"On the Uses of a Liberal Education" -Ideas critique

Edmundson’s essay is intriguing because of the many arguments and ideas he brings up.  He discusses a topic that, I think, many people do not want to face, so they choose not to talk about it.  I have to agree with his overall argument that education is changing due to the leak of consumerism into universities.  One of his supporting arguments, to this is that students think a good class is one where professors are enjoyable and also make the subject matter enjoyable.  This idea is something he does not like about the changing education system.  I believe a good class is one that is enjoyable.  Enjoyable to me does not mean easy though.  I find I like the teachers who are passionate about what they are teaching, which makes them enjoyable and in return the subject more enjoyable.

             Edmundson also argues that students lack passion; meaning they do not study subjects they are interested in.  Instead, they choose what will be best for their future and financial success.  One article also states the same thing as Edmundson, but in a statistical form.  “Evidence of Student Consumerism” states that in a survey they did with 195 sociology majors in four different schools, “75 percent report that they want to go to college so that they can make more money.”  This is a tough fact to believe, but I have to agree with it.  I chose my major, nursing, because it really is something that I am strongly interested in.  But, if I were to think about my friends and others I would believe that many of them are in a major because they hope to get a good job with it after college.  Lack of passion is also shown in the classes student choose to take.  Everyone asks other people if they have taken a certain class and whom their professor was to get the easy way out.  And once we get a chance to make our schedule what is the first think a majority of students do?  Jump on rate my professor.  This apparently is not an uncommon thing though, because according to the article, “Evidence of Student Consumerism,” 73 percent of students “would take a course in which [they] would learn little or nothing but would receive and A.”

            It seems that even though this is a tough topic to discuss for many people, more and more are beginning to explore it.  After reading trough a couple articles, Edmundson makes points that many people agree with.  And I must say I agree with his overall argument.  It’s not something we all want to fess up to, but we do all care about our future and financial success.  If that means we study something we don’t truly enjoy in college, many are willing to take that risk.   

"On the Uses of a Liberal Education" - Rhetorical Analysis

Mark Edmundson’s essay, “On the Uses of a Liberal Education,” was published in Harpers magazine, which has a wide audience.  This essay specifically targets those who have some relation with universities, whether it is students, students’ parents, or faculty.  Edmundson is trying to show how education has changed due to the leak of consumerism into universities.

In the essay, I did not find the thesis to be directly told.  I think Edmundson’s essay has more of an evolving thesis.  There is not one sentence you can pin point in his essay that would summarize the entire article.  Instead, he uses many arguments and examples.  At the end of each of his paragraphs you can generally find a sentence that would summarize his main point of the paragraph, which all work together to support the thesis of the entire essay.  One example of this is in paragraph eleven, when he is speaking about an attribute, which he believes to be very important, that he no longer sees in students.  The last sentence of this paragraph is “But there’s little fire, little passion to be found.”  This sentence is sufficient enough to stand on its own and I would understand the point he was trying to make.

Throughout “On the Uses of a Liberal education” I believe Edmundson was making an appeal to ethos, his credibility.  Edmundson tells us that he is a professor at the University of Virginia. This helps his appeal to ethos because the University of Virginia has a fairly well known reputation, more so in our area, to be one of the tougher schools.  Another appeal to ethos he uses is he references credible sources. At one point, he quotes a college financial officer saying “Colleges don’t have admissions offices anymore, they have marketing departments.”  The use of the quote from the financial officer helps the credibility of his argument that colleges no longer appeal to the education students could get at school but the updated commodities they could have.   I think his largest appeal to ethos is through his choice of words.  Often, I ran into comprehensive words that I had either never heard or were not familiar with, and I actually looked them up.  A few examples of these words would be arcana, perilous, and weltanschauung.

