Live And Learn Menand Summary
Preview: Menand’s article “Live and Learn” covers the idea of the educational system and higher education. Trying to answer the question: what is the most appropriate system for higher education? He answers this first by describing three theories that higher education runs off. The first is that education should be ran by the book and by a grading scale, the second is using the pass fail incentive, and the third and, the most important to our modern society, is the ideal that college is more for specialized jobs. By looking at ideals one and two, we see the system of education used post World War II. This system that uses grades both as a scale and as an incentive has encouraged the youth of the United States for the last fifty years. However, upon the recent times we have come to require specialized jobs, and due to this higher education has changed. Now we see higher education specializing students for future careers such as doctors and lawyers, where one does not broaden their experience.
Menand also mentions …show more content…
that liberal arts education, though lowering in numbers, is actually the most fruitful. Students who receive such and education usual are better at learning due to the wide variety of classes taken.
Author: Louis Menand has since 1991 contributed to the New Yorker and since 2001 has held a position as a staff writer He has received a Pulitzer Prize for History and the Francis Parkman prize from the society of American historians.
Context: The article is presented to students and educators in higher education, within the United States, during the modern era.
Article Narrative: The article sets authority, and creates the professor’s innocence in the first paragraph, in the second he progresses this, and the third he makes a transition within the paper, when the student asks, why he had to buy the book. In the fourth paragraph he begins to realize that the student has a good question that nobody had asked him before. In the fifth paragraph he gives an answer to the question, while at the same time hinting at other answers. The next paragraph he begins to elaborate on the previous. In the seventh paragraph he dictates that college is more of a test to divide people. Then he introduces a second theory based on a test-enlightenment-merit system in his next paragraph. In his ninth paragraph he states this produces similar people. Then in the tenth paragraph he summarizes his two theories. Then he talks about the history of higher education and how it started with the weatlhy in his eleventh paragraph.
In his twelfth paragraph he talks about how education use to follow the genetically tree of those who had attended before and how after 1940 we begin to see these numbers decrease and students begin to enter based on intelligence, causing another transition in the piece. In his thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth paragraph we see an increase in competiveness for Ivy League colleges and a more open availability of higher education to the masses. This in paragraph sixteen and seventeen we see how both theories one and two react to this seeing how it degrades the system and the other having issues with the competition for top-tier colleges. In paragraph eighteen and nineteen we see how valuable an education is financially and why people would want a higher education as well as how the demand for Americanized higher education is on the
rise. Paragraphs twenty to twenty-seven are focused on the real value of the higher education experience, and how people are not learning in college. This information would come from the C.L.A. test which determined around forty-five percent of students are not learning in college. Paragraphs twenty-eight to thirty-one talk about how students are studying less that what they had in times past as well as how students who fall under a liberal arts education seem to have a higher retention of information.
Paragraphs thirty-two to thirty-five present a third theory that applies more to the modern era, this theory states that higher education will turn more into specialized training. This would be the gateway for our countries success. Paragraphs Thirty-six to forty-five talk about how students over time are sorted out and selected for higher education. Paragraphs forty-six to forty-nine talks about how the system is becoming too big work, yet he still applies faith into the system because he himself is a theory two person.
Additional References: To support this he writes about a test performed by Richard Arum (N.Y.U.) and Josipa Roksa’s (University of Virginia) C.L.A. test which involved students being assigned to advise and employer about how desirable a purchase of a recently crashed airplane and then are given news article, documents, and F.A.A accident reports, and so on then, they are asked to take memos. These memos are used to determine critical thinking, problem solving, writing, and analytical reasoning. This test showed that forty-five per cent of students showed that college had provided no significant improvement from before college. However in this study students who had majored in a liberal-arts field did better on the C.L.A.
Conclusions: The article concludes higher education is on the change and is now possibly leading to even more education. This is important especially to those still deciding what to do with their lives, it shows statistics on which type of education is need, and what is the best option, even though he clearly states his preference for theory two.
Menand also mentions …show more content…
that liberal arts education, though lowering in numbers, is actually the most fruitful. Students who receive such and education usual are better at learning due to the wide variety of classes taken.
Author: Louis Menand has since 1991 contributed to the New Yorker and since 2001 has held a position as a staff writer He has received a Pulitzer Prize for History and the Francis Parkman prize from the society of American historians.
Context: The article is presented to students and educators in higher education, within the United States, during the modern era.
Article Narrative: The article sets authority, and creates the professor’s innocence in the first paragraph, in the second he progresses this, and the third he makes a transition within the paper, when the student asks, why he had to buy the book. In the fourth paragraph he begins to realize that the student has a good question that nobody had asked him before. In the fifth paragraph he gives an answer to the question, while at the same time hinting at other answers. The next paragraph he begins to elaborate on the previous. In the seventh paragraph he dictates that college is more of a test to divide people. Then he introduces a second theory based on a test-enlightenment-merit system in his next paragraph. In his ninth paragraph he states this produces similar people. Then in the tenth paragraph he summarizes his two theories. Then he talks about the history of higher education and how it started with the weatlhy in his eleventh paragraph.
In his twelfth paragraph he talks about how education use to follow the genetically tree of those who had attended before and how after 1940 we begin to see these numbers decrease and students begin to enter based on intelligence, causing another transition in the piece. In his thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth paragraph we see an increase in competiveness for Ivy League colleges and a more open availability of higher education to the masses. This in paragraph sixteen and seventeen we see how both theories one and two react to this seeing how it degrades the system and the other having issues with the competition for top-tier colleges. In paragraph eighteen and nineteen we see how valuable an education is financially and why people would want a higher education as well as how the demand for Americanized higher education is on the
rise. Paragraphs twenty to twenty-seven are focused on the real value of the higher education experience, and how people are not learning in college. This information would come from the C.L.A. test which determined around forty-five percent of students are not learning in college. Paragraphs twenty-eight to thirty-one talk about how students are studying less that what they had in times past as well as how students who fall under a liberal arts education seem to have a higher retention of information.
Paragraphs thirty-two to thirty-five present a third theory that applies more to the modern era, this theory states that higher education will turn more into specialized training. This would be the gateway for our countries success. Paragraphs Thirty-six to forty-five talk about how students over time are sorted out and selected for higher education. Paragraphs forty-six to forty-nine talks about how the system is becoming too big work, yet he still applies faith into the system because he himself is a theory two person.
Additional References: To support this he writes about a test performed by Richard Arum (N.Y.U.) and Josipa Roksa’s (University of Virginia) C.L.A. test which involved students being assigned to advise and employer about how desirable a purchase of a recently crashed airplane and then are given news article, documents, and F.A.A accident reports, and so on then, they are asked to take memos. These memos are used to determine critical thinking, problem solving, writing, and analytical reasoning. This test showed that forty-five per cent of students showed that college had provided no significant improvement from before college. However in this study students who had majored in a liberal-arts field did better on the C.L.A.
Conclusions: The article concludes higher education is on the change and is now possibly leading to even more education. This is important especially to those still deciding what to do with their lives, it shows statistics on which type of education is need, and what is the best option, even though he clearly states his preference for theory two.