It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.
—Aristotle, Rhetoric
SUBJECT: Rhetoric and debate
TIME REQUIRED: 3 hours per week in grades 9 and 10, plus time spent in extracurricular debate activities
Rhetoric is the art of expression. During the rhetoric stage—grades 9 through 12, the traditional high-school years—the student learns to express herself with fluency, grace, elegance, and persuasiveness.
Since self-expression is one of the greatest desires of adolescence, high-school students should have training in the skills of rhetoric so that they can say, clearly and convincingly, what’s on their minds. Without these skills, the desire for self-expression is frustrated. Expression itself becomes inarticulate. External objects—clothes, jewelry, tattoos, hairstyles—assume an exaggerated value as the clearest forms of self-expression possible.1
“To a certain extent,” Aristotle writes in Rhetoric, the classic text on the subject, “all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others. Ordinary people do this either at random, or through practice and from acquired habit.”2 The study of rhetoric is designed to make success in speech a matter of skill and practice, not accident.
A GENERAL GUIDE TO THE RHETORIC STAGE
Rhetoric is dependent upon the first two stages of the trivium. The grammar stage laid a foundation of knowledge; without knowledge, the rhetorician has nothing of substance to say. The logic stage taught the student to think through the validity of arguments, to weigh the value of evidence. In the rhetoric stage, the student uses knowledge and the skill of logical argument to write and speak about all the subjects in the curriculum.
The last four years of classical education stress expression and flexibility. The student expresses herself by continually writing and speaking about what she’s learning. At first, rhetoric is a specific subject for study, just as logic was during the middle grades. But the skills acquired in the study of rhetoric are then exercised in history, science, and literature. In the last two years of schooling, the student will undertake two major writing projects in an area of her own choice, which will show her mastery of rhetoric as well as her skills.
Flexibility becomes paramount as the student pursues her junior and senior writing projects. These demand a great deal of time and effort. When the high schooler decides on the fields she’ll study in depth, other subjects in which she has already received a good basic grounding will fade into the background. “Those who are likely never to have any great use or aptitude for mathematics,” writes Dorothy Sayers in “The Lost Tools of Learning,” “[should] be allowed to rest, more or less, upon their oars.”3 The same can be said for languages and for highly technical aspects of the sciences. Twelve years of schooling aren’t sufficient for a student to complete her studies in a particular field of knowledge anyway. But even though the student may not finish twelfth grade with a comprehensive grasp of science or history, she will know how to learn—a skill that she can use for the rest of her life.
A third distinctive characteristic of the rhetoric stage is its focus on great books. History and literature meld together as the student reads the works of great minds, from ancient Greece to the present day. Great books are rhetoric in action; their persuasion has stood time’s test. As the high schooler studies the rhetoric of classic authors, she analyzes the force of their arguments. Great books provide historical perspective on the accepted truths of our own age; they can prevent the student from swallowing the rhetoric of modern-day orators undigested.
THE STUDY OF RHETORIC
During the rhetoric stage, the student will study the principles of self-expression and exercise them in both writing and speech, using modern texts that build on the classical foundations.
The study of rhetoric involves developing skill in five areas, or “canons”: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio. The first three of these apply to both written and spoken rhetoric, while memoria and pronuntiatio apply specifically to debate and speechmaking.
Inventio, “invention,” is the process of formulating an argument and gathering all the supporting evidence. It requires both logic and knowledge. In essay writing, inventio occurs when you select a thesis and research it, lining up all the proof needed to make your thesis convincing.
Dispositio is the skill of putting all that information into persuasive order. The way you present an argument depends on a slew of factors—the makeup of the audience, the setting you’ll be arguing in, the emotional effect various types of information might produce, and so on. Dispositio teaches you to arrange all your evidence in the most convincing way. (The question of whether this is also the best and truest way is a source of tension within the study of rhetoric, which continually brings ethical issues to the fore.)