Even though some of Edmundson’s word choices are complex, he still manages to keep a conversational tone and stay relatable.  His conversational tone is represented through out the essay, especially when he uses rhetorical questions.  A good example of this is when he says, “Am I coming off like something of a crank here?   Maybe.” When he does things like this it adds to the conversational tone, but it also touches on his sarcasm and humor.  He uses his sarcasm to get his point across in an indirect direct fashion.  Sarcasm is especially evident when Edmundson states, “Clearly even the author of the Declaration of Independence endorses the turning of his university into a sports-and-fitness emporium.”  The ultimate relatable aspect to Edmundson’s essay is the beginning.  The opening of his essay is a description of one of his classes, on evaluation day.  This targets his readers because they are students who are currently doing this, or professors and faculty who have been through college and also know what its like on evaluation day.

 

Summary "On the Uses of a Liberal Education"

Mark Edmundson’s essay, On the Uses of a Liberal education, raises the problem of consumerism leaking into the education system.  He begins by painting us a picture of his classroom on a day he doesn’t particularly enjoy, evaluation day. He states that he often gets good reviews; just not the type he wants.  Certain words, such as “interesting” and “enjoyed,” are not the reviews he is looking for.  Instead, he wants the student to say that his class has changed them. It’s through the evaluations he receives that he see’s education changing.  Edmundson believes that universities are now devoted to consumerism and the entertainment of their students.  The consumerism aspects of college campuses is shown when funds go to building new dorms, improving student lounges, and stocking the gym with the newest name brand machines.  No longer are colleges appealing to their potential consumers, also known as students, through what they can learn, but through the superficial things they will have- things that really won’t affect their learning.  The other issue that is startling to Edmundson is how students expect to be entertained in classes in order for them to be good classes.  Students expect teacher to be enjoyable and make the subject matter enjoyable also.  Instead Edmundson thinks a good class is one that challenges the students or ultimately changes them.  More specifically in his class he wants “them to measure themselves against what they’ve read.” 

Another main topic in his essay is the lack of passion and emotion shown in students.  He brings this about when he mentions one particular student whom he admired, Joon Lee.  Joon Lee stood out from the crowd, which has become engulfed in this idea of consumer culturalism.   The vast majority of people, to Edmundson, are desperate to fit in, to wear the right thing, and blend in with the crowd.  No longer do students show a passion for learning something that interests them.  This is because they are worried about the impact it will have on their future and financial success.  The lack of passion in education coincides with the lack of expressed emotions in students, according to Edmundson.  If they were to express true emotions and passions they would stick out from the crowd; something no one wants to do.  But, where do students get this mindset?  The “tube.”  Edmundson blames the portrayal that everything must run perfectly on television to why students fear an occasional slip up which may embarrass them.  This is what set Joon Lee apart from the crowd.  He followed his interests, no matter how they might affect his future, and with strong enthusiasm and passion.  Edmundson ends his essay with changes he thinks the universities should take to make less of a “Club Med.”  He also in the end acknowledges his own conformity and pledges to change back to what he thinks will make a good class and challenge his students to think on another level.                   

"On the Uses of a Liberal Education" By Mark Edmundson

Mark Edmundson’s essay, “On the Uses of a Liberal Education,” was, yes, quite long when I printed it out to read, but as I began reading I was intrigued by what he began describing.  It was the end of the semester evaluation day in his class. He had clearly been through this multiple times and would usually get a similar outcome each time. The consensus amongst a vast majority of his students is that the class was “enjoyable.”  This frustrates him because he takes this as almost degrading.  He believes his purpose, as a professor, is to change people from the course; to challenge his students to “measure themselves against what they’ve read.”  Edmundson uses the rest of the article to explain how professors can no longer do what they want in their classes, or teach how they would like because of criticism of the students.  If the students complain the university cares because they are ultimately the “consumers” they are targeting.  When colleges target their “consumers” they gloat on the superficial things, gyms with fancy exercise equipment, new dorms, and improved student unions.  With the focus on things that truly don’t matter to education, the learning that is supposed to be going on in universities has suffered.  Edmundson believes because universities are competing for their students it caused an easing grading and relaxing of major requirements instead of giving students the challenge of thinking.    

