Polemic Assignment about Euthanasia

You must disagree with (not personally disagree; that’s your business) with the editorial that you have chosen. It is helpful to pretend that you are writing to someone who disagrees with you and who agrees with the article you have chosen to critique. You are explaining why the article fails to prove its case. Your own experience and opinions only become relevant in refuting one of the article’s points. Thus the assignment is somewhat akin to cross-examination in a debate.

Although I want you to address every part of the editorial, you do not have to disagree with every assertion the author makes. It can be quite helpful to break down paragraphs into standard form arguments, but one of the easiest ways to do poorly on the polemic assignment is to give an almost mathematical analyses of each each premise and conclusion, yet somehow miss what the editorial is essentially about. You are simply taking an opposing view to his/her overall argument, and your critique may conclude that a majority of their factual assertions are correct, but that these facts do not fully support the conclusion that they have drawn.