Analyzing Message in "Our 19th Century Curriculum"

In this post I will be looking closer at Kessler's main message in his article, "Our 19th Century Curriculum."

No author. "Blur old antique book." N.D.Pexels.

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It seems like Kessler's main goals are to express his own opinion on education as well as inform others about the topic and persuade readers. He starts by explaining what's happening in education, and says, "after paying average private college tuition and room and board ...over half of college graduates with bachelor degrees under the age of 25 don’t have jobs or are underemployed." In this statement, Kessler attracts attention with the aspect of paying lots of money for college, something many can relate to, and then uses a fact to inform the reader. These facts and ideas that Kessler presents are all expressing his opinion in an attempt to convince his audience that change in education is absolutely necessary.

The point in "A Student's Guide to Writing" that does not seem to apply at all is the one about responding to a specific event. Nothing really serious or motivating happened in education. The entire process of people realizing change was needed happened over a long period of time, because these new high end jobs did not just appear out of thin air. The career world has been slower to changer than any one specific event could happen, so this article is expressing ideas, but not responding to something that happened.

Kessler advocates for one major thing: change. He does not really address anything else in his article, he just goes into more detail about why we need change in specific career areas in school. So, in this sense, there is not any other layered messages, especially since he does not provide any concrete solution to this apparent problem.