Elocutio, “elocution,” teaches you how to evaluate the words you use when you give your argument. Which words will most clearly reveal the truth? (Alternately, which words will produce the desired emotions in the listener?) Which types of metaphors, parallelisms, figures of speech should you use? How can you structure your sentences for maximum effect?
For debate, you’ll also need skills in memoria (memorizing important points or entire speeches) and pronuntiatio (effective methods of delivering the speech).
Rhetoric, Aristotle tells us, leads to fair-mindedness. The student of rhetoric must be able to argue persuasively on both sides of an issue, not in order to convince his audience of that which is wrong, but “in order that we may see clearly what the facts are.”4 And this is true for every subject in which rhetoric is employed. Rhetoric, Aristotle concludes, is universal.5
HOW TO DO IT
During ninth and tenth grades, the student should study rhetoric during those hours previously devoted to logic. Plan on three hours per week, divided into two sessions of one and a half hours each or three sessions of one hour each.
Beginning in ninth grade, the student will work her way through three texts: Anthony Weston’s A Rulebook for Arguments, an introduction to rhetoric that provides a quick review of logic as applied to written essays;6 Thomas S. Kane’s The New Oxford Guide to Writing; and finally Edward Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. This study will cover at least two years, and may occupy all four of the high-school years.
As with other advanced subjects, you can use a tutor or online tutorial for the study of rhetoric. However, good readers should be able to pursue this study independently by following this pattern:
The ninth grader using A Rulebook for Arguments will encounter, at the end of Chapter 4, a section entitled “Personal attacks do not disqualify a source.” Weston’s text reads:
(17) Personal attacks do not disqualify a source. Supposed authorities may be disqualified if they are not informed, impartial, or largely in agreement. Other sorts of attacks on authorities are not legitimate. Ludwig von Mises describes a series of illegitimate attacks on the economist Ricardo:
In the eyes of the Marxians the Ricardian theory is spurious because Ricardo was a bourgeois. The German racists condemn the same theory because Ricardo was a Jew, and the German nationalists because he was an Englishman…. Some German professors advanced all three arguments together against the validity of Ricardo’s teaching.7
This is the “ad hominem” fallacy: attacking the person of an authority rather than his or her qualifications. Ricardo’s class, religion, and nationality are irrelevant to the possible truth of his theories. To disqualify him as an authority, those “German professors” have to show that his evidence was incomplete—that is, they have to show that his judgments were not fully informed—or that he was not impartial, or that other equally reputable economists disagree with his findings. Otherwise, personal attacks only disqualify the attacker!8
A good outline of this passage might look like this:
The student would follow this by finding two examples of ad hominem attacks in a political speech (a depressingly easy exercise) or by writing her own ad hominem refutation of something she’s read. Either exercise will show that she understands the concept.
When the student turns to The New Oxford Guide to Writing, she’ll follow a slightly different pattern. Each chapter is divided into sections with bold-print headings; these sections are then divided further by subheadings in regular type. The student’s first step should be to outline the chapter. In most cases, the student should probably construct one outline for each chapter, with bold headings generally treated as major outline points. However, she shouldn’t feel obliged to make the subheadings into outline points as well. For example, Chapter 16, “Paragraph Development: Cause and Effect,” is divided into the following headings and subheadings:
Cause
Ordering Reasons within a Paragraph
Effects
Multiple Effects
Cause and Effect
A good outline of this chapter might look like this:
Kane gives clear examples of each kind of paragraph.
After outlining the chapter (an exercise which may take the whole week or perhaps longer, for more detailed chapters), the student should complete the practice exercises at each chapter’s end. For example, Chapter 16 ends with several practice exercises, the first involving analysis (“Analyze the cause-effect relationship in the following paragraph”) and the next two involving composition (“Compose a single paragraph developing three or four reasons to support one of the following topics: The enormous increase in the cost of housing, the contemporary mania for exercise, the expansion of professional sports in the last twenty-five years…,” etc.). While the student should generally do the analysis exercises as written, she should always feel free to substitute her own topics (perhaps drawn from her study of history, science, or another subject) for those suggested by Kane. When completing these exercises, she should make an effort to use all of the different techniques described by Kane in the chapter.
