Page 57 - SpringBoard_Writing_Workshop_Grade7_Flipbook

Writing Workshop 5 (continued)
My Notes
2. Conduct a close reading of Andy Rooney’s persuasive essay “America the Not-So-Beautiful.”
Sample Text
America the
Not-So-Beautiful
by Andrew A. Rooney
Next to saving stuff I don’t need, the thing I like to do best is throw it away. My idea of a good time is to load up the back of the car with junk on a Saturday morning and take it to the dump. There’s something satisfying about discarding almost anything.
Throwing things out is the American way. We don’t know how to fix anything, and anyone who does know how is too busy to come, so we throw it away and buy a new one. Our economy depends on us doing that. The trouble with throwing things away is, there is no “away” left.
Sometime around the year 500 B.C., the Greeks in Athens passed a law prohibiting people from throwing their garbage in the street. This Greek law was the first recognition by civilized people that throwing things away was a problem. Now, as the population explodes and people take up more room on Earth, there’s less room for everything else.
The more civilized a country is, the worse the trash problem is. Poor countries don’t have the same problem because they don’t have much to discard. Prosperity in the United States is based on using things up as fast as we can, throwing away what’s left, and buying new ones.
We’ve been doing that for so many years that (1) we’ve run out of places to throw things because houses have been built where the dump was and (2) some of the things we’re throwing away are poisoning the Earth and will eventually poison all of us and all living things.
Ten years ago most people thought nothing of dumping an old bottle of weed or insect killer in a pile of dirt in the back yard or down the drain in the street, just to get rid of it. The big companies in America had the same feeling, on a bigger scale. For years the chemical companies dumped their poisonous wastes in the rivers behind the mills, or they put it in fifty-gallon drums in the vacant lots, with all the old, rusting machinery in it, up behind the plants. The drums rusted out in ten years and dumped their poison into the ground. It rained, the poisons seeped into the underground streams and poisoned everything for miles around. Some of the manufacturers who did this weren’t even evil. They were dumb and irresponsible. Others were evil because they knew how dangerous it was but didn’t want to spend the money to do it right.
The problem is staggering. I often think of it when I go in the hardware store or a Sears Roebuck and see shelves full of poison. You know that, one way or another, it’s all going to end up in the Earth or in our rivers and lakes.
I have two pint bottles of insecticide with 3 percent DDT in them in my own garage that I don’t know what to do with. I bought them years ago when I didn’t realize how bad they were. Now I’m stuck with them.
2 SpringBoard® Writing Workshop with Grammar Activities Grade 7
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.