21st November 8 December 2014

Spotlight on Liberal Arts Education

Every educated 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 is 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.oversimplification of civic engagement and neutrality as a
condition of academic integrity. 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 the truth. The way in which Coleman establishes her ethos first of
all, is by saying, she is the as a president of a leading liberal arts college, (1) she is referring to
Bennington. By telling her audience that she is the president of Bennington, she shows that she is
very well-educated on the topic she is presenting . 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 shows 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 educated ion students. To aAnyone who does not nt fit into her
target audience, the talk may seem to be boring or over their heads. or has too much of an

information overload. But,- ifIf you fit into her audience, the use of strong diction helps, them
you to see her credentials. This allows the audience to see where she is coming from through her
credentials, but she needed to convince 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 her 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,. sheShe adds another level of credibility just by
presenting it in her own way, by giving the audience personal hands on experiences that she has
seen . 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 relates 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 saying, 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 longer the actual truth. Since her target audience is students going
into college, she grabs them by saying 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 by showing students that American secondary

education is not as strong as everyone thinks it is , but in as a reality to the students it is used as
a turning point.
( Split Paragraph) 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 saying 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 arts worlds are not the two opposites and so different from each other, but they cannot
survive without each other.
(Split Paragraph) 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 logosLogos, reaches the reasoning part of the brain and draws the audience to
believe the argument more. Remember logosLogos is not just about statistics or numbers, but it
can come from how you make your argument the only possible truth without any leeway, the and

style and the 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[Eastern Europe and
Russia] 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 to show in showing that America is no longer the model for liberal arts
education;, by saying 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 is shown
by over the past century the expert has dethroned the educated generalist to become the sole
model of intellectual accomplishment which shows where the path of the liberal arts came from
and the way it is in the present day. Iit is more of her logos is because it is not common
knowledge or cited from other reports or other leading research. Instead of just explaining 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)

( Split Paragraph) Coleman also useds her own style and organization that led to the
emphasis of logos, the use of educatedion languagelanguage. Her rate of speech and her tone
when speaking starts out slow and then gains momentum.momentum. At first she introduces the
problem with more of a start to as story and then you can hear the urgency of the problem by the
way she speaks faster and more direct. 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. Coleman does this by addressing all of
these needs in the talk with dire consequences if they are not fixed . 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 to 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. itIt did not help me fully understand the need of for 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