‘The Value of Education’ as a Google search yields back one main benefit of becoming educated: money. This is not an idea that Henry David Thoreau and John Henry Newman would have agreed with. Both writers urged their readers to become educated and read simply to be educated. However, Newman’s 1873 piece The Idea of a University accomplishes this goal in a way that does not frame the reader as an inferior person. Thoreau writes his 1854 Walden excerpt Reading in such an authoritative and demeaning way to bully his “dull” readers into what he believes (#). Since Newman writes with a kind tone and polite word choice while having credibility among his religious colleagues about the value of education, his audience is more likely to be persuaded by him to become educated than by Thoreau’s crude air of superiority.
The element that causes these two papers to differ most is not that Newman wants education to happen at a liberal university and Thoreau wants education to come to the people; it is the word choice and tone between the two. While reading Thoreau’s piece, his sense of moral righteousness is evident when he
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He even goes so far with this claim to include a jab at his audience’s intelligence by “not mak[ing] any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of [his] townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects” (#). Because of this rude accost, the reader is less likely to agree with Thoreau over having their feelings being hurt. Newman, however, is quick to assure his readers that he is not writing to berate them (99), only show them his ideas. This difference in tone and word choice makes Newman more likable and encourages the reader to finish reading his statement and perhaps even be persuaded by him to send their son to a