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Mark Edmundson 's On The Uses Of A Liberal Education

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It has been argued that University culture and education is slowly moving toward a schooling designed to please students that have little fire and passion, rather than “an educational institution designed for instruction and examination of students” as Oxford Dictionary defines it. Mark Edmundson 's "On the Uses of a Liberal Education" explains how university education is becoming ineffective due to the University’s “ever more devot[ion] to consumption and entertainment” (40) in American culture as well as the focus on pleasing privileged students who have inevitably been devoured by the same sense of commercialized consumption. Likewise, Sherman Alexie affirms the idea that university education is marketed toward the “elite” groups of students who are able to shop for and afford college in his story, “Saint Junior”. Alexie accomplishes this through his contrasting characters: Roman Fury, a member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians and valedictorian of Wellpinit High, and Alex Webber, a wealthy, white legacy, who doesn’t necessarily have the grades universities are looking for, but has no problem getting in anyway. While Edmundson and Alexie approach the conflict through different forms of writing, both authors argue that by way of commercialized American culture, universities have isolated students of various ethnicities and cultural backgrounds by gearing a college education in favor of students with a privileged status. Both Edmundson and Alexie argue this point, finding
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