Rocket Science or Something to do with Best Practices?

I've come to expect a degree of whining and resistance in my GWRTC 103 classes, and, frankly, I understand it. GWRTC students are freshmen; freshmen often have limited experience with the expectations of college professors regarding workload and motivation. They also don't fully understand how workload and motivation equate to success. I do not expect to encounter such behaviors in an upper level class, however, and I am rather baffled and disheartened that I'm dealing with them in a class for teachers. So, let me begin to answer the question that seems to be on the minds of several students: What on earth does learning about the history of rhetoric have to do with learning how to teach writing effectively?


We teach a writing process that is firmly rooted in the offices of rhetoric described on p. 27. Yet we call it by different terms and have conflated a few of the offices. Why would we have done such a thing? What has happened in the last two centuries that would have precipitated such a change? Yes, I know. I am answering my question by posing more. Socratic method, anyone?

What do we gain by such dialectic anyway? What do our students gain, more importantly?

And then I guess there is the issue I raised last week about a teacher's responsibility in this, the 21st century. We are not merely responsible for teaching our students how to write. We are responsibe for teaching them responsibility, for teaching them how to be good citizens and contributing members of society. Didn't the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, and even Aristotle have a bit to say about the relation between rhetoric and virtue? Hmmm . . . something else to ponder.

Finally, here is one rather immediate reason it might be helpful to study rhetoric in a teaching writing class. (and I mean this more in a "big sister" kind of way than in a "I'm evaluating you" kind of way) By studying rhetoric, we learn about foundational principles such as rhetorical proofs, importantly, ethos. And ethos, you'll recall, refers to one's credibility. So, how much credibility does a teacher-in-training have if he/she whines about class assignments and doesn't bother to try to think for him or herself about why the material is important to a future career in teaching? (Yes, this is a rhetorical question.)

See you in class!