Journal Entry #3

"The case Against Chores" by Jane Smiley (b. 1949)

Questions for Active Readers.

1.- The experience that Smiley had that changed her beliefs about chores was working at the stable. She described her experience almost at the end of the essay. If she would had put it in the beginning I would had thought different about her opinion about chores.

2.- She supported her opinion with a lot of examples. One of them was that making the children do the work teaches them the alienated labor: no to love the work but to get it over with. Another example she gave was her husband. He has work hard since a child, but he feels that he has to get the job done first before going to have fun. Although she is giving a lot of examples, I think she is generalizing. Some other people's experience might not be the same and they could say something different about chores. Another thing is that she is not supporting it with scientific proves. The audience she is trying to reach are the parents who are forcing their kids to the chores and the children who are being forced to do it.

3.- She used rhetorical questions to make the readers have thoughts about and make them feel related to it or reflect to it. For children, chores are annoying and at that point they don't see the advantages they could get about doing them. They are learning certain thing that maybe in the future will be helpful. I think that if you don't make your kids help you at home your are making them dependent. I can give my own example. When I was I kid I had everything done for me, like the food, laundry, cleaning and fixing my room, almost everything. But when I moved to college I had to do everything by myself and I didn't nothing about cooking or doing the laundry. My mom had to teach me over the phone. I thought in that moment that I wished that I could have done some of does stuff at home so I didn't have to be in this position. That's why I say it's good teach your children how to do the housework.