Peter Funt argues that the shift to digital formats makes it more difficult to preserve personal memories and history. He notes that physical mementos like ticket stubs, letters, and photos allow for stronger recollection through the senses. However, digital files are easily lost and lack the sentimental value of handwritten notes. While new generations rely on digital storage, it cannot replace the experience of holding objects connected to past experiences. Funt concludes that digital formats may not adequately memorialize personal history for future generations in the same way physical keepsakes have for the past.

1. © 2021 College Board 157 Pre-AP English 2
PERFORMANCE
TASK
Analyzing an Argument
As you read the passage below, consider how the author, Peter Funt, uses:
ƒ evidence, such as facts or examples, to support claims
ƒ reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence
ƒ stylistic or persuasive elements, such as word choice or appeals to emotion, to add
power to the ideas expressed
“DOES ANYONE COLLECT OLD EMAILS?” BY PETER FUNT
1 For more than a century, baseball fans in Chicago have saved ticket stubs to preserve
memories, both fond and frustrating, of their beloved Cubbies.
2 Some Cubs’ tickets — like one from the 1932 World Series in which Babe Ruth is said
to have “called his shot” before homering for the Yankees — are worth thousands. But
most, sitting in drawers or pasted into scrapbooks, are valuable simply as physical
links to the past.
3 That’s over. This season the Cubs have joined more than a dozen other Major League
teams in eliminating paper tickets in favor of digital versions, downloaded to apps and
displayed on phones.
4 And so ticket stubs join theater playbills, picture postcards, handwritten letters and
framed photos as fading forms of preserving our memories. It raises the question,
Is our view of the past, of our own personal history, somehow different without hard
copies?
5 When my mother died a few years ago, we sifted through albums and shoe boxes in
which she had lovingly archived her children’s lives. Handwritten report cards from
grade school. News clippings of Little League games. Postcards from summer camp.
And so many photos: birthdays, graduations, weddings, trips to wonderful places.
6 Mom was not a hoarder. She was typical of a generation that found it pleasing to keep
memories alive by retaining hard copies. Not that she had much choice: She never
owned a computer or cellphone.
7 After my father’s death, in 1999, I saved a folder of handwritten condolence letters
from his friends and colleagues. Rereading them once or twice a year, I am transported
back to times I miss so much. Of course, I received many emails about Dad as well —
but I wouldn’t begin to know how or where to find them. Besides, personal messages
are so much more meaningful when presented in the hand of the sender.
8 My two kids, now in their 20s, have mostly digital keepsakes. Increasingly they rely on
Facebook and the cloud to store memories. Their letters from college, sent by email,
are long gone. Many photos, never printed, have disappeared. I worry that for them,
personal history already doesn’t reach back as far as it should.
Unit 1
Analyzing an Argument

2. © 2021 College Board
158
Pre-AP English 2
PERFORMANCE
TASK
9 Researchers know that of the two primary forms of accessing memory, recognition
and recall, the former is a simpler and more reliable process. It is the association of
a physical object with something previously encountered or experienced. This could
be because tangible memories utilize all five senses, evoking emotional triggers and
transporting us back to a precise time, place or moment.
10 In his new book, “Digital Memory Studies,” Andrew Hoskins, a professor of social
science at the University of Glasgow, concludes: “Despite the decay and wear and
tear of photographs, letters and other objects that are reminders of people and past
experiences, their keeping is like holding on to those people and experiences.” Digital
items offer nothing of the kind.
11 In my youth I collected things. I kept baseball cards in cigar boxes. I carefully slipped
pennies into slots in cardboard sleeves and pasted stamps into an album. As my
interest in journalism grew, I maintained a thick scrapbook of newspaper front pages.
And yes, I still have a cherished batch of Broadway playbills and ticket stubs from
games at Yankee Stadium.
12 This kind of collecting — not just accumulating but, to use a trendy term in its analog
sense, curating — is likewise different when it involves the physical.
13 Mark B. McKinley, a psychologist who teaches at Lorain Community College in Ohio,
explained in The National Psychologist that collecting physical memorabilia is a form
of “experimenting with arranging and classifying” elements of our world. This, he says,
“can serve as a means of control to elicit a comfort zone in one’s life, e.g., calming
fears, erasing insecurity.” It’s no wonder children are fond of collecting things — it’s
critical to their mental and emotional development.
14 I looked at several parenting websites to see what children collect nowadays. One
mother’s note from Kentucky caught my eye: “My son collects Lego sets, Bionicles,
Mario figurines and lumps of broken concrete.”
15 It would be easy to knock the concrete collection, but I actually find it kind of cool. The
kid might become a great geologist or a successful contractor.
16 But will his mom print out a photo of that unique collection? Will his degree in geology
be memorialized on paper, or will he be given a digital diploma? Will he frame his first
contractor’s paycheck or will he be paid by direct deposit? And if he ever makes it to
Wrigley Field, will he find a way to remember the ballgame without a ticket stub?
“Does Anyone Collect Old Emails?” from The New York Times © 2019 The New York Times Company.
Unit 1
Analyzing an Argument

3. © 2021 College Board 159 Pre-AP English 2
PERFORMANCE
TASK
Analyzing an Argument
ƒ Write an essay in which you explain how Peter Funt builds an argument to
persuade his audience that the digital age is making it more difficult to preserve
one’s memories.
ƒ In your essay, analyze how Funt uses one or more of the features in the directions
that precede the passage (or features of your own choosing) to strengthen the
logic and persuasiveness of his argument. Be sure that your analysis focuses on
the most relevant features of the passage.
ƒ Your essay should not explain whether you agree with Funt’s claims, but rather it
should explain how Funt builds an argument to persuade his audience.
Unit 1