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21st November 2014

Spotlight on Liberal Arts Education


Every student knows that the best way to convince a friend or an audience is to use the
three rhetorical strategies. No matter the situation, ethos, pathos and logos are the key to the
audiences heart. Ethos establishes credibility; it shows the audience that what you are saying it
reliable and trustworthy. Pathos evokes emotions, such as passion, hate or fear, in order to grab
the audience. Logos mostly means logic but is not just presented in statistics and numbers. It can
be shown in pushing your viewpoint as absolute truth and in the style and tone presented in the
argument. These rhetorical strategies are targeted directly to the brain. In the Ted Talk, A call to
reinvent liberal arts education by Liz Coleman discusses the very important need of a fix in the
area of liberal arts education. She carefully and prestigiously uses ethos, pathos and logos in
order to present the issue.
Establishing a credible ethos is very important in order to get the audience to believe and
trust what you are saying is truth. The way in which Coleman establishes her ethos first of all, is
by saying, as a president of a leading liberal arts college, (1) she is referring to Bennington.
Another way she establishes ethos, is the way she uses strong and high academic vernacular, but
more importantly she says in the language of my students,(1) which all these elements show
that she has more than a secondary education and is a professor. Using the strong and high
academic vernacular, this is directly connected to her audience of high secondary education.
Anyone who doesnt fit into her target audience, the talk may seem to be boring or over their
head or has too much of an information overload. But, if you fit into her audience, the use of
strong diction helps, them to see her credentials. This allows the audience to see where she is
coming from through her credentials, but she needed to connect them to why she is an expert

on the issue of reinventing liberal arts education. Coleman takes the audience to the whole
problems by going to the beginning of it the story begins in the late '90s. I was invited to meet
with leading educators from the newly free Eastern Europe and Russia. They were trying to
figure out how to rebuild their universities.(1) This adds to the credibility since she has insider
information that most people do not know. Coleman has tons of ethos from her speech but the
way that it is delivered is the most important part of it, she adds another level of credibility just
by presenting it in her own way. Now having established ethos, lets move onto pathos.
When considering pathos, it is not hard to understand it or hard to find emotional
connections that relate to the audience. Since the human brain connects memories to emotional
connections, such as sight or sound, this is easier to grasp and relate to. The way that Coleman
brings in fear is by using our public education, once a model for the world, has become most
noteworthy for its failures.(1) Everyone thinks that America is the symbol of greatness from
freedom to education but this quote rejects this idea. It puts fear in the American audience since
their truth is no long the actual truth. Since her target audience is students going into college, she
grabs them by the progression of today's college student is to jettison every interest except one.
And within that one, to continually narrow the focus, learning more and more about less and less;
this, despite the evidence all around us of the interconnectedness of things.(1) This is also
meant to bring in fear, but as a reality to the students it is used as a turning point. In connecting
ethos to pathos, Coleman used a quote from Thomas Jefferson if a nation expects to be ignorant
and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was, and never will be.(1) This is used to
show how the fundamental ideas that set up this country and colleges are deteriorating at the
core, and this is a massive problem. Without realizing the problem there can be no real change.
The way in which she grabs the more technological students is creating the bridge which seems

to be between these very different worlds. She creates this bridge by when making connections
is of the essence, the power of technology emerges with special intensity.(1) It shows that both
the technological and liberal arts are not the two opposites and so different from each other, but
they cannot survive without each other. Besides bringing in fear, she also shines the light at the
end of the tunnel by giving the audience a game plain in which will change the direction of
liberal arts for the better by intending to turn the intellectual and imaginative power, passion
and boldness of our students, faculty and staff to developing strategies for acting on the critical
challenges of our time.(1) The use of Colemans pathos creates fear, but also draws up an
outline in the way that by reinventing the liberal arts the world will be a better place. She also
shows how technology and liberal arts cannot survive without one another. Without these
elements that make up the pathos the speech would not have been as connected to the audience.
Lastly logos, reaches the reasoning part of the brain and draws the audience to believe the
argument more. Remember logos is not just about statistic or numbers, but it can come from how
you make your argument the only possible truth without any leeway and style and organization
of it; never forget the facts that are used in it as well. Coleman did not use numbers or statistics,
but she had an abundance of facts. She used they came to the United States, home of liberal arts
education, to talk with some of us most closely identified with that kind of education.(1) She
also stated that in truth, liberal arts education no longer exists -- at least genuine liberal arts
education -- in this country.(1) This shows the reason for the leading educators from Eastern
Europe and Russia came to America to use our colleges as a leading model for the reinvestments
of liberal arts. It is also a good way to introduce her audience into the leading problem with
liberal arts. From there Coleman uses her own leading logos in showing that America is no
longer the model for liberal arts education; she stated that we have professionalized liberal arts

to the point where they no longer provide the breadth of application and the enhanced capacity
for civic engagement that is their signature.(1) This allows for her audience to visualize where
the role of liberal arts has come from. Over the past century the expert has dethroned the
educated generalist to become the sole model of intellectual accomplishment.(1) This allows the
continuing of the path of the liberal arts and the way it is in the present day. The reason it is more
of her logos is because it is not common knowledge or cited from other reports or other leading
research. Instead of just explain the path that liberal arts has taken she shows how it has changed
in the relevance and connection to other areas of study; subject matters are broken up into
smaller and smaller pieces, with increasing emphasis on the technical and the obscure. We have
even managed to make the study of literature arcane.(1) Coleman also used her own style and
organization that led to the emphasis of logos, the use of education language and her tone when
speaking starts out slow and then gains momentum. Her ideas also build on top of each other
from the beginning of the issue, to the need for change and the ways she is trying to resolve the
issue, to gaining awareness to the inventing liberal arts education. All of these little pieces make
up the big strategy of logos.
Overall without having strong pieces of evidence to back up ethos, pathos and logos
arguments will not be strong enough to convince anyone to hear or back your argument. Through
her talk A call to reinvent liberal arts education Liz Coleman goes above and beyond using
these rhetorical strategies in order to bring the attention of how bad without fixing liberal arts can
be for education in general. I did not like Liz Colemans talk; to me the way it was presented was
too educated it did not help me fully understand the need of reinventing the liberal arts, since I
am more passionate about improving technology. It does help me see that there is a bridge
between these two worlds though. I cannot deny that her use of ethos, pathos and logos did not

help draw me in to continue to finish the talk. I understand the need for a call to action in the area
of liberal arts, but I am not as enthusiastic about it as Coleman is. Without the rhetorical
strategies, the talk would not have been as effective as it was.

Bibliography
1. Liz Coleman. A call to reinvent liberal arts education. Ted Talk .February
2009.Video.November 19, 2014.
http://www.ted.com/talks/liz_coleman_s_call_to_reinvent_liberal_arts_education?langua
ge=en#t-26317

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