A modest proposal for rating everyone: stretch · Grade 11

The passage and its 8 questions

Directions: Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions in full sentences.

• It is a melancholy thing to walk through our towns and see so many conversations wasted. Every day, millions of people speak to one another without the faintest idea whether the exchange was any good. A neighbor asks after your health; you answer;
• you both walk on, and no data is collected at all. I propose to correct this oversight.
• My plan is simple. After every conversation, each participant will rate the other from one to five stars. A grandmother telling a long story about her childhood might earn two stars for pacing; a teenager who replies with a single shrug might earn one, or, if the shrug is well executed, three. Scores would be displayed on a small badge worn at all times, so that strangers could decide in advance whether a person is worth greeting.
• The benefits are obvious. Shy people, who now waste years slowly becoming friends with others, could simply consult the badge. Teachers could be ranked by the minute.
• Families, at last, could identify their most efficient member. Doctors could deliver bad news more briskly, knowing that sighing and holding a patient's hand were costing them precious points.
• Some will object that people might begin to speak only in ways that earn high ratings:
• flattering, agreeing, never admitting doubt or sadness. To this I reply: have they not begun already? My proposal merely makes official what our habits have long been rehearsing. Others will say that the best conversations are often uncomfortable, and that a friend who tells us a hard truth deserves gratitude rather than a low score. I admire their sentiment, but sentiment cannot be graphed.
• I have considered other remedies: listening more closely, asking better questions, tolerating silence, forgiving a dull story for the sake of the person telling it. These are pleasant ideas, but they are slow, they produce no numbers, and they cannot be ranked.
• Let no one talk to me of such measures until there is a chart to prove they work.
• I declare, finally, that I have no personal interest in this plan. My own rating, I am told, is a modest two and a half, chiefly because I talk too much about my proposals.
• 1. What is the real target of this satire, and what does the author actually believe?
• 2. In paragraph 4, the speaker asks, 'have they not begun already?' What does this question imply about the reader's own world?
• 3. What is the effect of the word 'efficient' when it is applied to families in paragraph
• 4. Paragraph 5 lists remedies the speaker dismisses. How does this paragraph reveal the author's real views through irony?
• 5. The title and first sentence allude to Jonathan Swift's 1729 satire A Modest
• Proposal. Why might a modern satirist borrow Swift's framework?
• 6. Copy the sentence in which the speaker's deadpan logic most clearly exposes his own absurdity, and explain your choice.
• 7. Find a word in the passage that was new or tricky for you. What do you think it means? Which words around it helped you?
• 8. Explain how the passage connects to a current issue or another text you know.