Menand Study Guide



Author:Louis Menand was raised in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Pomona College, Harvard Law, and Columbia University. He taught at Princeton University and the City University of New York, and also worked at The New Republic and The New Yorker.Audience: Addressed to readers of the New Yorker. The New Yorker audience extends beyond New York with over half of its' circulation coming from major metro areas with an average household income of 109,877. The magazine targets affluent, educated, cosmopolitan readers.Thesis Statement:Menand establishes three different theories that explain why people attend college in America. He uses evidence from books and different statistics that support his three theories. He critiques the current higher educational system and the instructors and how they has changed negatively since 1945.Menand's three theories on why people attend college:Theory one: We have college to find the intelligent people and use their talents to strengthen society.Theory two: We have college for people to study what they want to and obtain an education based on their interests.This theory, Menand’s choice as to why we have college, leans towards only teaching students classes that they prefer and can relate to, rather than forcing them to take classes they have no interest in. For example, why make a journalism major take a quarter of psychology? Theory two disagrees with these methods and focuses on a more on what the student wants.Theory three: Society calls for people to have an education in order to obtain any well paying job. This theory explains that advanced economies require certain knowledge and skills, causing a demand for people to obtain a college education in order to have competence in a specific line of work. Although all three of these theories have much different points of view, one can see that a college education is needed to do most of what a person pursuing the “American Dream” wants to do. But, as Menand warns us, be sure to take college for the right reasons. Menand explains to us that students, on average, spend almost ? of their school week pursuing and participating in different forms of entertainment and only ? studying and doing homework.Professor XMenand introduces us to Professor X, who works during the day for the government and works at night as an instructor at a private four year institution. The students he teaches want only a passing grade, they are in college to obtain a better job. Professor X published an article in The Atlantic about his experiences which was later mentioned in a Times Column. Professor X believes that most students he teaches are not qualified to be in college and un-teachable at least in the areas of writing and literature. He wants to stop the flood of students entering college for job requirements and proposes that those student go to vocational training instead. He thinks students should be sorted out as early as middle school for either a vocational or academic track instead of waiting for the system to sort them out later wasting valuable resources.Louis Menand's tone in his article "Live and Learn" is that of hope. At times he is a bit critical, but he shows a sense of hope the way he elaborates his?points and theories. Even though he is critical, at the same time he is very rational, and his theories and statements pertain to today’s society. This sense of hope is partially due to the fact that he gives different possibilities to each theory. ................
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