I pity the fool.

My head was spinning with this week’s readings. “Nineteen possible logical patterns that are valid” – give me a break, Aristotle! I pity the fool who had to memorize this nonsense. I was happy that Lynn recognizes that not many teachers or students are going to have the time or patience to learn these patterns. But, I do understand why some knowledge of the history of rhetoric is important for teachers and students of writing. Obviously Aristotle devoted quite a bit of time to his theories (too much time in my opinion), as did other theorists throughout the centuries. It is impractical to dismiss it all without consideration. Again, I felt as though the message was to find some type of middle ground – to “draw on both process pedagogy and classical tradition,” as Lynn asserts. Covino too says something along these lines about adapting the “best of the past” to our present classrooms.

Did anyone else kind of wish that Covino had started and stopped his paper with “Obviously, the definition of rhetoric is not going to be settled?” It seems that all the readings agreed that rhetoric is everything. What is the point in beating the crap out of that fact? I don’t think that texts can be classified; in trying to do so, we are wasting our time. I agree with D’Angelo’s statement that it seems the identification of the “modes” was not about function, but was more about trying to “get experience in order.” Still, trying to uproot what has been set down for so long is daunting. The PSSA Writing Guidelines includes scoring rubrics for narrative, informational, and persuasive writing. They also define focus as “the single controlling point made with an awareness of task (mode) about a specific topic.” Once again, teachers are faced with the dilemma of teaching to the test. If these modes are outdated, based on some faulty theory of psychology, why are the people writing these testing guidelines not aware?