So…I’m going to divide this post into two general parts:

1. Rhetoric in secondary composition education
2. Rhetoric in post-secondary composition education

Within each of those divisions, I will focus on four specific points

1. Facets of rhetoric that should be taught (rhetorical concepts)
2. Why it would be taught at this level
3. Benefit to the student if this material was taught at this level
4. Benefit to society at large (why this matters to the “real world”)

Now on to the organized brainstorm

Rhetoric in secondary composition education

Facets of rhetoric that should be taught (rhetorical concepts)

Antiphon’s philosophy

Canons of Rhetoric

Six Parts of a Speech

kairos

Why it would be taught at this level

Antiphon’s philosophy: To teach Antiphon’s philosophy in secondary schools allows students to begin understanding why they are writing and how this will ultimately connect to their lives. This philosophy should not be taught only at the secondary level, but should continue to be stressed in the teachings of the post-secondary instruction. This can be done by asking students to write essays on real topics that apply to their daily lives and communities they are involved in. This way they can see how writing in their real life will always be important.

Canons of Rhetoric: To begin teaching the canons of rhetoric at the secondary level provides students a chance to begin learning how the writing process works. As with anything taught in schools, repetition would aid in retention and students would soon internalize this method as the “standard” for writing. Therefore, when they reach their college composition classes, they would be able to gain more important information since college instructors would not need to teach the canons in-depth, but would only need to review these and enforce this method in their own lesson plans.

Six Parts of a Speech: This should be taught at the secondary level in order to prevent students from entering college courses with the ability and mindset that a five-paragraph essay is the only way to create an essay. Using the parts of a speech/composition as the way to write allows students to maintain the structure of an outline, while teaching them something more useful than the five paragraph essay. I’m not asserting that the five-paragraph essay should be completely eliminated, but it should be taught alongside this method so that when students begin writing more complex material, they have a better structure.

kairos: Kairos should be taught at the secondary level as students are learning to write various types of essays. In today’s college classroom, students enter into an essay with the belief that they are writing to “their teacher” and that the end means for an essay is to “get a good grade.” By asking students to consider other audiences during their secondary education, they can begin to grasp this concept much earlier in their education and begin to internalize this for future use.

Benefit to the student if this material was taught at this level

To begin teaching the more general material at the secondary level means that college instruction is open to teach more information in the span of a semester. Since many students do not enter college knowing anything about these aspects of rhetoric, college composition instructors must devote a large portion of the first semester of composition to teaching this material. Therefore, the student spends more time learning material that could have been taught in their secondary classes instead of using this time to learn new information that would make them better, more focused writers. Additionally, since this material is only covered in two semesters at the most, there is little chance that students will actually retain and internalize this material.

Benefit to society at large (why this matters to the “real world”)

When secondary instructors begin teaching these general principles of rhetoric at a younger age, there is more time for students to internalize this material. Teaching these principles at the secondary level could, ultimately, allow for a revised composition curriculum in post-secondary education. This revised curriculum would allow instructors to focus on more specific material that becomes applicable when students enter their career fields. Potentially, students would learn general rhetorical concepts in their secondary classrooms, then spend a semester in post-secondary working with more specific principles. This would mean that composition programs could then create discipline specific classes for all areas of post-secondary instruction. This second semester composition class could be postponed until the student had decided upon a major and then base the instruction on writing for the career field (e.g. Business Writing, Composition for Nurses). This would allow students to enter the work force, if not their advanced major courses, with a basic knowledge of how to write for their discipline. Therefore, the work force would find new graduates who had a more in-depth knowledge of how to write for the discipline they were working in and companies would not have to spend additional resources teaching new employees what they should have learned in college.

Rhetoric in post-secondary composition education

Facets of rhetoric that should be taught (rhetorical concepts)

Three Types of Rhetoric

Syllogisms, Enthymemes and Logical Problems

Antiphon’s method of teaching

Plato’s Phaedrus

Corax’s Doctrine of General Probability

Why it would be taught at this level

Three Types of Rhetoric: This should be taught at the post-secondary level since in my mind, the material students are being taught at the secondary level prepares them to write in general. With the amount of rhetoric that should be taught at the secondary level there can be a more specific focus on teaching argumentation at the post-secondary level. Therefore, while students can be taught to research and argue a point, the specifics of argumentation should be saved for the post-secondary level so that students have mastered some of the more general rhetorical lessons (much as they would in the Greek and Roman periods) and can now move into the more specific aspects of writing and argumentation.

Syllogisms, Enthymemes and Logical Problems: At the current time, the logic that arguments need to follow tend to become a brief discussion of the fallacies students should avoid when they write. However, this alone is not enough and college composition instructors should focus also on teaching logic and logical styles when they teach fallacies. At the post-secondary level students are more prepared to comprehend these ideas. Also, since I feel teaching at the college level should turn more to argumentation and less to review of secondary school skills, teachers would have more time in classes to devote to these styles and methods.

Antiphon’s method of teaching: While this is not a style of rhetorical writing, it is a method that should be used in post-secondary education. In asking students to write an argument from both points of view aids in teaching them the necessity of counterarguments in their writing.

Plato’s Phaedrus: The point that Plato makes within the dialogue–that a good argument, regardless of the position it takes, can sway an argument would work well when taught in conjunction with argumentation units so that students could see the need to include both sides of the argument and the need for strong refutation in their writing. Also, Plato’s demonstration that rhetoric aids a person in comprehension as well as persuading his listeners. These are both skills that a writer needs to comprehend before they enter the “real world” but they are a bit too complex to be taught at the secondary level where students should be fine tuning their more general writing skills.

Corax’s Doctrine of General Probability: Once more, this is a method that needs to be taught with argumentation so that students understand more of the logic required within a paper as well as how they must support their side of the argument so that readers are accepting that as the proper side to take.

Benefit to the student if this material was taught at this level

By focusing post-secondary instruction on these more specific rhetorical concepts, students would have a chance to better their writing in areas more applicable to the workforce. The current layout of college composition has students working to write essays that range from personal narratives to expositions on random topics throughout the range of their entire first semester. Then, during the second semester, students begin to focus on argumentation. Therefore, for the student it seems that the entire first semester is nothing but a waste of time. If composition were redesigned so that college composition focused solely on writing argumentation and writing for an audience, students would have a chance to begin understanding how writing relates to their lives in general as well as to their chosen career. This, ultimately, would allow students the chance to take more interest in their courses since they would not be putting little effort into a “useless” course.

Benefit to society at large (why this matters to the “real world”)

When society begins to create better writers in school, they are creating better citizens. College graduates enter the workforce with a better idea of how to write. However, they also enter society with a better ability to comprehend and analyze important matters. Aristotle’s four advantages to studying rhetoric in a democratic society are still valid in our modern society. Aristotle posits that rhetoric teaches us how to:

1. perceive the difference between truth and falsehood
2. understand how people are moved to action
3. see both sides of an issue
4. defend ourselves against the arguments of others

When graduates enter society with these abilities, they are able to make better decisions throughout their lives. These students would have the ability to choose the better political or job candidate because they would have the ability to see through the pathos appeals in the speeches. They would be able to sway people to join a cause once they had analyzed it to determine that the cause was just and noble. Finally, they would have the background to see the weaknesses in arguments against themselves and protect themselves from slander or faulty arguments through refutation instead of through lawsuits.