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Rhetorical Analysis Of Live And Learn By Louis Menand

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Louis Menand, a college professor and author of the article “Live and Learn: Why We Have College,” presents three different theories that about higher education. These theories are some competing ideas about what a college education is and its uses. The author claims that the reasons for attending college are meritocratic, democratic, and vocational. Menand discusses the debate about how over generations the importance of going to school for students has changed. Also, the article mentions whether students are actually learning anything. The author uses rhetorical strategies and some of them are effective and others not as much. With the strategies that Menand has talked about, they help the author prove his point and furthermore assists the reader with understanding the higher education system is a problem that has to be fixed.

The Three Implicit and Conflicting Theories Attending college gives a person countless opportunities which is why more and more people are going to college. Menand explains the different educational system that shows …show more content…

The first theory that is described is known as the “meritocratic” version. This theory involves sorting, by using tests to see who is the most brilliant student and from there we can decipher your final grade. For example, employers will examine your final grade, like test scores and your G.P.A., and select the highest grades. They do this because it means you are one of the best. Menand says “Society needs a mechanism for sorting out its more intelligent members from its less intelligent ones, just as a track team needs a mechanism for sorting out the faster athletes from the slower ones” (2011, p.2). In this case, we would use the stopwatch as a test and the results are the G.P.A.. The sorting out process separates the highly intelligent from the less intelligent. This would be a good version of an education

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