Kenyon Commencement Speech PDF

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English 1010

Kenyon Commencement Speech In the article “Kenyon Commencement Speech” David Foster Wallace believes claims that having a real education gives you the choice to decide what is meaningful or not. (198-209) Wallace starts his speech by giving an analogy about fish and how the hardest realities to talk about and see are usually the most significant. (198-199) He as well as Sanford J. Ungar in his article titled “The New Liberal Arts” believe that a liberal arts education is worth more than just a material value. Both of these authors agree that liberal arts colleges are the way to go. (190-209) Wallace claims that having a liberal arts education teaches you how to think. He them goes on to give situations that could have a changes in how we thought including standing in line at the grocery store, driving our car through traffic, and having two different views on the exact same thing. (200-206) Wallace adds thoughts about why being well educated is what it means to be free. He also agrees that we need to change our default setting to change the way we think about adult life. (208-209) The Author references back to the fish analogy from the beginning of the speech. He offers his view on how we need to remind ourselves to stay consciously awake. Wallace, Ungar, Hacker and Dreifus all seem to agree on the fact that education is the key to success. (179-209) The author mentions throughout the article that education is more than just a material thing but in fact valuable to us as human beings. (198-209)

Work Cited Wallace, David Foster. "Kenyon Commencement Speech." Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. They Say / I Say with Readings. 2nd. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2012. 198-209....