Horace Mann's Use Of Rhetorical Strategies Essay

Horace Mann’s Use of Rhetorical Strategies

Rhetorical strategies are used to convince the reader of the author’s argument. Horace Mann used rhetorical strategies to support his argument in “Intellectual Education as a Means of Removing Poverty, and Securing Abundance.” Mann’s argument is that public education will provide equality for all men, no matter what class they are in. To support his argument, Mann used rhetorical strategies such as style, diction, appeals, and metaphors.

First, Mann uses style to support his argument. The style of his essay is consultative, or business-like. It is consultative because Mann’s audience is the Massachusetts Board of Education, therefore he must be proper and intellectual to convince the Board to support his argument. This is shown through, “We are verging towards those extremes of opulence and penury, each of which unhumanizes the human mind”(Mann 150). Using consultative style supports his argument because it indicates that what he is talking about is meant to be taken seriously.

Secondly, Mann uses formal diction in his argument. He uses words such as “benevolence”,”oppressive”, and “unrelenting”. The purpose of his diction is meant

He uses ethos, credibility, by being named the “father of American public education”. He uses pathos through, “But is it not true that Massachusetts in some respects, instead of adhering more and more closely to her own theory, is becoming emulous of the baneful examples of Europe?”(Mann 150), by create a feeling of wonder and questioning equality. Mann uses logos when he said, “surely nothing but universal education can counterwork this tendency to the domination of capital and servility of labor”(Mann 151) because it presents logic that education will overcome the discrimination between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The use of appeals supported Mann’s argument because it provided reliability, emotion, and