Concept Review on David Foster,”This is Water.” After listening to David Foster Wallace’s speech, “This is Water”, which is a speech about liberal arts education’s meaning, a lot of thoughts, opinions and review come into my mind. In the speech, he described what is the reason for the education and how people think and see things different with several examples and stories. First of all, it could be seen that he explained about the point that different people think in different ways based on their knowledge, belief, perspective and their angle of view on a case. He contrasted the point with a story about two guys which one of them is religious and other is atheist. According to the source, these two people’s belief are completely …show more content…
However, these problems caused by the obsession can be reduced by trying to think and communicate in a different way. Instead of only thinking from your point of view, we can probably try to think in other people’s perspective and understand them. In this way, we can also make better choices and decisions in our career and life. In a part of the speech, Foster also described our daily lives and routines. He explained the routine of an average working adult. His daily routines includes getting up early in the morning, heading to work, getting stuck in a traffic, tiredness, stress , desire to get home after work. It’s like the whole world is irritating him. If that person is only thinking about himself, it is sure that everything will look like they are irritating him. But, instead of wasting time on thinking these problems and frustration, we could search for a solution to prevent these problems. What happened is happened already, it can’t be helped. By thinking positively, We could make plans to save time and this will also make life easier. As a conclusion, what I learned from Foster’s speech is learning and understanding how to think plays an important role for every human being. Humans are provided with brains to think for solutions and liberal art education is to enhance the potential of thinking, teaching human beings how to think
Water is a powerful medium for introspection. This truth is evident in the short story, 'Greasy Lake,' by T. Coraghessan Boyle. In this story, water serves as a catalyst for self-reflection, as it propels the protagonist into a certain degree of conflict, and ultimately works to reveal and confront the character?s inner struggle.
In Inherit the Wind, a 1960s film adaptation directed by Stanley Kramer, the battle between religion and science was tested, portrayed through the Scopes Trial of 1925. In the trail, John Scopes, a high school science teacher, was accused and convicted of teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, curriculum that was forbidden by Tennessee state law. It is clear that a focal point of the film was the discussion of whether religion should be the driving force behind education, or if science and empirical study is a better alternative. This discussion is alive and well in 2017, crucial in a time where Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is a known believer in theories of ‘intelligent design,’ a theory that suggests divine guidance in the
If they are taught correctly, liberal arts classes have the potential to help “students cross social boundaries in their imaginations. Studying a common core of learning will help orient them to common tasks as citizens; it will challenge or bolster… their views and, in any case, help them understand why not everyone in the world (or in their classroom) agrees with them,” explains Gitlin in his article “The Liberal Arts in an Age of Info-Glut.” By exposing students to this in high school, they will be more prepared when this moment occurs in their careers. I, along with many students throughout the country, have been exposed to incorrectly-taught liberal arts classes. Students taking English, for instance, must read specific novels while assessing a theme that is already pointed out to them. Then, they must answer a question that has only two answers. This type of curriculum not only eliminates the development of opinions, but it keeps the students from being exposed to most of the author's beliefs and the author’s point of view, which is the main purpose of liberal arts classes. Without this exposure, students are left incapable of working with others and accepting their opinions in order to develop solutions to
It is common for human beings, as a race, to fall into the comforts of routine – living each day similar to days before and days to come. Unfortunately, it is often too late before one even realizes that they have fallen into this mundane way of living in which each day is completed rather than lived, as explained by David Foster Wallace in “This Is Water”. This commencement speech warned graduating students of the dangers of submitting to our “default settings” of unconscious decisions and beliefs (Wallace 234). However, this dangerous way of living is no new disability of today’s human race. Socrates warned the people of his time: “A life unaware is a life not worth living” and who is to say he wasn’t completely right? A topic of long debate also includes the kind of influence that consciously-controlled thoughts can have on the physical body. A year after Wallace’s speech, neurobiologist Helen Pilcher, published “The New Witch Doctor: How Belief Can Kill”, which explains the influence of the mind and individual beliefs on the quality of one’s life. Together, both authors illustrate how detrimental a life lived unaware of one’s own thoughts and beliefs can be on the body and spirit. And though it is easy to live by
In Outside In, Paula Fass asserts that the form and function American education has been determined by the equilibrium between two predominate goals and ideals of education— to create a unified society with common values and beliefs (ecclesiastical objective) and to nurture the individual potential of each student by observing the individual needs and desires that students bring to public instruction (liberal objective). . The author aims to illuminate the tension that exists today between these two objectives by exploring how American education served “the other” throughout the first half of the twentieth century.
Sanford J. Ungar, a journalist and president of Goucher College, is one of those faculty members actively trying to disprove the accusations against liberal arts colleges and educations. In his February 2010 article from the academic journal The Chronicle of Higher Education, Ungar gives readers many examples of common misunderstandings about liberal arts and then informs them why those examples are incorrect. Appropriately titled, Ungar’s “7 Major Misperceptions About the Liberal Arts” is an easy go to guide when a person wants to learn more about liberal arts. These readers, mainly students and parents looking towards a higher degree of education, can read Ungar’s essay and find new knowledge about the liberal arts discipline.