Contrasting descriptions

Description 1:

            As I sit on my fluffy comfortable bed, I decided to take a look around my cozy room. The layout of our room gives us plenty of floor room to move around freely as if we weren’t even sharing the room. The lights are shining brightening the room.  A soft carpet covers the hard tile floor.  My roommate’s bed is full of vivid colors and patterns.  Blue, green, yellow, pink, and white all cover the quilt in designs and flowers.  Then there’s the abundance of fluffy, comforting pillows on her bed that make it inviting to jump into when trying to get comfortable.  We both have warm, soft, fleece blankets on our bed to wrap up in when we want to relax and watch a movie.  Also, to make us feel more at home we have lots of pictures all around the room.  Pictures of high school friends and memories, new college memories, and family members that put a smile on our face each time we look at them.

Description 2:

            As I sit on my bed, I begin to look around.  The door to our room is shut making me feel cut off from the rest of my suite.  Our window is never open, never letting any natural lighting in. And the carpet is dark brown making our room seem even smaller than it is.  Even worse, the carpet looks like a black dalmation with white spots. What open floor space we have has shoes and clothing laying around on it.  Then I began to look at our desks.  The chairs are hard wood; both of them are cluttered with books, a printer, and any other miscellaneous items not leaving us much room to do work.  Our trashcans are overflowing with food we bring back to eat.  And our dresser is cluttered with lotions, brushes, make-up, and hair straighteners.  In simple words it looks like we should do come major cleaning.     

Self-reflection:

             After writing the two descriptions, I found that it was easier for me to describe things in a favorable way rather than unpleasant.  I found that I also write more long complex sentences, so when I went back and reread my paragraphs I ended up trying to change some of my sentences to vary structure.  This exercise made me really focus on word choice, which is harder than I expected.  I feel like some of the words used were ridiculous, but needed to get the image across to the reader.  Also, this exercise really showed how what details you choose to tell or how you tell them shows how angle of vision can be manipulative.  It’s manipulative because it makes the reader see what you want them to see, whether it is good or bad.  It just showed in the exercise because we were describing the same scene each time, but the details we chose to mention or how we described them set the tone for how the reader would interpret the scene.  

Rhetorical analysis

Text:

Happy Blue Year

Section: WHILE YOU WERE OUT

I wanted to love my cute little wireless earpiece. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror

DEC. 25 -I GOT WHAT I WANTED! A brand-new Bluetooth headset! Wow, it's tiny. A little swanky gizmo with a dingus that goes behind my ear and a piece that fits into it and a tiny wedge of plastic that sits near my jaw, blinking. Except, you know, it isn't blinking. It's just sitting there. Turns out I've got to charge it for eight hours before it will do anything at all. So here we go! Into the charger! See you tomorrow, itty-bitty electronic friend!

DEC. 26 -Okay, we're ready. I push the minuscule surface of the thing and yes! It glows! First blue, then red. Blue, red, blue, red ... zzzzz ... What? Oh, right. Time to get busy, because this is, first and foremost, a business implement that will enable me to go anywhere I want and talk to all the important people who want to talk to me while I'm going from here to there. I won't be one of those people who meander about with a Stone Age cellphone at their head pouring dangerous microwaves into their brain. I'll be one of those spiffy wonks I always sort of despised, now that I come to think of it, looking like jabbering psychos escaped from the hospital and conversing with imaginary friends. This is the next development in intercranial communication, and now I'm on the leading edge of it! Let's see how this thing fits into my ear. Uh ... it doesn't.

DEC. 27 -Well, it's a good thing I called Forbisher, Trotsky, and Lamont. They all have the exact same Bluetooth thingamabob and swear that you get used to the way it doesn't fit into your ear but sits there on the outside of the canal, dangling in mid-air. They also say that it doesn't matter that there's nothing near your mouth to speak into once you accept that it works. So I'm going to go to the next step: pairing my headset with my cellphone. Now where did I put the instruction booklet?

DEC. 28 -Found it! It was in the garbage with yesterday's turkey.

DEC. 29 -What's up with this damn thing? It won't "discover" my cellphone. Let's take it a step at a time. Push the on/off area of the headset. Here. No, wait. Here. Blue, red, blue. It's looking for my phone. I'll reboot my phone. Ah! It's pairing! Pairing ... pairing ... pairing ... What the @#!@#$!

