Teaching’s Dangerous Assumption

This recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education tells a story as to how a professor realized that it is ok to say that she doesn’t know the answer to a question, or that she might be uncertain about something a student has said in class.
My response is quite simply disappointment that this still counts as an interesting observation. It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be anywhere near the category of things that one learns after teaching for years. On the contrary, it should be a first-order principle of teaching: It’s fine not to know. The most dangerous assumption about teaching is that a teacher knows, and students do not. 
A couple of times a year I work with high school teachers, and it always amazes me how quick they are to jump in and fill the uncomfortable silences and moments of student exchange that I try to craft with my pedagogy. Once the tension gets to the point of simmering, the high school teacher breaks the tension with a cool, refreshing dose of  “here’s how it is” which the students gleefully write down, happy to once again be deposited with valuable information. The script is familiar and comfortable. The students and teacher experience pleasure by filling out these roles. But is it teaching? Is learning happening? Unfortunately, it is, and it is teaching some dangerous assumptions.
I am always a bit surprised that the high school teacher is not immune, or does not celebrate the moment where the students are adrift and questioning one another. I too, participate in these moments, explaining that I am uncertain as well about them, and perhaps we should investigate further. I feel this is the best way to teach students that the solution to their recognized gaps in knowledge is not to guess, not to depend on an authority figure (which is pretty much all a high school teacher is these days), but to make a plan to address the lack of knowledge and shore it up as best they can for their purposes. Usually, this is the purpose of trying to sway an audience on an issue, one way or another, since I’m mostly teaching debate.
I think the reason that the above article is still interesting and a bit surprising, and the reason that high school teachers can’t help but jump into and disrupt productive silences with banking-model discourse is because the trope governing the reality behind both is the same. That trope is that knowledge is at the root of authority. By this logic, the teacher risks losing all authority and control of the classroom if he or she is not the source of knowledge. 
This is present in the rhetoric of the Chronicle essay as well. Discomfort at presenting a professorial subject that is not complete, or that is fragmented in some way is to risk upending the entire value of the course. It seems equally reasonable that a course in anything would teach you how to find out about it, not just information about it. Why does this trope hold so much power?
One reason might be that it dovetails nicely with capitalist narratives and capitalist desire. When someone is in a relationship in capitalism, the exchange must be even, or even for those involved. Not providing the right answer to a student question, or suggesting that you don’t know the answer to a student’s question is a very uncomfortable response in an exchange-system rhetoric. Not being able to provide what the customer wants is a terrible mistake, and can cost you everything. 
The alternative trope is one where authority in the classroom, or perhaps the more soft version of the word for professors – quality in the classroom – is connected to the professor’s ability to manage questions or the art of questioning. For this is the life-blood of the university, not providing an exchangeable service. The university should be equally preparing people for career and civic life – a life where the answers are not forthcoming, and we are generally operating on a best-guess basis. Those who can sift through the questions, reframe them, and suggest directions for answers are of the most value to society.
Training young people that older people will come along and spout out the unsatisfying, yet appropriate answer to everything is not the way to prepare people for a functioning society of any kind. What the author of the Chronicle piece has as her conclusion – that a student confronted with a professor who willingly admits she does not know the answers can inform career and life choices – should be the introduction to the preparation of future faculty and teachers for the classroom. 

Robin Williams and Immersive Invention

This New York Times article about Robin Williams’s habits of preparation for engagement with audiences raises a lot of interesting ideas when rhetoricians talk about invention – the art of coming up with what to say, or as I like to call it “putting something together.” I often talk about argument construction in terms of assembly, and it seems Williams had created quite the assembly method for his own practice of inventio.


Rhetoricians most regularly teach invention when they are teaching debaters or when they are teaching a course such as public speaking, or another “performance” course, as some in the field call them. We generally seem to teach a trajectory where we claim that rhetoric is a powerful, meaning-making field that is capable of creating everything from emotion to fact. Then we turn around and deduct lots of grading points off of student work that doesn’t include “quality” citations or information. That information needs to come from good sources, which, according to our own rhetoric, come from somewhere other than rhetoric. This can leave an aftertaste in students’ mouths that rhetoric is something of a servile art, something that dresses up information that is determined to be valid and meaningful elsewhere, through other methods that are far removed from the rhetorical world.