Now, let us define liberal arts or liberal education. According to Michael Lind, liberal arts should be understood in its original sense as “elite skills” (54). We all know that liberal arts include cour...
... pedagogical arguments, such as teaching a person how to critically think, to ignore the ethics of their dogma and focus on superficial emotional appeals and easily understood logical appeals. By ignoring ethics in pedagogical arguments, the argument becomes less about teaching and more about explaining a certain viewpoint, focussing less on whether this is the right viewpoint and more on the author’s personal reasons supporting it. Second, in This is Water specifically, analysing this speech causes the writer to not only become a critical thinker like Wallace wanted, but also extend Wallace’s arguments in directions that he failed to properly explore, like activism.
“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions”, said Albert Einstein to express how imagination can foreshadow an uncertain and ever-changing future. Imagination is a unique ability that only humans possess; it can affect an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and decisions and is a technique used by individuals towards innovation, creativity, and development. On the other hand, imagination can also influence decision making and even determine the fate of an individual’s life, which is shown in the short story On the Rainy River, by Tim O’Brien. Tim imagines himself in both situations: one of which is when he leaves to go to war and one in which Tim considers not going to war and moving to Canada. These thoughts of an uncertain
I’m nominating Daisy Hernández’ memoir, “A Cup of Water Underneath my Bed,” for the 2016 Humanities Award for Intersectional Analysis. Daisy’s life story is an exemplary example of intersectionality because she is an authentic compassionate individual who writes about living, the aspects of her identity and redefining the meaning of success. The 2016 Humanities Award for Intersectional Analysis criteria requires that the candidate exemplify a complex intersectional analysis, which Daisy has exemplified over and over again in her writing. Daisy’s intersection of social, ethnic and racial differences, along with the complexity of language, sexuality, and class can be distinguished throughout the three structured sections of her life. In addition,
Back when I was little girl, I always fascinated over water. I remember that I loved to be able to go down to Lake Chatuge, which is directly behind my house, and sit there, thinking about how wonderful my God is to make such a beautiful thing that we do not appreciate like we should. According to Oxford Dictionary, water is “a colorless, transparent, odorless, tasteless liquid that forms the seas, lakes, rivers, and rain and is the basis of the fluids of living organisms.” Ron Rash used symbolism, which is “something that represents something else” (Mays 205), in his book One Foot in Eden drastically in many different aspects about water. The symbolism of water in One Foot in Eden has many various meanings that are vividly expressed within
Davis Foster Wallace on his commencement speech “This Is Water” at Kenyon College in 2005, delivers a life lesson arguing that our default thinking is that we are the center of the world. David Foster Wallace on his speech “This Is Water” at Kenyon College in 2005, deliver a different kind of commencement; he delivers a life listen speech arguing that people should learn something important which is choosing what to think. He tries to deliver his message by starting with a short story about three fishes; one of them is a wise old fish that asking the other young two how the water is, but the two young fishes don’t understand the question! In this story, the two young fishes are typical unthinking people, and the water represent what is surrounding us. He tries to show that most of us don’t really know what’s going around us because this is one thing of our default thinking; we
In modern times, the importance of liberal arts is questioned. The article “Myth: A Liberal Arts Education is Becoming Irrelevant” by Carol T. Christ makes the argument that a liberal arts education provides a broader range of knowledge which is useful because it produces a critically thinking student. Obtaining a career is the main focus of college education. Knowing this, Christ emphasizes how a liberal arts education is useful when looking for employment. She refutes the conception that a liberal arts education is irrelevant in today’s society by identifying the useful qualities it provides the employers look for such as, “Flexibility, creativity, critical thinking, strong communication skills (particulary writing)” (Christ,
In ancient civilization, a liberal arts education was considered essential for free people to take place in civic life; without them people would not be willing to disregard one's traditional values, and analyze a broad variety of arts, humanities, and sciences to create new opinions and ideas. In the 21st century many Americans are doubtful that liberal arts degrees are actually worth the cost of college. In his essay “The New Liberal Arts”, Sanford J. Ungar discusses seven “misconceptions” of liberal arts degrees in modern-day America.
This relationship, according to Nussbaum, draws on the lineage of Western philosophical intellectual traditions from Socrates concept of “the examined life” (Nussbaum 614) and Aristotle’s notion of reflective citizenship to Greek, Roman and Stoic models of liberal education. In her view, liberal education is a liberator of minds from the “bondage of habit and custom” (Nussbaum 614) and thus provides an educational vehicle capable of producing students whose sensibilities and rationality are consistent with that required by a cosmopolitan citizenry. Nussbaum argues that liberal education is most fully developed in the US where critical reflection on cultural values and national policy is a standard part of the learning experience. However, she warns that this does not mean the ideal of a liberal education that produces cosmopolitan citizens has been achieved, but rather if there is an education system capable of achieving this ideal, it is the US liberal education system backed by the nation’s liberal