Analysis of My Rhetorical Situation

Fotos, Alexandra Baby-Sitter Children Educator, 11/17/2015 via Pixabay Public Domain Distribution License

Analyze your audience

My topic is about the Math Wars currently being fought over the common core curriculum in mathematics used in public schools, so my audience is going to have some affiliation with this topic.

There are two groups of people that will definitely be affected by this topic specifically
Teachers: Teachers are going to be very interested in this topic, especially those that specifically teach at a middle school or high school level (the entirety of their curriculum is being changed after all)
Parents: The parents of the children that are being currently taught in public schools will be interested in this topic as well. Parents are usually concerned over their children's curriculum, so they will definitely be interested in a topic such as the Math Wars.

There are other people that may be interested in the Math Wars, but these two groups are definitely the majority of the interested population. I feel as though my audience is not necessarily interested in any type of media specifically, but are connected to the Math Wars in some way. Furthermore, I would say that the audience is described my a certain type of demographic, but they are definitely made up of mostly low to middle class working families. Families in this economic demographic are more likely to be concerned with the Math Wars since they are more likely to send their children to public schools, while upper-class families are mostly send their kids to private schools, which have different guidelines than those of public schools. The Math Wars only exist in the United States, so only citizens of the United States would be even slightly interested in this issue (of course, there may be other people in different countries that may be interested in the topic, but they live outside the US and aren't directly affected by the information they read about this topic). Lastly, the audience is mostly concerned with the level of math education children are receiving in public schools, and whether or not this curriculum can be replaced with a "better" one.

My purpose is to inform my audience of the Math Wars as a whole; I want to show both sides of the issue. I want essay to be more in the form of a encyclopedia entry rather than an opinionated piece of work. I want my audience to know the basic overview and certain specific events that occurred during the Math Wars, but I'd rather it be from a third-person omniscient perspective. Details like context and stakeholders will show how these people and events were involved and their perspective, but won't have the author's personal opinion about said person or event.

From my own perspective, I'm a little out of place for writing about the Math Wars. I'm a Bachelor of Science Math Major, which specializes in certain branches of the College of Science (depending on the student's personal choice), while a topic like the Math Wars would be more suited to a Bachelor of Arts Art Major (a.k.a. future math teachers). It's not that I'm necessarily disinterested in this topic; I could be more interested in my topic. There aren't any recent major math controversies that aren't petty debates, so the Math Wars was the most perfect fit for me. Regardless of my less than perfect fit, I am interested in the Math Wars since my mother is a teach and is directly affected by this controversy. I definitely want to find out more about this topic for her sake as well as my own.