ERH-250 Reading Response

For this reading response post, I wanted to focus on how we should teach rhetoric. On page 40 of our textbook, it says: “that may not, in fact, treat rhetorical principles at all or that subordinate them to the study of grammar or literature” (40). This excerpt is referring to the multitude of different ways to define rhetoric and how rhetoric as a word can carry many meanings. In this case, do we need to define rhetoric for the purpose of education? In my high school career I had never taken a course with the term rhetoric in its name, but when I got to VMI I realized I had been learning it all along. How can teachers teach something that is so important to English curriculum and writing, but can’t be defined? Rhetorical education should be split into different groupings, knowledge of the history (classical rhetoric in the book), rhetoric as persuasion, and rhetoric in applicable practice. Teach students about aristotle and the sophists so that they know where the term comes from, teach them about arguably, most important function, its relation to persuasion, and lastly make students perform practical assignments: write a persuasive essay, argue a law case, create a petition etc. Rhetoric is something that students should learn well before entering the octagon of college academics.