Thoughts from commeting on Ashoka student blogs

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I started reading through these blogs.  I half expected to see a rhetoric present that I had never encountered before, but was surprised to see that these students encounter many of the same problems that I my TTU students often discuss.  The assignment about home put me in a sentimental mood though.  I had to go back and listen to some Luther Vandross afterwards because I haven't heard A House is Not a Home in so long. 

I did like how the topic for the Ashoka students' essays made me want to read more about their thoughts and arguments.  I've never been in a teaching situation where the curriculum is entirely up to me, so it was nice seeing students write about something that was really interesting to me as well.  Something I'll definitely keep in mind for when the time comes.

Below are the links to the blog posts that I commented on:

http://ashokadiaries.blogspot.com/2014/09/introduction-to-home.html
http://nainikadineshashoka.blogspot.in/2014/09/introduction-to-essay.html#comment-form
http://mahirabudhraja.blogspot.in/2014/09/things-ive-learned-from-formal-writing.html

Describe your "philosophy statement" approach to the first assignment. Which rhetors are you thinking of using, and why?

As I continue to develop my teaching philosophy, I kept coming back to two different people: Isocrates and Dr. Ronald Bieniek (Professor of Physics at Missouri University of Science and Technology).  Although these two individuals differ in many ways, they both have similar perspectives regarding what it means to educate a student.  According to Bizzel and Herzberg, Isocrates opposed teaching generalities “because they screen out the particulars (context) of a given situation, which must be considered in all truly good moral and rhetorical decisions” (p. 69).  Ron Bieniek felt the same way, but always expressed to us that he was filling our toolboxes.  He often told us during lecture that the very nature of physics keeps physicists and students alike from deriving a general equation to solve all of the problems we’d encounter in his course.  Instead, he would fill our toolboxes with the tools necessary to solve a problem.  Our job as students was then to determine (based on the context of our situation) what tools to apply.

From my perspective my job as a composition instructor is to fill my students’ toolboxes with the rhetorical tools necessary to deal with any writing problems they encounter.  However, cultural issues tend to complicate the identification of the tools that my students need.  If you had talked to me about my teaching philosophy in August, I would have continued to play with this toolbox metaphor by highlighting the emphasis I place on context.  Now, I really want to think about the role that cultural rhetorics play here.  Should culture determine the tools with which I fill my students’ toolboxes?  Should I ignore my students’ cultural backgrounds and indoctrinate them into a Western rhetorical tradition?  If my role as an instructor is to bring students into the fold, I wonder what that says about the value of my students’ experiences, their cultures.  Just some things that I’ve been thinking about as I continually think about non-Western traditions.

What rhetoric do you remember being employed during and in the aftermath of 9/11? Perhaps make connections to rhetors we've been reading. Also, which of the introductions to rhetoric did you find the most useful, and why?

I was only fourteen at the time of the September 11^th attacks, but such an event tends to stick with you even if at the time you don’t quite know why.  Although no one had time to coordinate what message to convey to a group of teenagers, each teacher seemed to have the same objective.  Each teacher wanted calm.  Each teacher took advantage of a kairotic moment to achieve this objective, but the objective was met in every classroom that day.  I’ll never forget going to jazz band that day and seeing the shock on Mr. Walker’s face.  Instead of the usual routine of pulling out our instruments and setting up to practice, he had us all sit down and he just started playing Louie Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World.”  He didn’t try to explain what was happening nor did he even acknowledge that it had happened.  He just said that whenever things were looking dark for him, he always put this song on and it made life seem simpler somehow.   We just sat there for the entire class period listening to this song.

Now, I don’t think that anyone would doubt that Mr. Walker was using rhetoric to ease a tension that he most likely saw on our faces.  Taking this a step further, Mr. Walker took advantage of a kairotic window to ease our tension, so he was practicing false rhetoric according to Plato.  However, I then must ask: Is his use of false rhetoric as negative as Plato implied?  I think we’d all agree that, no, this is not a negative use of rhetoric, but this does serve as an interesting example of how rhetorical studies have evolved over time.  We tend now to avoid distinguishing between a true and false rhetoric and instead emphasize that all rhetoric is necessary in our day to day decision making. 

I bring up true and false rhetoric because I must say that I preferred the Bizzel and Herzberg introduction to the other pieces we read this week.  This preference stems from the level of detail that Bizzel and Herzberg maintain throughout their text.  For example, before reading this week I was unfamiliar with Plato’s dichotomy of true and false rhetoric.   My previous knowledge about Plato had been that he was staunchly opposed to the idea of rhetoric, but according to Bizzel and Herzberg, Plato was not opposed to all rhetoric.  He was only opposed to rhetoric that did not seek to remove any encumberances that obscured our ability to see absolute truth.  In addition to these conceptual details Bizzel and Herzberg also included information regarding the historical contexts that undoubtedly influenced the rhetorical theories of rhetoricians whom we have all become familiar with.   Borcher’s introduction summarized how emphasis on specific aspects of rhetoric evolved over time, but Bizzel and Herzberg touch on the impetuses for these shifts.

What are the most important characteristics of rhetoric, and what have you learned about non-western rhetoric which is new to you?

In Ch. 1 Borchers identified the important characteristics of rhetoric as the following:

• Rhetoric is symbolic
• Rhetoric involves audience
• Rhetoric establishes what is probably true
• Rhetorical theory is inventive and analytic

When I first began studying rhetoric, I was in love with the idea that language or meaning making could be formalized.  Maybe it’s the engineer in me, but I was fascinated with the notion that we simplify communication to a sort of equation.  For example, we tend to look at writing as a formalized process: identify your audience and purpose, analyze your audience to determine the most effective method of communication, compose your first draft, and revise, revise, revise.  Although the analyze your audience and determine the most effective method of communication part of the process is deceptively difficult, we tend to treat it like any engineering process (i.e. inputs go in, outputs come out). After accepting this, the primary task becomes understanding how the inputs get changed to outputs or the effect that rhetorical choices have on an intended audience. Rhetoric made sense to me this way. 

Fortunately, I’ve come to the light and realized that although simplifying rhetoric to a process of inputs and outputs is helpful, it might not be the most inclusive view of rhetoric.  Readings like Ch. 9 from Borchers helped me get to this realization.  Of course I had been aware of the ways that culture influences rhetoric, but I had never seen the process laid out in such a way as in Borchers.  I’d never even considered how Western rhetoric tends to colonize different perspectives or how we as instructors can sometimes colonize the rhetorical strategies of students towards an ideal Western philosophy.  I was specifically struck by the inclusion of harmony and spirituality in African rhetorics.  These are two things that I would have never considered a part of any rhetorical tradition, but therein lay the beauty of my realization.  Although Western rhetoric is the dominant rhetorical philosophy, it is not the only (nor should it be the only) philosophy we acknowledge.

After reading this week, I learned a major lesson.  Cultural rhetoric is what really pumps me up.  My very recent decision to focus on non-Western rhetoric was reaffirmed and I can’t wait to get more involved in these kinds of studies.