DEC. 30 -My trip to Verizon was very nice. I only had to wait ten minutes until the guys behind the desk completed their conversation with each other, and then one of them took my Bluetooth and my phone through a door marked employees only. Returning in three minutes, he said, "It works now." And so it did. I put the thing in my ear and drove back to the office talking merrily to people who for some reason kept saying, "Are you at the bottom of a swimming pool?"

DEC. 31 -I'll admit, I'm discouraged. After I wrote the last entry, my little pal blinked in a variety of colors and died. It seems that while it was discovering my phone and then pairing with it, and as a result of subsequent usage (of approximately 25 minutes), the Bluetooth lost its charge and expired. What's going to happen now?

JAN. 1 -Happy 2009! The sun is shining. The early birds are attacking the frozen worms. And my ear is clear of protuberances. That's right. I have given up the Tooth. I am and will remain Toothless.

After hours of searching, the doodad found the framitz again, and I got some action out of the whole schmear. It took most of an evening. Then I strolled around the room, talking with people I had no desire to speak to simply to feel like one of the Bluetooth generation. At some point I strolled past a mirror and caught a glimpse of myself, doing that Bluetooth thing.

I saw. And I removed the parasite from my head.

It's a start. Now, how about we spend the rest of the year getting rid of all the other stupid stuff we're plugged into? Take that, progress!

PHOTO (COLOR)

By Stanley Bing

Rhetorical Analysis

Stanley Bing’s article, “Happy Blue Year,” is written satirically.  The article was written in Fortune Magazine and at first seems to be about his mishap with his new gadget, a Bluetooth.  Being in Fortune Magazine many business men or women who are caught up in the technical are going to be reading it, but the purpose is not so clear up front.  Once you read the article and get past the satire, you see that his purpose is writing to the people who are caught up in the technological age and addicted to all of the new technology.  He writes to them to specifically say there is no need to be “plugged into” all of these different things and sometimes they are more trouble than they are worth.

One strategy Bing uses, is a delayed theses.  The whole article seems just like a chronicle of a man who is having the typical problems with some new technological device he got, but in the end he throws his thesis out there very directly.  His thesis is the very last sentence of the whole article, “Now, how about we spend the rest of the year getting rid of all the other stupid stuff we’re plugged into?”  This works for his writing because you are not quite sure what he is trying to get at as you read the article; it seems like a humorous narrative.  But, then once you get to the thesis you understand he is addressing a greater problem, societies addiction to new gadgets.  Another characteristic of the article is the last statements of each of the paragraphs leave you with a negative thought or feeling.  A couple of examples are “Let’s see how this thing fits into my ear. Uh… it doesn’t,” “Now, where did I put the instruction booklet,” and “ What the  @#!@#$!”  By ending each paragraph with negative statements, it helps his argument against technology because it leaves the negative connotation in your mind. Also, the language he uses through out the article is not very sophisticated.   When writing in a magazine that business men or well educated people are going to be reading I wouldn’t expect an author to use words like “itty-bitty electronic friend” or “ framitz,” which when I goggled it came up in an urban dictionary online.  The word choice kept the article very simple to read, and I think he did this to go with the whole theme of undermining the high-tech and more advanced world. 

When it comes to rhetorical appeals I think he tried to use logos and pathos the most.  When making his argument with logos, he was stating reasons that these high-tech devices could be more of a hassle than anticipated.  An example is, remembering before you can use it you have to charge the battery for eight hours. Then when its charged and you begin to use it you have to worry about when is the battery going to die on you?  Or, the worry about your Bluetooth fitting, I know I never thought about how it might fit before I bought one.  Then he mentions the hassle of trying to sync it with your phone, and if you can’t figure it out, like him, you have to get someone else to do it.  All of these reasons pertain to particular problems one could run into when purchasing a Bluetooth but are also possible when purchasing any new electronic device that you are unsure how to work.  Then his appeal to pathos refers back to the conversational style he took in his writing.  He wrote out what he did and the simple thoughts that were running through his mind during the situation, but you know you would be thinking the same thing. The conversational tone and humor make a situation we all know we have been in funny, although it wasn’t at the time, and can think back to a personal experience we had and ask was it worth it?