Jeff Ziegler, Dean of Pinnacle Classical Academy
You and I, as human beings, are immersed in an ocean of words. We listen to words, we think in words, we speak in words, we read the words of others, and we write in words.
In our first years in this ocean of words, we hear others utter words, sentences, and stories. As we begin to swim on our own, we utter our own words, sentences, and stories.
At a magical moment, we learn how to read, and in doing so, we begin to make our home in the large sea of written language that is part of the ocean. Later, we learn to express our thoughts and feelings in our own written words.
The Latin word sententia means “thought, feeling”; it also means “sentence.” In the sea of written language, our inner thoughts and feelings are expressed outwardly in sentences, oral and written.
Each sentence is composed of words, and each word is composed of letters of the alphabet. The Latin word litterae means “letters of the alphabet”; it also means “literature.” The letters of the alphabet are seeds that blossom into literature of all kinds, from stories to histories.
Our experience of this large sea of written language, from letters to literature, is grammar, broadly understood. The English word grammar comes from the Greek word γράμμα (grámma), which means “what is written.” In the Roman world, the grammaticus, or grammar teacher, helped guide students through the large sea of written language, from the letters of the alphabet, to syntax, to literature. Our own parents and teachers did the same, and decades later, you and I regularly exercise the art, or skill, of grammar, almost as regularly as we breathe.
Aristotle defined man as a rational animal. Years after we were first immersed in the ocean of words, our reasoning powers began to develop, and we began to use words to come to a deeper knowledge of the truth of things. A child may muse that if Spot is a golden retriever, and golden retrievers are dogs, and dogs are animals, then Spot must be an animal. This exercise of human reason in the ocean of words is the art of logic, another skill that you and I exercise regularly.
As human beings, we also wish to persuade others, at times reasonably, at times unreasonably. This exercise of persuasion in the ocean of words is the art of rhetoric, yet another skill that you and I regularly use.
As human beings immersed in an ocean of words, we cannot escape the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. We are destined to use these arts, or skills, throughout our lives. Why not be schooled in each?
The high school years are an apt time for schooling in rhetoric. St. Augustine, consistent with the custom of his time and place, studied rhetoric between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. Dorothy Sayers, writing at a time when students who would not attend university would end their secondary education around sixteen, believed that schooling in rhetoric should begin at fourteen.
By blending science (in the sense of knowledge) and art (in the sense of skill), a high school rhetoric course could help explain the purpose and principles of rhetoric, introduce students to exemplary orations, and offer plenty of rhetorical practice, from the declamation of poems or other works to the crafting of speeches.
High school teachers who seek to help students grow in the science and art of rhetoric can draw on great authors of the past. The Athenians began over two millennia of reflection on the science of rhetoric: Socrates and his interlocutors grappled with its purpose in Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, and Aristotle examined its principles in his Rhetoric. Potential topics for assigned speeches abound, as do exemplars of rhetoric; William Jennings Bryan gathered hundreds of them in The World’s Famous Orations.
Educational fads come and go; careers that are here today are gone tomorrow. But rhetoric is among the skills that endure—transcending fads, useful in any career, accompanying us through life. As human beings, we are swimming in an ocean of words, often using rhetoric as we do so; why not be schooled in it?
Jeff Ziegler is dean of academics at Pinnacle Classical Academy (Shelby, N.C.) and a member of the part-time faculty of Belmont Abbey College’s Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education program.
