The Benefits Of Education In This Is Water By David Foster Wallace

This is Water, was a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. Ever since this speech has been given it has become well known. Because of the length, it can be hard to read through the speech while trying to understand the whole idea of it. Wallace fills the speech with stories, examples, and vivid ideas while trying to convince these college graduates how to view life in a positive perspective. While this speech is packed full of ideas he manages to give it in a way outside of the norm for commencement speeches. Yet still gets all the information to the graduates and anyone else who listens to it.

Wallace begins by using a story about fish in order to hook his listeners, ending with one of the fish humorously asking “What the hell is water?”(1). He explains that the meaning of the story is that “the most obvious important

Through proving that we are not always correct, and reminding the audience that different people can have different views of reality, Wallace is able to use logical reasoning to show that humans have the ability to change their perspectives.

1. David Foster Wallace opens his speech with an anecdote about fish and water. Metaphorically, what does this anecdote represent? What impact does it have when Wallace returns to the line “This is water”again at the end of the speech?

Gerald Graff is a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Graff, in his essay, emphasizes the importance for instructors to teach and increase enjoyable courses that students shall truly understand. Graff assures that all kids have hidden intellectualism trying to emerge from within, and as a teacher he feels partly accountable to help those kids develop their competencies in educational work. The essence of Graff’s argument is for students to know that intellectualism lurks within them all, and they need to implement their potential at school. Furthermore, he enriches the essay based totally on his own life experiences, along with his hidden intellectualism, while he attended school during the anti-intellectualism

Wallace establishes a humorous tone in the first section to convey his argument. “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how's the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’” (233) This anecdote introduces the fact the many people don’t understand what is going on around them and why Wallace believes it is important to be conscious of what is happening around you. “This is not a matter of virtue- it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.” (233) Wallace argues that it is hard to get into a state of awareness because humans have their “hard-wired default-setting”. People need to get out of their own self-centered habits and see things in a different point of view. By using a humorous tone, Wallace can effectively get people on his side of the argument.

Many people tend to become frustrated with their daily lives and start to have a negative mindset of blaming other people for their problems. In David Foster Wallace’s speech, “This is Water,” he informed the audience of the importance for everyone to know they have a natural default setting, which is the automatic way that a person feels they are the center of the universe and that negative situations are other people’s fault. He also discussed the importance of trying not to act in this natural default setting, and try to think of problems that other people have to go through in their lives. The main purpose of Wallace’s speech was to persuade the audience to fight the urge of staying in their natural default setting to prevent

Recently Detroit has been publicly experiencing a lot of issues within the city, which has cause many people to speak out on the matter. Alex Johnson was no different, He wrote in article called “No Water, No Teachers: Behind Detroit's Surge, Old Problems Stubbornly Persist”. Throughout the article Johnson discuss the harsh reality of living in Detroit and the affect it has on the community. As I read this article I felt empathic for the people of Detroit because no person deserve to be without water or a stable education. Overall I felt that the article was a cry for help and that the government really needs to step up and help.

Yet even with these realizations that delve into the deeper meaning of education, modern education is still calling for simple measurable outcomes and continues to be geared towards specific employment ideas. This model of education is blatantly inadequate though. Many students today will end up holding jobs not yet invented in fields not yet discovered, so the teaching of answers to today’s questions is utterly useless. Albert Einstein once said, “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” and this statement reigns true throughout time. To continue academic success, the education system needs to impart a mastery of one’s own mind that allows students to not only answer current questions but also to pose questions that will shape the future world.

The commencement speech, “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace is widely known due to the amazing message it provides. Wallace’s speech is unlike any other, which are usually very positive, inspirational, and oftentimes cliche. He asserts that the value behind an education is learning how to become aware of what we choose to think, and in doing so it brings freedom and vitality to an individual. His speech is very unorthodox, the structure is very different to normal graduation speeches, making his oration unique and special. Wallace uses rhetorical appeals to speak with recent graduates.

One cannot truly change the world around without first mastering the art of looking beyond oneself and into the outside world. This idea of looking beyond oneself has been the focus of ancient and modern philosophers throughout the world. In “The Is Water”(2005), a commencement address, David Foster Wallace, a modern day philosopher, implies that people generally view the world from a selfish perspective and elaborates on how the world should work to reverse its self-centered ways. Wallace reveals his topic through a series of anecdotes, each highlighting a different way we are focused on ourselves and then providing a way to view each situation from a different perspective. Wallace’s purpose is to point out the faults in thinking only for

Earlier this year, a video went viral, this video is called “Don’t Stay in School”. This video showed the reality of our education and how many young adults wrestle with their new found responsibility. The video featured a young man rapping lyrics such as: “I wasn't taught how to get a job but I can remember dissecting a frog…” and so on. Through the lyrics don’t apply to all schools, the singer actually makes a valid point on how most abstract education processes don’t have a toll on the average adult.

When I was five years old I began school. In Kindergarden we learned basic things like letters, numbers, and how not to be fully engulfed in flames. For some reason, 2004 was the height of anti-fire education in Missouri and before I knew how to tie my shoes I knew that if I ever was ablaze, to cover my face, fall to my knees, and roll back and fourth. This is what my institution placed serious value upon and because I was a student of that institution I also placed serious value upon it. The same idea must be applied to a university's teaching of environmental sustainability. This is discussed in David Orr's "What is Education For?" Through choosing a curriculum a university chooses what it places value onto, by making the environment a priority it showcases to the future generations that environmental wellness is an important responsibility for them to take ownership.

John Keating, a student at Welton Academy inspired his fellow classmates, to meet in caves and read challenging poetry of the past, not with flashcards, but with these words, “Now, my class, you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.” Typically, students do not hear enough of this type of passion in a traditional classroom. However, a progressive classroom, be it a cave or college can inspire students to memorize facts, not because they have to, but rather because they want to for the betterment of humanity. Society desperately needs students educated in a progressive style because America needs students who realize

Learning to read and write, or getting an education in general, is something that is easily handed to us in the world today. Imagine living in a world where you were expected to be uneducated, illiterate, and stupid. In the texts “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie and “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass, these young boys grew up in different worlds where they were looked down upon and were expected to fail due to the standards they grew accustomed to. Although Douglass and Alexie underwent contrasting hardships on their educational journey, they both shared the realization that learning to read and write was both a curse and a blessing. With those shared