Value Of Rhetoric In Education

The educational system offers a multitude of subjects and topics that may or may not benefit a student later in life. However, to be specific, a topic that can have a strong benefit, but has also seemed to decline in the level of importance is rhetoric. Rhetoric acts as the backbone to a well formulated persuasive argument, which emphasizes rhetorics true value. Rhetoric should be highly valued by being taught more in today’s high schools because rhetoric is an ancient tool and because rhetoric is everywhere, there is no way to escape the concept. One of the most unique qualities in which rhetoric has become familiar with is that rhetoric has been around and has been constantly used for hundreds of years. To display how long people have admired

The tool can be found in any given situation without one even noticing. For example, in the novel Thank You For Arguing the author, Jay Heinrichs, declares that he will go a day without being persuaded by anything like: cats, wristwatches, and even family arguments. The author introduces this experiment to the reader in which can go to prove that rhetoric must be valued because of the concepts’ constant existence when the novel states, “To see just how persuasive argument is, I recently attempted a whole day without persuasion… No one would persuade me” (Heinrichs 6). In further explanation, rhetoric is how one creates an argument, and what specific tactics are used to convey that given argument, this quote perfectly captures how the art of argument or rhetoric plays a major role in everyday life, which deems rhetoric as a valuable source to have and to understand. One can make the argument that education officials who disregard rhetoric as a necessary concept to teach are making a huge mistake because rhetoric is everywhere and the subject cannot be eliminated, why try to do so? Due to the fact that rhetoric is popularly used daily, rhetoric proves that the subject is valuable to students, in fact the University of Iowa stated that, “Rhetoric is a fundamental building block of good education…” (Why is Rhetoric Required). This quote seamlessly emphasizes how profoundly students need to be taught rhetoric throughout their learning experience. However, some may say rhetoric is an irrelevant course to take because all that the subject deals with is argument. Iowa University conducted a study on college courses and their interest levels, and returned with data that concluded “Some people…regard Rhetoric as something to be ‘got out of the way’ as an annoying GE requirement” (Why is Rhetoric Required). This quote shows how not even students notice