"The Fate of Rhetoric in Education"
Booth, Wayne, C. "The Fate of Rhetoric in Education." The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 89-106. Print.
SummaryBooth argues for the need to to teach rhetorical education and specifically encourages teaching critical argument. He is concerned that students are no longer critically thinking and instead simply accepting what the media and public tells them.
To address this issue Booth gives three suggestions for incorporating RhetEd, including teaching RhetEd across the disciplines, and offers a list of laws that would improve the education system and society at. He then notes that these laws are for the idealistic land of Rhetopia. Rhetopia, although imaginary, creates a way for society to learn how to think/speak critically. ResponseI found myself nodding in agreement throughout reading this chapter. My main pedagogical research interests involve how to embrace civility, community, and citizenship in the college composition classroom. This chapter served as inspiration for writing my theory manifesto.
While his list of laws are for the fictive land of Rhetopia, I think they would work well in our society. However, laws are most effective when they are valued by society, and RhetEd clearly is not. Interestingly, the public is fine with practicing shoddy rhetoric and further cementing rhetoric as something negative with no formal rhetorical training. However, in their defense, there seems to be no training on rhetoric outside of English/Communication college courses. Connections/QuestionsI wonder about other nations' views on RhetEd. It would be interesting to explore how culture plays a role in shaping views on critical argument, the media, rhetoric, and education.
Booth's RhetEd and suggestions to integrate teaching rhetoric in other disciplines reminds me of WAC (writing across the curriculum) and WID (writing in the disciplines). Might it be possible to ever launch a RhetoricAC/RhetoricID sort of program? Zebroski, Britton, and Booth all address modern education. Additionally, Booth and Heidegger both deal with concepts of enframing. Booth argues against enframing (without naming it), as he resists standardized testing and boxed-in, one-way thinking provided to us by the media. |
Key Quotes
"Any nation isin trouble if its citizens are not trained for critical response to the flood of misinformation poured over them daily" (89).
"Our only hope is to find ways to produce a public that both cares about serious, penetrating, courageous, mutually respectful argument and is trained to conduct that argument productively--whether or not calling it rhetorical education" (90).
"Students learn, from year one, as they observe the public scene, that that's the way to do it. And too often they do not learn, in the classroom, that there are other, better ways" (90).
"Our democracy depends on better Rhet-Ed than most of our children now receive. Now is the time for all of us to fight against miseducation in rhetoric" (91).
"Every citizen needs to know hot to read and write, and to do these well does entail an absorption of huge amounts of information around the world" (93)
"The political proposal for improvement is almost always in the form of imposing national or statewide standard tests of factual knowledge" (93).
"Not trained to think skeptically about the quality of arguments, never having learned the fun of genuine LR, too many students get hourly training from the media in win-rhetoric of the bad kinds. The goal in life is to triumph" (96).
"How are students learning to think about why building a community of mutual trust is better than winning this or that material reward? (99).
"Our only hope is to find ways to produce a public that both cares about serious, penetrating, courageous, mutually respectful argument and is trained to conduct that argument productively--whether or not calling it rhetorical education" (90).
"Students learn, from year one, as they observe the public scene, that that's the way to do it. And too often they do not learn, in the classroom, that there are other, better ways" (90).
"Our democracy depends on better Rhet-Ed than most of our children now receive. Now is the time for all of us to fight against miseducation in rhetoric" (91).
"Every citizen needs to know hot to read and write, and to do these well does entail an absorption of huge amounts of information around the world" (93)
"The political proposal for improvement is almost always in the form of imposing national or statewide standard tests of factual knowledge" (93).
"Not trained to think skeptically about the quality of arguments, never having learned the fun of genuine LR, too many students get hourly training from the media in win-rhetoric of the bad kinds. The goal in life is to triumph" (96).
"How are students learning to think about why building a community of mutual trust is better than winning this or that material reward? (99).