Should We Really Give Children The Vote Summary

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Should We Really Give Children the Vote?

Sixteen year old Vita Wallace is an activist for children’s rights. In her argument, “Give children the vote,” she attempts to show that an injustice has been made to citizens of the United States. Wallace’s major claim, or thesis (McFadden, 2003), is that citizens under the age of 18 shouldn’t be denied the right to vote on account of age. Rather, she argues, children should be allowed to vote at whatever age suits them individually. By saying individually, she is using a qualifier, words and phrases used to limit and modify the overgeneralization of claims (McFadden). It is important that Wallace uses the term individually, because she recognizes that an age limit would be inappropriate for …show more content…

Right away she discusses “Discriminatory laws” which prevent high school drop-outs from getting their driver’s licenses. This leads to her first minor claim that children are being “Punished for exercising one of the few legal decisions they now have” (Wallace, p. 145). With this statement Wallace is trying to connect her values of freedom, justice, and democracy to persuade the reader to agree that indeed children are being treated unjustly for dropping out of school. Her argument is weak here because she doesn’t account for other values of drop-out students such as personal responsibility or self-worth. Wallace argues that it’s okay for people to drop out of school because it’s their choice. While she argues that it’s their right to not be in school, she forgets that others have the power to take away special benefits, such as driving due to her actions. As my mother would say, Wallace seems to be confusing the words “right” with …show more content…

She then cites the Fourteenth Amendment saying that it is legal to change the voting age starting at state level. This is excellent information but once again is lost by the remainder of the paragraph. It is one of her stronger points, but doesn’t mention it until the last page. This seems like information that she should have included sooner. In general I thought the final page of the essay was difficult to read. I became lost in a jumble of information that I thought was poorly placed at the end of the essay when it should have been towards the front or middle. Wallace finally had a good opportunity to enhance her major claim, but she lost the audience due to poor organization.

Although Wallace used universal values in trying to persuade the audience the argument failed for three reasons. The majority of the paper fails due to overall lack of credibility and evidence. This is because she bases much of her argument only on personal experience. The final reason I found her essay unsuccessful was the overall choppiness of the paper due to poor organization. Overall, Wallace’s argument may have been more successful if she would have focused on actual evidence rather than

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