Rhetorical analysis

Edmundson’s essay “On the Uses of a Liberal Education” was published in Harper’s magazine. The fact that Edmundson is a professor and has his work published in a magazine gives him credibility and strengthens his ethos. He begins his piece with a story about his own experiences teaching. He uses a metaphor and compares the students to “informed consumers” telling the “producer” what they did well and what they did wrong. He continues saying that he no longer likes the reviews that describe him as entertaining, he writes that he would much rather his students be “changed” by the course.
He then takes a critical tone and blames the attitudes of the students on the consumer based society that Americans are enthralled in. His diction indicates this when he writes that the liberal arts education is “ineffective.”
His next point is that the idea of genius is becoming less and less prevalent. He uses an anecdote about a student he used to know that was so full of genius and passion. He explains that these types of students are extremely hard to come by in today’s culture because those who question are looked at as weird. He blames the lack of genius on the TV. He writes, “All must run perfectly.” This sentence is used to describe the characters on TV, as well as the attitudes of students who are afraid to be wrong and nervous about talking to their professors. This sentence is short and choppy and is also placed at the end of the paragraph to emphasize its importance. Edmundson places the topic sentence of many of his paragraphs in the last sentence in order to emphasize it. His use of the statement “—buy in order to be” is really the idea of the consumer culture summed up in one sentence. He uses this after giving a real life example, a Jeep commercial in order to build his logos.
Throughout his essay he asks questions to the reader, than answers them. This is an effective technique because it makes the reader think about what Edmundson is trying to say. He also utilizes the double dash in his essay a lot in order to indicate pauses in thinking. In paragraph 30, he utilizes logos a lot by displaying facts such as the number of humanities degrees and sciences.
In order to appeal to pathos he describes our future as bleak because students are unmotivated consumers. He also uses the word “disturbing” to make the reader think about the problems within our education system.
A bold move that he makes is he has a whole paragraph that starts with “My overall point is this:” This is placed towards the end so the reader is forced to read the entire essay and gather his opinion. Then, he is able to get his point out clearly in one sentence.
In the end he uses a circular story and comes back to the idea of his teacher reviews and says, “I’m getting back to a more exuberant style; I’ll be expostulating and arm waving straight into the millennium, yes I will.” This is a good closing statement because it shows that he is willing to change back to the teaching and is dedicated to changing the consumer-based liberal education.