I felt as if this ad was strong in displaying a simple yet riveting statistic. The reality is that this statistic is one of the major issues that puts our nations youth into a risky situation. Graduation rates have more to do with unequal education opportunities than anything else. These ads in my opinion are made to garner support in pressuring law makers to close the “gap” that creates inequality in the education system. The town I went to high school in Long Island has a very large budget annually. The reason for this is because taxpayers money from the town I am from only goes to this one education district. What if these school districts that have a lot of money anyway, gave a mere fraction to a fund that dispersed money to school districts nationwide in need. These districts in need, need money in order to support programs that benefit their students. Whether it is after school tutoring or sports teams, these extracurricular activities are vital in keeping a teens mind focused on their respective priorities. I think the intended audience of the ad are those people who are disenfranchised by the fact they do not have the means necessary as a community to improve literacy and graduation rates. The purpose of the advertisement is to bring hindsight to the fact that people are not able to achieve their full potential without an education. The way to end this issue is by expanding access and resources towards education especially in low income communities because their the most vulnerable to this reality. My stance is that I believe that all people deserve the chance to have an education and I do not believe the federal government is doing enough to help on the local level in order to improve education.
Explicit: The explicit message of this ad is that there is a major issue when it comes to graduation rate in the United States, every year more and more students are dropping out of college and limiting what they can across all the realms of opportunity in life.
Implicit: Combined with the statistic and the picture the goal of the ad is to show how the subjects in the picture are very proud of the work they put into graduating. The goal is to emulate the fulfillment that is achieved through working for something and not quitting. I think that as technology makes our daily tasks more and more easy, the necessity to work hard like our parents and grandparents is not as urgent.
Extended Meaning: The reality is that because we are all born with ambition this issue is fixable. Because there are so many kids that want to do well, but they look at school as a hinder on their potential, the issue becomes gearing their focus towards staying in school. The way to do this is by giving kids more of an opportunity and the way to do that is by equalizing the funding, at least to an amicable level that helps resolve the drop out issue.
Rhetorical Analysis of Linh Le: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/lle04/?p=157
Explicit: The ad shows a girl sitting on a chair with a bulletin behind her that displays a statistic relating literacy levels to to the random person.
Implicit: The implied message here is that there are a lot of random strangers who make up the statistic of those who are illiterate. I like the way Linh used the picture of this random girl to display her message I found the usage to be very effective.
Extended Meaning: I think that the goal of this ad is to try and shed light on the fact that reading is the basic necessity that people need to function in our society, meanwhile it has become a luxury to be literate. I found this ad to be very effective in displaying the overall correlation between literacy levels on a broader scale, and to narrow it in on a particular issue within this realm of issue.