Some of the chapters have no practice exercises. In this case, the student should provide an example for each technique described in the chapter, either from someone else’s rhetoric or of her own creation.
After working through Kane, the student will have a good grasp of the basics of written rhetoric. Students who are putting a high level of effort into the study of upper-level mathematics or science may need to end their study of rhetoric here in order to have enough time to specialize. However, most students (and all those interested in the humanities) should go on to the final rhetoric text: Edward Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (4th edition).
Corbett’s six-chapter study of rhetoric uses models ranging from Socrates to Rachel Carson to teach students the art of persuasion. The student should begin by simply reading the first chapter, “Introduction,” carefully. The second chapter, “Discovery of Arguments,” deals with inventio, choosing a topic for writing (in Corbett’s words, “how to ‘discover’ something to say on some given subject”). The chapter is quite long (over 200 pages!) and should be outlined, section by section (the sections are set off by bold-print headings). After outlining, the student should either give a written example or (where provided) complete the “Practice” provided by Corbett. For example, after outlining “Formulating a Thesis,” the student should choose a general topic, ask three questions about it (Corbett writes that you should define a topic for argument by asking whether you intend to prove that the topic is a fact, to define it, or to show what kind of thing it is—three classic strategies for narrowing the subject of an argument), and then state a thesis in a “single declarative sentence.”9
Most students will need a month or more to work through this chapter. The following chapters are not quite as lengthy; the student should follow the same basic procedure in working through them. The fifth chapter, “The Progymnasmata,” walks students through a set of writing exercises which have long been used in classical tutorials to develop writing skills; the student begins by retelling a folktale and then continues, writing a narrative, explaining an anecdote, arguing for or against a proverb (a “maxim or adage”), and so on through the final step of the progymnasmata, the “legislation,” in which the student argues “for or against the goodness of a law.” These exercises will ask the student to put into practice all of the skills learned throughout the book, and will give her all the tools needed for the junior and senior projects (see Chapter 33).
The final chapter, “A Survey of Rhetoric,” can be simply read for information or can be skipped.
Note: Evaluation of these writing exercises can sometimes present a challenge. The resources suggested earlier (see Chapter 17) can help you; also, remember that writing is a subjective activity and that even expert writing teachers can differ over whether a particular assignment is well-done or incompetent. Often, there is no “right” answer to a writing assignment. However, if you’d like some additional help in evaluating your high school student’s writing, consider one of the following options:
(1) Cindy Marsch’s Writing Assessment Services (www.writingassessment.com) offers an online evaluation program for home-school students.
(2) Call your local private or parochial school and ask whether the composition teacher would be willing to evaluate your student’s work. Make sure that you take the rhetoric text with you, so that the teacher knows the principles the student is trying to put into place. Generally, offering an honorarium of $40.00–$50.00 for an evaluation session is a nice gesture.
(3) Call the secretary of the English department at your local university or community college and ask whether any of the writing teachers might be willing to evaluate your student’s papers; the same honorarium is acceptable.
Note: To complete the above rhetoric study, students should be skilled at outlining. This skill is covered in the grammar programs we recommend in Chapters 17 and 25. If necessary, the rhetoric-stage student can return to these resources.
For Further Study
Students who wish to continue the study of rhetoric as a specialization—and particularly those with an interest in political rhetoric—will benefit from Martin Cothran’s Classical Rhetoric with Aristotle: Traditional Principles of Speaking and Writing. This thirty-three-week rhetoric course is based on the reading and analysis of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, a foundational ancient text on the subject. It also includes a useful teacher’s key, reading exercises from Mortimer Adler’s classic How to Read a Book, and exercises to reinforce Latin and logic skills (these are optional). The rhetoric course outlined above is focused more toward preparation for college writing; Cothran’s course is a more traditional “ancient rhetoric” course, in that it gives equal preparation for speaking and writing and also focuses on the motivations of the men (and women) who seek to persuade.
