom
transfer to novel problems that they need to solve in other areas which is a persuasive
technique, creating a shared identity with the audience (Pinker). This illustrates her credibility,
because she states all of her opinions and facts and waits until the last paragraph to put herself on
a common ground with her readers. This inevitably builds a bridge with the reader by
discovering what is most rooted in the audiences values, which with an audience of educators
and people affected by what goes on in the classroom would be a productive and intellectual
learning environment. She develops a knowledgeable and professional tone through the entire
article, showing her credibility, and also uses credible and effective sources like Duke
University economists Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd and Larry Cuban, an emeritus education
professor at Stanford (Pinker). By using reliable sources, both the logos and the ethos are

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affected because with facts speaking directly to the morals of the audience, the reader respects
Pinkers views even more.
Pinker also gains credibility by acknowledging the counterarguments of the issue and
refuting them. In doing so, she appeals to ethos by eliminating disputations to her claim and
instead turning them in her favor. Trust from the reader grows as Pinker gains credibility. She
states its true that there is often an initial uptick in students engagement with their studies
interactive apps can be fun. But the novelty wears off after a few months (Pinker). She takes
note to the initial truth of the counterargument, but illustrates how it isnt durable, which better
supports her claim and reliability.
Pinker attempts to influence the readers through the use of reasoning, where she appeals
to the logos of the audience. Logos refers to the strength of an arguments support, which in this
case is extremely strong through the incorporation of logic through different examples of
research and statistics. When discussing the widened class divide that more networked devices
would create she offers the information that babies born to low-income parents spend at least 40
percent of their waking hours in front of a screen- more than twice the time spent by middleclass babies (Pinker). This validates her point about the differential impact on poorer families,
and how this leads to less familial interactions, which is what happens when children use
electronic devices; they fall behind on social interactions. This use of logos is extremely effective
because the percentage presented, 40%, is double that of the average child, which alerts the
reader and persuades them to reason with her.
She also presents a multitude of research about the One Laptop Per Child project, and
states, beginning in 2006, the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project envisioned a digital

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utopia in which all students over 6 years old, worldwide, would own their own laptops (Pinker).
This appeals to logos and pathos of the reader in tandem. Her focus on researching an emotional
issue keeps the attention of the reader and establishes exigence through the urgency of the issue,
making the reader want to continue reading.
Pinker captivates the reader in her appeals to pathos by taking specific interest in poor
families and therefore emotionally connecting with them. She focuses on poorer families who
when given the resources to use the Internet like other students with more funds, did less
homework then when they did before because their parents simply give them laptops which were
buggy, and walk away. This issue choice and style is an appeal to pathos to keep the readers
emotionally attached by tugging on their heartstrings. She poses the question, if children who
spend more time with electronic devices are also more likely to be out of sync with their peers
behavior and learning by the fourth grade, why would adding more viewing and clicking to their
school days be considered a good idea? which targets the audience directly (Pinker). In doing
so, she encourages the reader to think about their life and possibly their children, which even
furthers the emotive link initially provided. Pinker had preliminary emotional attachment by
speaking about the poorer families and their struggles, but by asking a question, she gives the
audience the incentive to keep reading for an answer. She also keeps the readers interested by not
taking a position against Obama himself, but merely his view on the subject, because she does
not believe that his claim is possible and effective. Pinker is very effective in her use of appeals
to pathos, because she gets the reader interested and on her side, which is very important in
employing rhetorical strategies, and tends to be very persuasive.

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President Obamas speech regarding this where he vows to vowed to protect a free and
open Internet and extend its reach to every classroom and every community could influence
both the reader and the audience based on whether they support Obama or not (Obama). There
has already been a downfall that has surfaced in student performance in the classroom and
interaction with other students, especially those students who do not have sufficient funds. By
appealing to the heart and the head, Pinker gives the audience a non logical way of sympathizing
with the issue, where they will be able to better know what is deeply at stake in the issue by
walking in her shoes. She takes a firm stance and uses concrete language in specific examples,
like the One Laptop Per Child project, which negatively affected impoverished children, which
consequently heightens the pathos of the argument.
Overall, Pinker is very effective in her use of rhetorical strategies as a call for action to
her audience. Logos, ethos, and pathos in the article work together in creating a cogent influence
on the reader. Appeals to ethos increase her credibility by building a bridge between herself and
the reader, which deem to be very successful in support to her claim. She efficiently appeals to
the logos of the audience in the use of audience-based reasons and research to support her claim.
Also, the appeals to pathos help the reader see what is deeply at stake with the issue of an influx
of technology in the classroom because she puts the reader in her shoes. The combination of
these appeals both establish exigence and provide the reader with a reason to take action against
the invasion of technology in the classroom, because there is such thing as too much.

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Works Cited

Obama, Barack. State of the Union Address. The White House Office of the Press Secretary.
U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. 20 January 2015. Keynote Speech.
Pinker, Susan. Can Students Have Too Much Tech? The New York Times. 30 January. 2015.
The Opinion Pages. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.