Meet The Parents Who Won T Let Their Children Study Literature By Steve Pearlstein

Today students major in areas such as medicine, engineering and business yet, not many major in liberal arts. Why is that? Steve Pearlstein, a writer and a Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University, in his article “Meet the parents who won’t let their children study literature” (2016), argues that college students should be able to pursue the career they want rather than listen to what their parents want for them. He supports his argument by providing testimonies, statistical evidence, and studies. The author’s purpose is to encourage all students to consider a profession in liberal arts. Out of all his appeals, his strongest were both logical and ethical because he provided an amount of sources that build up his credibility.

Pearlstine doesn’t evoke any emotion throughout his article and doesn’t provide any examples that can make any reader feel anything about this issue. For instance, “ For me there’s nothing more depressing than meeting incoming freshman at Mason who have declared themselves as an accounting majors. They are 18 years old, they haven’t had a chance to take a course of Shakespeare..” (Pearlstine ). The author detests seeing freshman students like Mason declaring themselves with majors, without taking their time to explore other majors and later on choose the major they want. Although he uses pejorative language such as, “depressing” it doesn’t make the overall audience feel anything about that student taking accountancy as their major. Also, the author doesn’t tend to consider what if that was Mason’s dream career? The author could’ve provided a scenario interacting with Mason and why Mason chose accountancy. Another example is when he quotes Christy Buchanan, “A lot of students feel parental pressure to go into business, economics, medicine” (Pearlstine). Students feel pressure from their parents to pick professions that are highly impacted. This quote that Pearlstine uses doesn’t evoke readers to feel any emotion, it is like reading a normal sentence. He could’ve have used a scenario where we see students speaking their thoughts on why they made a decision

In my own thoughts, I never even thought about any liberal art careers. Since I am taking a sociology class, it is actually interesting subject and I get why some people take sociology as a major. Also, upon reading the text and the title I could relate to this topic because I have seen this issue through friends and family. I’ve seen a couple of my family members struggling to choose a major because they want to make their parents proud by becoming a doctor or a lawyer. This issue matters because many students are making decisions that they feel would make their parents proud. In the other hand, some feel pressured to take a major they aren’t sure of because their parents are paying for them. It’s a relevant issue today because some parents are very involved in what their children are doing. It impacts the student because if they take a whole different career and end up not liking it, then they waste money for a degree they didn’t want in the first place. This is an issue that is still present, it is just the matter of fact that students should be free to do what they want with their