Alternatives
The program we’ve outlined above walks the student through foundational training in rhetoric; the texts we recommend are based on the model of the progymnasmata, the training exercises used in classical rhetoric, and the skills covered will equip the high school student to write persuasive essays.
However, some parents may feel the need for a more structured curriculum—a “writing program”—particularly for students who continue to struggle with writing, or who have come out of a classroom situation and are not yet used to working independently. (Students who are not yet writing on a high school level should spend at least two years in one of the curricula recommended for logic-stage writing in Chapter 17 before moving on to our rhetoric-stage recommendations).
If you’d prefer to investigate a structured curriculum, we suggest two options:
1. The Institute for Excellence in Writing (see Chapter 17, Chapter 17) now offers a one-year rhetoric course, Classical Rhetoric through Structure and Style: Writing Lessons Based on the Progymnasmata. IEW also offers an Advanced Communication Series DVD set, intended for high school persuasive writing, and a College-Bound Student Package, which includes a seminar on DVD plus a fourteen-week program during which students practice writing SAT-type essays as well as the dreaded “personal experience” essays for college applications.
The courses assume previous experience with the IEW “Teaching Writing: Structure and Style” program. Students and parents who have already completed at least one year of the IEW course could progress through the Advanced Communication Series set, the Classical Rhetoric through Structure and Style curriculum, and then the College-Bound Student Package. Depending on the student’s ease with writing, this is a two-to three-year progression; the final high school year(s) could then be spent on Anthony Weston’s text and the New Oxford Guide to Writing, as described above.
Students and parents who have not used IEW before should complete one year of “Teaching Writing: Structure and Style” before beginning the Advanced Communication Series.
2. Classical Writing (see Chapter 17, Chapter 17), based on the exercises of the progymnasmata, is an option for experienced home-school parents or parents who feel comfortable with the writing process. Students who have not used this program can begin with the first level, Aesop and Homer for Older Beginners, and can then move into Diogenes: Maxim and Diogenes: Chreia. Although upper levels are not yet available, you can check the Classical Writing website (www.classicalwriting.com) for more information.
The curriculum makes very effective use of classical teaching techniques; imitation of good writers is at the center of the method, students are encouraged to incorporate grammar learning, spelling, and editing skills into the daily lessons, and the program develops the specific writing skills needed to tackle Great Books study. However, the lessons are complex and require the parent to be comfortable with grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and writing; the parent is responsible for planning the sessions and directing the integration of grammar and vocabulary learning into the lessons. You can view sample lessons at the Classical Writing website.
DEBATE
Involvement in a debate club or society provides invaluable, hands-on training in rhetoric. If at all possible, find a local debate society, and enroll your ninth grader in it. Try to pursue debate throughout ninth and tenth grades. If the eleventh grader no longer wants to take part, debate can then be dropped from the curriculum—it has served its purpose.
Your local university or college is a good starting place. Call the theater department, which is generally connected with the debate club because debate is a spoken performance. Ask who coaches the debate team. Once you’ve found the coach, explain what you’re doing, list the rhetoric texts you’re using, and ask how your ninth grader can practice debating skills. The coach may invite the student to sit in on the college sessions. At the very least, he should be able to direct you to an age-appropriate debate group nearby.
You can also call a parochial school, if you happen to have a good one nearby. Ask for the debate-team coach, and explain your situation. Some private schools welcome home schoolers to extracurricular clubs.
Finally, you can call your state home-education organization (Appendix 2) and ask about debate clubs for home schoolers. More and more of these are popping up. The quality of the coaching tends to be mixed—you can end up with anyone from an overworked parent who’s never studied rhetoric to a moonlighting university professor. Ask about the qualifications of the coach before you commit. But these groups are often very resourceful, mounting regular competitions and even statewide championships for home schoolers.
