Learning In The Key Of Life By Jon Spayde

Superior Essays
Along with Formal Education is Life a classroom of Lived Experiences? In the words of John Adams, “There are two educations. One that teaches us how to make a living and the other how to live.” Learning both these forms of education not only helps in a trade or a profession, but also helps in getting liberal education as human beings. "This impression is clearly observed in Jon Spayde’s “Learning in the key of Life”. He digs into the actual meaning of being educated. He builds up a platform, which showcases that both ends of the learning spectrum formal education and informal learning through lived experiences are necessary in order to be educated. Spayde effectively persuades his audience that both formal …show more content…
He begins by questioning the audience about the education system in our society. He then answers these questions by providing the meaning of education in accordance with various groups of the society. When he puts forward his views addressing the education system, he uses informal diction words like ‘Yikes’, ‘boils down to the mantra’ (Spayde, 64). He is also informally representing himself as one among the audience who is also affected by this problem. He succeeds in connecting to his audience by using worlds like ‘we’ and ‘our’. Informal phrasing is further evident when he talks about Abel Lomas by using terms like ‘hard-luck’, ‘mixed up in a drug bust’ and ‘dumbfounded’. (Spayde, 65) When Spayde gives his views on Professor David Orr’s definition on slow and fast knowledge, he addresses the audience in a very personal way by saying, “ You can figure out what you can do pretty quickly, but the ethical understanding of what you ought to do comes very slowly” (Spayde, 65). By using informal diction he is addressing the audience directly to the concept of slow knowledge. This informal diction strategy has effectively made the audience think back about such instances in their daily life scenarios where they must have made wrong decisions based on fast knowledge and it makes the audience realize that the author is right based on their own …show more content…
In the beginning, he succeeds to get the attention of the audience by using heavy weight words and phrases like ‘battle’, ‘soul’ and ‘corporation- heavy democracy that dominates the globe’ (Spayde, 65). He brings out the seriousness of formal education and how it is allied with power. His comparison of education to power is by itself overwhelming. To justify his view- point he puts forward a scenario of the power of a grad school dropout over a high school dropout in terms of empowerment attitude, entitlement and easy access to tools, people and ideas in-spite of having a lower salary. His use of words such as ‘ poorly or inadequately schooled’ creates a sense of weakness due to lack of formal education, and the word ‘dictate’ makes one feel powerful and authoritative which further strengthens his argument about relating education to power (Spayde, 67). Through this scenario, Spayde brings out the value of formal education with a resistive tone and with an effectual note on division in American life based on schooling. However in the following paragraph, he makes the audience realize that Education is not just training for a professional setting; it is training for life. He confronts formal education to learning through experience when he puts forward the words of Shorris stating

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