Draft 1.2
The controversial writer Douglas McGray writes his article, “Lost in America”, to convince his
audience that Congress needs to change the school system for the better. McGray believes that the
students of America are uninformed about the world because not enough foreign culture classes are
offered to students. The teaching of foreign education classes has decreased in the United States
recently. McGray sees this and believes people should do something to change it. He wrote this paper
because he wants people to read it, agree with him, and begin to try to make a change. “Lost in
America,” by Douglas McGray speaks to the well-educated high level representatives to convince them
to change the public school curriculum by using anecdotes, historical evidence, and metaphors because
he believes that school systems need to create a globalized and updated curriculum to correctly educate
the children of America.
At the beginning of the article, Douglas McGray uses an anecdote to get across his first point. He
writes about a girl named Christina and her interaction in the classroom. In this anecdote, a teacher
informs his students that his family comes from the Island the Philippines. When the instructor in the
after school program says this, a student who is fifteen, Christina, is astonished. She believed that the
Philippines was a country in China(McGray 351). McGray writes this anecdote about Christina to prove
to the audience that many kids nowadays are not aware of foreign heritage or foreign languages. In this
anecdote, the student, Christina, does not know where the country, the Philippines, is. She believes it is
in China when it is definitely not. McGray uses her confusion to show his audience that something needs
to be done about what schools are teaching the youth of America. McGray includes this in his article he
puts it at the beginning to immediately make his readers see his point and agree with him that more
