Summary:
Booth's main agenda is getting the American public, specifically teachers, to recognize the value of teaching rhetoric in the high school system. He lists multiple arguments for why rhetoric should be reinstituted a general field of study in popular curriculum. It helps us engage in serious and critical arment. It provides a means of understanding and navigating a partisan society. It may help students understand the disparity between the wealthy and the poor areas. Democracy depends on rhetoric. He also condemns standardized testing as producing knowledge that is purely the superficial memorizing of facts, creating static knowledge. He then ends with a list of "laws" that would contribute to the utopian society he envisions through widespread rhetorical education.
Response:
Booth wants teachers to recognized and understand Listening Rhetoric (LR) -- “pursing the truth behind our differences.” Instead of the cultural conception that students learn in school, Booth reinforces a perception that I've always had -- that students learn more from the media, internet, and entertainment than from school. Instead, I'd argue that formal education provides frameworks for the additional education they receive from these other media. Our students put a lot of faith in cultural myths and stereotypes without realizing where these myths and stereotypes come from. By providing a framework (perhaps through education in the cultural construction of ideologies), students can learn how to continue to educate themselves by understand new perspectives of seeing the information they're provided outside the classroom.
Connections/Questions:
How does "The Fate of Rhetoric in Education" qualify as a manifesto? First off, it defines a crises early and calls for a solution before proposing its own solution -- widespread education in rhetoric. Booth admits flaws in his theory, and he keeps his argument accessible to a popular audience. While touching on logical cultural arguments, he brings in sources written by individuals from the field he discusses so that the source becomes a voice that he enters into dialog with. Finally, he provides answers to the questions he asks, and states the answers as fact instead of couching them with phrases like "I think" or "I believe."
