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English 1301
1 December 2015
“Lost In America,” an essay composed by Douglas McGray, is an essay
regarding the urge to change America’s curriculum in a way that will give today’s
students the necessary tools to be globally aware. McGray’s essay is directed
towards the people of the academic world, including scholars, educators, and
students themselves. “Lost In America” was published in the Foreign Policy
magazine, a magazine that “reaches an international audience of millions and has
become a trusted source of insight and analysis for leaders from government,
business, finance, and the academic world” (Foreign Policy). Through being
published in Foreign Policy, McGray gives this distinct group the opportunity to
learn about the academic world in America. McGray argues that America must “open
the classroom door” by creating more learning opportunities for students to become
internationally aware through offering more relevant courses that educate and
inform students about the world around them (McGray 351). McGray points out
several flaws in America’s education system through the use of statistics, paradox,
anecdotes, as well as strategic organization. Through the use of these strategic
rhetorical choices, “Lost In America,” persuades people of the academic world to
integrate new courses that will give students relevant and timely knowledge of the
changing world around them.
McGray incorporates a substantial amount of statistics into his essay to prove
to the academic world that American students are not learning languages of
countries that are extremely powerful economically. McGray also identifies through
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the use of statistics that American students are uninformed and misinformed of the
world around them. McGray believes that Americans can improve on having
students learn about countries that are successful in today’s society by
incorporating more modern language classes, Arabic for example. “More than 25
years since the oil crisis showed the Middle East to be the world’s most vital and
volatile region, only about 500 American public high schoolers were enrolled in
Arabic classes, while some 175,000 studied Latin instead” (McGray 352). Through
using this statistic, American scholars and educators may be encouraged to develop
an Arabic class in their institutions. Another staggering statistic McGray integrates
into his argument was that when 18- to 24-year-olds were given a map, “Sixty–nine
percent failed to find Britain, 29 percent could not find the Pacific Ocean, and nearly
