Why Is Mark Edmundson Liberal Appropriate Entertainment Summary

Mark Edmundson’s “Liberal Arts & Lite Entertainment” in his book Why Teach? develops an argument about the culture surrounding education. The university professor takes a stance on the problems that he has experienced both in his own classroom and observed on campus as well as others, and he assigns these problems—his claims—appropriate blames. Enough logic is used to make these “blames” more factual, and he often claims how things are and usually offers several reasons as to why. His essay, originally written in 1997, begins with his own university before branching out to all those across the country, and it is followed by a deduction of student culture and professors. He gives hope to the idea of the acceptance and praising of “genius” (as

He does not like how his students have taken on the role of the “informed consumer” or the “calm consumer expertise” that fuels their responses (4). His strongest claim here is that universities are “ever more devoted to consumption and entertainment,” and he supports this claim of fact throughout this section by giving his readers a taste of what he is covering in the sections to follow, and it is one of many of Edmundson’s examples of ethos (6). He mentions how critics have many theories as to why and how “education is in crisis,” and he makes a concession by giving that to them, as long as their theories are “used well” (6). Towards the end, Edmundson states that in order to further understand what is behind the culture here in universities, the “realms of expert debate and fine ideas” need to be left behind so that these “experts” can let the behavior of the students on campus and in classrooms speak for itself

This section involves the examination of student culture and who or what made them the way they are today, as Edmundson seems to think that it is not the students’ fault for creating the culture in which they are ensnared. He has come up with this idea that students are “self-contained” and that “strong emotional display is forbidden” (7); but this is simply their “cool consumer culture” at work since the “specter of the uncool creates a subtle tyranny” (21, 8). Students are “desperate to blend in,” and with that in mind, they are neither passionate nor enthusiastic and are “nonassertive,” afraid to speak out and be aggressive (8). Edmundson continues this section by giving answers—his belief of what has happened. He goes from “persona ads” to sheltered childhoods to “future prospects” to “rebound teaching,” all of which circle back to his claim about his students not having an intellectual dedication to school (8, 10-11). This whole section, while teeming with smaller examples of ethos, has a logos approach. Edmundson recognizes the state of his students and offers reasons and logic behind why he believes this is so. One could assume that the university and the professors would be trying to dismantle this mentality that their students have, as