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March 04, 2007
Deliberative skills for citizenship, or why I wanted to teach composition
On the list of things many people don't know about me is that I was invited into Phi Beta Kappa when I graduated from the University of Washington. I don't often reflect on that membership, in part because I've been so busy reading for classes and exams and what have you that there hasn't been time. But last spring, several bits in the society's newletter gave me a strong moment of "yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about." This draft has been sitting for months, but as I am wrestling with exam questions, it offers the answer to the primary question of why learn the canon of rhetoric, and why I wanted to teach composition.
"Accepting membership into Phi Beta Kappa, Professor Gnomes reminded us, is an acceptance of the obligation to carry learning into citizenship in a participatory democracy"
The first principle, that learning has a purpose beyond mere knowledge, is as old as rhetoric, as the Sophists teaching the art of speaking to men who needed to represent themselves in a really participatory democracy, a much more direct model than we have in the United States. But it isn't just about speaking well or even winning the moment, because the phrase finishes with a reference to democracy. What is that, in the here and now, and what learning is needed to participate in it?
"we are apt to suppose the whole story of democracy is about majority rule. But a moment's reflection reminds us that democracy is also about the reasons why majority rule is important and about its limits. A bit more reflection discloses that democracy must also be about deliberation into the question 'what is the right thing to do?'"
The will of the majority is heavily influenced by a small minority. Political party platforms, religious beliefs as propounded by various Christian denominations, other religious systems, leaders social movements, and more than many would like to believe, the image makers of advertising, movies, and television programming. It wasn't that long ago, compared to the long history of rhetoric, that major legislative decisions were made in the government of the United States as the result of a group of men seated (or standing) in a room, debating, sometimes contentiously, the right thing to do. The men we refer to as the Founding Fathers debated at length and heatedly over the documents that became the (written) backbone of our country. John Quincy Adams was not only a distinguished lawyer, he was a great orator and held the first Boylston chair in... yes, rhetoric, in the United States. The United States Senate history features great speeches and debates from great orators. The United States Congress has its share of great oratory in its history as well, romanticized most notably in Jimmy Stewart's portrayal of a young idealist sent to the great hall in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But these days, anyone who watches C-SPAN can tell you that often the men and women featured on that screen are reading text to a camera and a fairly empty room. It's not the same thing at all.
But it is also the case that these examples are the top layer of a participation process that begins in the homes and classrooms our villages, towns, and cities across the country. The conversation over dinner shapes what the child believes is true. The message conveyed on the television and other media are screened and filtered through that system, even as they shape it. Later, when that child goes to school, he or she is influenced by the teachers, by the interactions with other students, and by the material offered for learning. By the time a young person is old enough to vote (and old enough to go to college) they bring a value system to that opportunity. The informal spaces are just as important as the formal ones, and the persuasion that takes places in those spaces is often unnoticed.
My interest comes from the moments those beliefs and values come into competition with one another. How do we know how to present and discuss our ideas? In my exam reading, I learned that the "active listening" skills I had endured in high school emerge from a theory of argument developed by Carl Rogers, a model designed to recognize the difficulty is arguing over what is the right thing when competing values are in play. That process is really hard for most people, but the key point of it is that one has to slow down from the emotional outburst and reaction to consider and carefully state one's position (and the other's, as well). This consideration and care of communication is my interest. I used to be a "corporate facilitator." What that means, at its core, is that I facilitated processes whereby individuals in a particular community reflected on their own values, the values they represented as they worked, and the ways they communicated with one another and those outside their community. This subject and this interest is not new to me, it's just really hard to translate into the exam question model. What passes for communication is too often the spewing of emotion and unreasoned, unsupported, opinion. And it's tempting to say that such conversation is okay in the informal realm, but it really isn't, because it's what happens in those spaces that shape what comes to be accepted, to be the "will of the majority" in the public and political realm. To really participate in democracy one has to be able to recognize what is at stake in the sound bytes and slogans that too often pass for truth.
"So Phi Beta Kappa's purpose entails public advocacy of the skills of deliberation that are important to citizenship. What are those skills? Essentially, there are three ingredients:
1. capacities of critical thought that provide an understanding of how to make and evaluate arguments
2. possession of knowledge of the facts whose relevance to things that matter makes them reasons that can be presented in arguments, and
3. discernment about what matters--that is, what is worth deliberating about.
If citizens in a democracy are to deliberate, these are their tools. They need to be able to think; they need facts to think with; and they need a grasp of what is worth thinking about.
So if we want a democracy that is about more than counting votes, a democracy in which citizens are equipped to withstand the skills of manipulators and in which the connection between truth and freedom is clear, we will support the ideals of Phi Beta Kappa."
(all quotes so far from John Churchill, (PBK) Secretary
in The Key Reporter, Spring 2006)
Now, I don't want anyone to think for a moment that I believe everyone should be a member of PBK, because I don't. But I do think its principles are important, and I firmly believe that rhetoric is the key discipline in furthering those principles. All the theories, all the variations, all the methods and terminologies and systems that have emerged over the years are important to know precisely because they are a range of tools for analyzing communication and for crafting communication in an increasingly atomized yet "globalized", individually separate yet increasingly multi-cultural, mutli-value-holding, yet still participatory democracy.
That is only as good as the participation in it.
Only as good as the men and women speaking and writing that shape its ideals, beliefs, legislation and relations. The United States does not sit in isolation. Reasoning out the right thing to do involves many knowledges, the ability to hear and discuss beliefs that are new and sometimes contradictory to our own. It requires rhetorical agility.
Professor Peter J. Gomes's, to whom Mr. Churchill referred in the comment at the beginning of this post, said:
"At the very point where the clarity of ideas, the clarity of the written and the spoken word, the principles of intellectual passion and integrity have never been in greater need or shorter supply - it is at this moment, it seems, that our Society should stand poised to contribute its greatest effort to the well-being of our republic".
Exactly what I think about the art of rhetoric, as both discipline and practice. The art of speaking and writing well needs to be at the center of learning, tools for analysis, practice, and persuasion.
In working through questions for exams, I think in some ways it all comes down to this: how can 2500+ years of theory and practice of an art concerned solely with speech (and writing) be rolled up, adapted, and used to teach and exemplify deliberative skills for citizenship in this participatory democracy at this time?
Posted by cageyer at March 4, 2007 09:26 AM