TOW #13- Being Smart About Your Child's Brain

Frank Bruni is an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times. In his columns, he writes about sseveral different topics including American politics, higher education, violence in football, and gay rights. In his op-ed piece ‘Being Smart About Your Child’s Brain’, he discusses the problems circulating around school sports. Bruni believes that health should be prioritized in all sports, not simply football, because more and more injuries such as concussions and heat strokes have been occurring. Several times throughout his piece, Bruni turns to statistics in order to make his point. For example, he speaks of a scientist named Comstock, who supervises a national inventory of athletic injuries in high school students. Coomstock says “’I have 22 sports in my surveillance system, and concussions have been reported in all but one of them. That includes swimming,’” (Bruni para 13). Both hearing this from a scientist and through numbers, the reader puts the information together logically and allows them to come to their own conclusions. It also shows that this concern has proof behind it and is actually abundant enough to have concerns about. He also turns to several other scientists to prove his point, including information from Kevin Guskiewicz, Douglas Casa and more. This allows him to add ethos to his argument by turning to those who know more about the topic than he does. He also brings up current events that readers may be familiar with. He speaks of a sixteen year old in New York who developed heatstroke and ended up in the hospital with kidney damage during practice. The current event proves to the readers that this is still something that needs to be addressed and shows the drastic effects that this problem has on the high schoolers. I believe this was a rather effective piece, as he understood where he was standing in the audience’s eyes. As he was a writer and not a scientist, he knew how to properly back up the information, and to what extent so that it wouldn’t be overwhelming to the reader. It seems his audience are the parents, as he discusses a lot of parent’s questions at college conferences and their lack of focus on the sports.