The subject of the essay is the achievements of graduates and their analysis on the day of graduation. The thesis of the essay consists of the enumeration of failures by students and indulgence given them by professors and statement about the real-life hardships. The argument of the essay is about the effectiveness of education, attitude of students, and differences between the things taught at university and the ones that will be encountered in the real-life after graduation.
The audience of the essay is written for includes graduates on the day of their graduation and all people that are supposed to be in the hall that day. The writer was addressing students to make them aware of the insignificance of their achievements at university and their failures while completing assignments or responding to questions because he wants them to be ready for the hardships of life as it will not be as easy as learning and no additional extensions on deadlines will be given.
The author uses rhetorical appeals in the following way. The ethos is used using the author’s credibility as he is a professor who knows about students’ achievements and failures and addresses them from the name of the faculty: “We the faculty take no pride in our educational achievements with you” (Neusner 208). The logos are used using the use of reasoning with the help of explanation of why the faculty takes no pride in their achievements: “Worse still, when you were boring, we acted as if you were saying something important” (Neusner 208). The pathos is used in the whole essay as the storytelling approach and at the end of the essay with the help of words “So go, unlearn the lies we taught you. To Life!” (Neusner 208). All these appeals make the argument more effective.
The text has a logical fallacy that is presented with the help of enumeration of students’ failures and indulgences given by professors combined with an emphasis on the ‘not caring’ attitude of professors. If they did not care about the future life of students, they would not tell them about the ways to act and would not give hints on how not to act.
I believe that this is one of the most emotional and sincere appeals that can be presented on graduation day so that all students could evaluate the attitude of professors and their efforts in making them more caring and attentive than they were.
The author emphasizes the reasons for professors not to take care of students’ attitudes though he makes it carefully so that students could understand that they were valued and their efforts were marked correspondingly. Besides, I think that the writer was inspired by the speech by the professor that he cites in his speech to sound more credible though, at the same time, he highlights the lack of knowledge of students.
I think that the argument presented in the essay is effective because the author uses it to maximize the significance of students’ knowledge and efforts using minimizing it. All contrasts are used in the essay to convey the only idea of the value of education and efforts that could have been made to make the best of those years in terms of knowledge and experience whereas professional practice will be different.
Work Cited
Neusner, Jacob. “The Speech the Students Didn’t Hear.” The structure of Argument. Ed. Annelle T. Rottenberg. New York: St Martin’s, 208-9.