SCHEDULES
Ninth grade |
|
3 hours per week |
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A Rulebook for Arguments (9–14 weeks); The New Oxford Guide to Writing (remainder of the year). |
|
|
Extracurricular |
|
Debate club. |
Tenth grade |
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3 hours per week Complete |
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The New Oxford Guide, begin Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. |
|
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Extracurricular |
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Debate club. |
Eleventh and twelfth grades |
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3 hours per week |
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Continue with Corbett until finished. |
RESOURCES
For publisher and catalog addresses, telephone numbers, and other information, see Sources (Appendix 4). Most books can be obtained from any bookstore or library; where we know of a mail-order option, we have provided it.
Rhetoric
Corbett, Edward P. J., and Robert J. Connors. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
$69.95. Order from any bookstore. This is available only in hardback and is rarely discounted, but you can often find used copies through www.abebooks.com.
Cothran, Martin. Classical Rhetoric with Aristotle: Traditional Principles of Speaking and Writing. Louisville, Ky.: Memoria Press, 2002.
$39.95 for coursebook, $4.95 for teacher’s key. Order from Memoria Press.
Kane, Thomas S. The New Oxford Guide to Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
$19.95. Order from any bookstore.
Marsch, Cindy. Writing Assessment Services. www.writingassessment.com. Weston, Anthony. A Rulebook for Arguments. 3d ed. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2000.
$6.95. Order from any bookstore.
Debate
The National Forensic League (www.nflonline.org) provides manuals, forums, support, and links for debaters and debate societies. 125 Watson Street, Ripon, Wisc. 54971; (920) 748-9478.
The National Christian Forensics and Communications Association (www.ncfca.org) was founded by the Christian home-education advocacy group Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). P.O. Box 212, Mountlake Terrace, Wash. 98043; (425) 776-3620. NCFCA provides coaching and how-to resources for would-be debate teams; see http://www.ncfca.org/resources/books_and_materials.
If you’re inspired to start your own debate club, look for these useful titles through any bookstore:
Freeley, Austin J. Argumentation and Debate, 12th ed. Boston, Mass.: Wadsworth Publishing, 2008.
$119.95. Comprehensive survey of argumentation and debate, with models, scenarios, and guides for real-life situations.
Oberg, Brent C. Forensics: The Winner’s Guide to Speech Contests. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Meriwether Publishing, 1995.
$17.95. A guide to debate, specifically geared toward competition skills.
Phillips, Leslie, William S. Hicks, and Douglas R. Springer. Basic Debate, 5th ed. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2005.
$50.64. A standard hardcover textbook on the subject.
Alternative Resources
Classical Writing. The Classical Writing website provides an e-mail contact and message board, but no physical address or phone number. You can purchase texts from Classical Writing, through print-on-demand from Lulu.com, or from Rainbow Resource Center. The texts are listed below in order of use; each level is approximately one year’s worth of work and consists of a core book and student workbooks or guides. The first two levels also require the purchase of a separate instructor’s guide.
Aesop & Homer for Older Beginners.
Aesop core book. $20.95.
Homer core book. $34.95.
Student Workbook for Older Beginners. Visit website for pricing.
Instructor’s Guide for Older Beginners. Visit website for pricing.
Diogenes: Maxim.
Diogenes: Maxim core book. $26.96.
Student Guide. $26.95.
Visit the Classical Writing website for pricing information and more information on the following advanced courses:
Diogenes: Chreia.
Diogenes: Chreia core book.
Student Guide.
Herodotus.
Herodotus core book.
Herodotus Student Guide and Answer Key.
Institute for Excellence in Writing series. Atascadero, Calif.: Institute for Excellence in Writing.
Order from IEW.
Advanced Communication Series
$65.00. 3-DVD seminar and student E-book.
Classical Rhetoric through Structure and Style: Writing Lessons Based on the Progymnasmata.
$29.00. Student Text.
College-Bound Student Package
$179.00. Worksheets, text, and DVDs.
Teaching Writing: Structure and Style.
$169.00 Prerequisite to the advanced levels; video seminar instructs parents on how to teach writing. The package includes 10 DVDs and a workbook/syllabus.