Rhetorical analysis of Ha-Joon Chang's My Six-Year-Old Son Should Get a Job - Essay Example

Chang begins the essay with an appeal from a unanimous father that his six-year-old son should get a job like other millions of children. The father justifies his appeal saying that the child one day is going to enter the adult world of survival, that is why; the sooner is the better. Chang expresses this thought through a bold sentence “I should make him quit school and get a job.” This technique immediately delivers the expected answer. Chang expresses it, “I can hear you say I must be mad. Myopic. Cruel.

You tell me that I need to protect and nurture the child.” Chang’s explains this is how the noble rich societies are going to criticize a father who wishes to send the six-year-old child to the job. Ha-Joon Chang with the above approach received his readers’ attention and achieved the goal. He then delivers the key concept of his article “This absurd line of argument is in essence how free-trade economists justify rapid, large-scale trade liberalization in developing countries.” Chang used literary analogy to achieve his goal and to establish his case to his audience.

Devolved countries while do not morally approve sending a six-year-old child to the job, at the same time, care less if developing countries industries are forced to enter into an unequal battle because of free-trade economic policies. Chang, again uses analogy to explain the future economic conditions that these countries will eventually be facing due to free trade policies, “If I drive Jin-Gyu into the labor market at the age of six, he may become a savvy shoeshine boy or even a prosperous street hawker, but he will never become a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist -- that would require at least another dozen years of my protection and investment.

” Again, this is how Chang argues against the implementation of free trade policies in developing countries. After establishing his case to the audience, Chang starts proving the case. He uses the term infant industries for developing countries and compares it to the process of bringing up of children by parents. Chang’s principal advocacy revolves around rendering protection to the infant industries. He also knows that he has to face opponents’ views that express governments can be over protective, and industries can manipulate for prolong government protection through clever lobbying.

Chang explains that the policy needs to be used wisely (“My Six Year Child Should Get a Job”). In the process of defending his case, Chang uses historical facts. He juxtaposes current infant industries of developing countries with that of United States in the late 18th century. In this respect, Chang refers to the thoughts and proposals of Alexander Hamilton, the United States first Secretary of Treasury. At the age of 33, Alexander Hamilton, declares that a backward country like the US should protect its 'industries in their infancy' from foreign competition and nurture them to the point where they could stand on their own feet (“My Six Year Child Should Get a Job”).

This is Chang’s core concept towards today’s free trade policies with respect to the developing countries economies. Hamilton proposed a series of protective measures to achieve the