Re Education, Quotations, & Irony

Was flipping through An American Rhetoric by William W. Watts. Found this example of using quotation marks "to call attention to irony." Don't know who Henry Steele Commanger is, but I liked it (the entire entry is worth typing out). Seems to go against the current stream.

b. First is the widespread illusion that education is something that goes on in the classroom, something that comes by way of a "course" that a professor "gives" and a student "takes." --Henry Steele Commager, "Is Ivy Necessary?" Saturday Review (quotation marks here are the equivalent of a mildly ironic so-called and make that overworked word unnecessary)

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