The Struggle Of The Intellectually Excellent

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In order to properly understand the struggle of the intellectually excellent, it is first important to understand what makes one intellectually excellent. According to John Newman, intellectual excellence is achieved through Liberal Education (Newman 58). This intellectual excellence is not what brings around merit or righteousness. Having this knowledge is what can make a man more able to learn. It is not the rudder of a man’s inner self. Newman says this about pursuing intellectual excellence: “Intellect too, I repeat, has its beauty, and it has those who aim at it” (Newman 59). In the preceding passage, John Newman discusses that every object has beauty, but there is an example of every type of object that is the most perfect. The same can apply for knowledge. Intellectual excellence is that perfection of knowledge. While it is technically unreachable, as no man can harness all of the universe’s knowledge, those who strive for the beauty of knowledge are reaching for intellectual excellence. Those with intellectual excellence can be students, whether in middle school or college, or instructors. It is relative to the learner itself as well. In a college setting, those who are achieving intellectual excellence are those who, most often, are in liberal arts educational pathways. Those who are business majors, for example, are confined to only their field of education. They do not need to know about Vivaldi, Michelangelo, and other classic artists. They only strive to learn that which they need to, simply because there is no benefit in other knowledge. Those in liberal arts majors, however, are more likely to achieve this excellence. Menand states that “liberal-arts students are more likely to take courses with substantial amounts ...

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...l have those qualities: critical thinking, understanding of the key events of history, and the skill to know how to answer to situations intellectually. Most students as colleges will only know how to throw back an answer to a question that they have pointlessly memorized, know only what matters to them in the span of history, and will only react to a situation with a half-willed attitude.

Works Cited

Lemann, Nicholas. “Schoolwork.” Newyorker.com. The New Yorker. 27 Sept. 2010. Web. 5 Oct. 2011.

Mead, Rebecca. “Learning by Degrees.” Newyorker.com. The New Yorker. 7 June 2010. Web. 5 Oct. 2011.

Menand, Louis. “Live and Learn: Why We Have College.” Newyorker.com. The New Yorker. 6 June 2011. Web. 4 Oct. 2011.

Newman, John Henry. “Knowledge Its Own End.” Reading the World: Ideas That Matter. Ed. Michael Austin. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2010. 54-59. Print.

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