Contrast this approach to how Williams created his rhetoric. He immersed himself in topical readings and held conversations with many people. He secretly polled the audience for their pathos, yet at the same time respected the ethics of the Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca Universal Audience – making sure that his words were not just pandering to those who might uncritically accept them. What’s missing from this article is how Williams decided to combine what he was reading with what would get his audience to adhere or assent to his desire – he wanted them to laugh, to “get it” whenever he would perform, I am assuming. Perhaps an explanation is the ancient rhetorical method of copiousness – surrounding and immersing oneself in topoi in order to have the invention come out of the soup, so to speak. But it seems Williams was much more selective than that. He chose his books, moments, and topics with precision, based on the situation he was facing, and the issues that the public were attuned to.

Tribute after tribute to Williams indicates his ability to very quickly generate relevant, effective material that did not rely on old jokes, or previous methods to get a laugh. This might not be the marker of genius, which is what CNN and other news outlets call it. Genius might be the pathos we feel as the result of watching a master of invention display the results of the immersion-invention he spent his life developing. I see it as an excellent model for teaching invention to those who wish to be constantly engaged with audiences in ways that parallel the work that Williams was doing.

What would public speaking be like if we assigned each student to become immersed in a relevant, topical issue facing the public which we imagine they will be addressing in life? Would each student come up with a different way to generate new material week to week about the same thing? Instead of the horrible public speaking textbook, why not require them to spend $80 to $100 on books about their issue? Have them keep a notebook, digital or otherwise, where they are engaged and combining this material to keep the class interested and excited about their weekly presentation? Could examples such as Williams finally push public speaking out of the delivery business, as formal and cold as the scientific facts that is supposedly services in our classes and into the warm world of ancient rhetoric, where it was not only the source of knowledge, but provided the boundaries for the recognition of knowledge as such?

Another way to ask that last question might be – Would we recognize Williams as a genius without his method of invention, uniquely his, but something we identify in our responses to his rhetoric?

Robin Williams and Immersive Invention

This New York Times article about Robin Williams’s habits of preparation for engagement with audiences raises a lot of interesting ideas when rhetoricians talk about invention – the art of coming up with what to say, or as I like to call it “putting something together.” I often talk about argument construction in terms of assembly, and it seems Williams had created quite the assembly method for his own practice of inventio.


Rhetoricians most regularly teach invention when they are teaching debaters or when they are teaching a course such as public speaking, or another “performance” course, as some in the field call them. We generally seem to teach a trajectory where we claim that rhetoric is a powerful, meaning-making field that is capable of creating everything from emotion to fact. Then we turn around and deduct lots of grading points off of student work that doesn’t include “quality” citations or information. That information needs to come from good sources, which, according to our own rhetoric, come from somewhere other than rhetoric. This can leave an aftertaste in students’ mouths that rhetoric is something of a servile art, something that dresses up information that is determined to be valid and meaningful elsewhere, through other methods that are far removed from the rhetorical world.

Contrast this approach to how Williams created his rhetoric. He immersed himself in topical readings and held conversations with many people. He secretly polled the audience for their pathos, yet at the same time respected the ethics of the Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca Universal Audience – making sure that his words were not just pandering to those who might uncritically accept them. What’s missing from this article is how Williams decided to combine what he was reading with what would get his audience to adhere or assent to his desire – he wanted them to laugh, to “get it” whenever he would perform, I am assuming. Perhaps an explanation is the ancient rhetorical method of copiousness – surrounding and immersing oneself in topoi in order to have the invention come out of the soup, so to speak. But it seems Williams was much more selective than that. He chose his books, moments, and topics with precision, based on the situation he was facing, and the issues that the public were attuned to.

Tribute after tribute to Williams indicates his ability to very quickly generate relevant, effective material that did not rely on old jokes, or previous methods to get a laugh. This might not be the marker of genius, which is what CNN and other news outlets call it. Genius might be the pathos we feel as the result of watching a master of invention display the results of the immersion-invention he spent his life developing. I see it as an excellent model for teaching invention to those who wish to be constantly engaged with audiences in ways that parallel the work that Williams was doing.

What would public speaking be like if we assigned each student to become immersed in a relevant, topical issue facing the public which we imagine they will be addressing in life? Would each student come up with a different way to generate new material week to week about the same thing? Instead of the horrible public speaking textbook, why not require them to spend $80 to $100 on books about their issue? Have them keep a notebook, digital or otherwise, where they are engaged and combining this material to keep the class interested and excited about their weekly presentation? Could examples such as Williams finally push public speaking out of the delivery business, as formal and cold as the scientific facts that is supposedly services in our classes and into the warm world of ancient rhetoric, where it was not only the source of knowledge, but provided the boundaries for the recognition of knowledge as such?

Another way to ask that last question might be – Would we recognize Williams as a genius without his method of invention, uniquely his, but something we identify in our responses to his rhetoric?

