Rhetoric As we know it, Philosophy, College Term Papers.com


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Rhetoric As we know it

Rhetoric As we know it "The study of rhetoric traditionally has aimed to equip students with an ability to identify problems and issues, to investigate, to interpret, and to communicate results -- whatever the subject matter. These abilities require higher-level thinking, not just skills; analysis and evaluation, not just observation . . . . The study emphasizes strategies and practice rather than a body of facts and contemplation; thus the study of rhetoric aims for social application. Students are studying rhetoric in a technical communication course even though they may never hear of Aristotle nor study history and theory of rhetoric. Identifying a problem, gathering, interpreting, and arranging information, choosing an appropriate style, and making recommendations, as students learn to do in preparing recommendation reports, proposals, and manuals, are rhetorical acts. In its best tradition, rhetoric insists upon responsible and ethical practice. This is the tradition in which we educate students." What one might see this as is an attempt to justify a mix between a prescriptive approach to rhetorical application (taught to students) and an adaptive approach. Rude suggests that strategies (adaptive/heuristic) and practice (prescriptive) should be integrated so that students are prepared to make “responsible and ethical” decisions when the time comes to apply this stuff we have learned. Carolyn Rude’s approach to education is one that I see Pirsig and Johnson both approving of, but there are differences in strategies towards the education as well as the demonstration of the know vs. know-how of the technical communications education. I will attempt to tackle this paradigm in two parts: Pirsig’s point of view and Johnson’s. “Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.” Pirsig, a theorist as well as a rhetorician would see the approach as the right idea. Students should be faced with challenges that require demonstration of understanding as well as some demonstration of quality. I know that stating Pirsig feels students need to demonstrate some effort towards quality is reaching, but I think that is what he is truly looking for students (his in particular) to be able to understand and demonstrate. I feel that this is what you are trying to establish with us as students in your class as well. Flaws are found in this methodology of education, Pirsig sees that students need to be taught Quality but, “…how are you to teach something that isn’t premeditated? It was a seemingly impossible requirement.” (Pirsig 176) Struggling with this concept leads one to believe that students must develop a sense of Quality based on what they feel. There is no prescriptive method to teach students to produce Quality. Pirsig’s major problem with this whole concept is that he does not have a true understanding of Quality, and rightfully so. How is one supposed to determine Quality? Here’s how Pirsig (in my eyes) might respond to Carolyn Rude; students should be introduced to methodology in order to make valid attempts but the “answers” are to be derived from students applying effort to a goal, Quality. Phaedrus’ experiments with his students produced astonishing results, creating a student that had a grasp on the idea that “…there were no longer rules to rebel against, not ultimates in themselves, but just techniques, gimmicks, for producing what really counted and stood independently of the techniques – Quality.” (Pirsig 208) The students that took this and ran with it demonstrated true education and in Pirsig’s (as well as Phaedrus’) eyes had achieved the goal, Quality. “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” Johnson, more of a designer/innovator comes along with a similar set of views, differing in ways, but following a pattern, students demonstrate quality. The goal of Johnson’s user-centered design is to place things in the hands of the end-users, not the creators, or “experts.” Rude’s idea that students are, in a sense molded into something that can produce a higher level of thinking is what Johnson is looking for; his means are different however. A goal of “…joining of productive knowledge and practical knowledge in the Aristotelian sense…” is congruent to Rude’s approach and daunting, as it may seem, is the solution to the paradigm. Coinciding with Rude, Johnson sees this curriculum of technical communications as an opportunity to engage students as well as teach them, so that we are not just learning of our “artifacts or practices,” but creating them and at the same time demonstrating the theorems applicable to them! Use of analogies to draw into the actions of other technical fields, so that we can demonstrate strategies, analysis and evaluation. This method also creates a student that is reflective, one that can complete and comprehend ethical and practical judgments. A response that Johnson might give to Rude would be that this tradition in which they aim to educate students is an approach that almost forms a student into a well-rounded information purveyor and someone that can “…see ethical problems as being more than two-pronged dilemmas that compel an individual to always carry the burden of whistle-blower.” To create a person that offer alternatives to standard dichotomies that are found in our management of power and ethics. Both Johnson and Pirsig would respond to Rude in similar fashion, one of agreement that both authors’ ideas coincide with Rude’s and that they make every innovative attempt to pursue the tradition of education. Johnson’s path through user-centered design and Pirsig’s pursuit of Quality take every step to pave a road for students to utilize a higher level of thinking. A level that gives students an ability to identify problems, interprets them, produce substantial conclusions and communicate them. Advancing this a step produces the conclusion that Pirsig, Johnson and Rude all strive to “educate” students to a point where practical and ethical judgment are utilized by students to affect the world they live and work in. Bibliography:

Word Count: 1023