Rhetoric and Composition: ENG 015 007: Blog Response #1

My most interesting experience in writing came in my junior year of high school in my AP English Language and Composition class. Unlike any English class that I have been a part of in the past, one of the goals of the class and the teacher, Dr. Wilson, was teaching the genre of nonficiton prose. In previous classes I almost exclusively dealt with fictional works, whether it be novels, novellas, poems or anything else that never really happened. The assignment I found most interesting had each student read a Supreme Court decision. After reading the decision and its dissentions, each student would have to write a paper summarizing the reasoning of the justices and then explain our own opinions on the case. My court case was Plyler v. Doe. The case asked the question whether it was constitutional or not for the child of an illegal immigrants to attend public school. I had to read the briefs of each side of the argument and then the final decision. Reading the decision was unlike any reading I had ever done. The writer was not concerned with presenting a story, that was the job of the lawyers. The job of the justices was to take the stories presented and decide what was right and what was constitutional. What was written down was essentially the reaction of the justices to these stories, opinion rather than facts and observations. Of course there was plenty of legal jargon and references to precedents but at the paper's heart it was an opinion. Unfortunately my opinion is not as valued as the justices' opinions are but I was still excited to put down my reactions on paper. It was exciting to respond to something in the real world, something that people care about enough to go to court for, something that affects the lives of real people. It was a nice break from writing about fictional characters and what the theme of the novel was.