Debate Coaches and the Canon of Invention

How do most debate coaches teach the canon of inventio? By pointing toward tournament success. By showing videos of good, successful speeches. By having students watch and learn from those who have won big tournaments. By getting them to read, or cut, or memorize the sources of the arguments that the winners have run. Well, usually not read.

In short, they don’t teach it. They teach debaters how to copy what happens at the “best” tournaments. They teach a hermetic, repetitive, and limited form of invention, the basics – use what works for your goal.

Over time, this becomes conflated in the minds of the debaters as something ontological. Because they are good at coming up with persuasive arguments in tournament settings, they must be good at inventio broadly. They must be good at argument if they are good at debating.

For whatever reasons, historical or practical, we are at a point in history where debate coaches are somewhat embarrassed to admit that they spend most of their time teaching the rules of a limited game. I think perhaps we have bought our own story that we are teaching some sort of democratic engagement, or some sort of larger connection to helping others understand the human condition.

I think that’s the value of debate for sure, but I think in order to get there – and not create people who have an artificially inflated conception of their rhetorical prowess, we need to place the tournament in proper perspective – as something that is a subset of a larger category: rhetorical situations. Debate should be the place that the department and the university come to for help across the curriculum in the category of coming up with persuasive, engaging arguments. But we simply don’t have the ability to do that now. We come up with arguments that often confuse the audience, justifying it with tropes such as “they don’t understand debating,” or “In a real debate this would work.” A real debate is a far cry from a tournament debate. What’s wrong with teaching that?

In speech comm derived rhetoric, there is a real lack of exploration of invention and pedagogy right now, but in English composition derived rhetoric there’s a lot of cool stuff that speech comm people often overlook. Perhaps debate coaches could recover some of their value by being the go-between in invention. They could be the people who have the knowledge and ability to connect rhetorical resources in invention between fields, and for fields that haven’t thought much about it as an art. In short, debate coaches should be the Sophists-in-residence at their school. Instead of “come to us if you want to learn what debate really is” – something a philosopher might say, we should say “Come to us if you want others to learn from you.” For that is, if you get down to the root of it, what the sophists were teaching – the art of making sense out of something senseless, complex, or confusing.

I found this book the other day and the requisite praising of it among composition teachers. Where are the speech communication people? Where are the debaters? Books like this and their value should be standard issue for those teaching rhetoric. Why discriminate? Why did I not hear about this book in my PhD work? Why are we embarrassed to teach the creation of arguments? Why do we quickly substitute things like the tournament for the hard work of invention, or the criticism paper for the difficult work of confronting a difficult issue in front of an audience that wishes to be engaged?

Surely it isn’t simply because it’s difficult and hard to measure. A trophy is a clear sign. Too bad it’s not made equally clear how limited a sign it is.

Debate Coaches and the Canon of Invention

How do most debate coaches teach the canon of inventio? By pointing toward tournament success. By showing videos of good, successful speeches. By having students watch and learn from those who have won big tournaments. By getting them to read, or cut, or memorize the sources of the arguments that the winners have run. Well, usually not read.

In short, they don’t teach it. They teach debaters how to copy what happens at the “best” tournaments. They teach a hermetic, repetitive, and limited form of invention, the basics – use what works for your goal.

Over time, this becomes conflated in the minds of the debaters as something ontological. Because they are good at coming up with persuasive arguments in tournament settings, they must be good at inventio broadly. They must be good at argument if they are good at debating.

For whatever reasons, historical or practical, we are at a point in history where debate coaches are somewhat embarrassed to admit that they spend most of their time teaching the rules of a limited game. I think perhaps we have bought our own story that we are teaching some sort of democratic engagement, or some sort of larger connection to helping others understand the human condition.

I think that’s the value of debate for sure, but I think in order to get there – and not create people who have an artificially inflated conception of their rhetorical prowess, we need to place the tournament in proper perspective – as something that is a subset of a larger category: rhetorical situations. Debate should be the place that the department and the university come to for help across the curriculum in the category of coming up with persuasive, engaging arguments. But we simply don’t have the ability to do that now. We come up with arguments that often confuse the audience, justifying it with tropes such as “they don’t understand debating,” or “In a real debate this would work.” A real debate is a far cry from a tournament debate. What’s wrong with teaching that?

In speech comm derived rhetoric, there is a real lack of exploration of invention and pedagogy right now, but in English composition derived rhetoric there’s a lot of cool stuff that speech comm people often overlook. Perhaps debate coaches could recover some of their value by being the go-between in invention. They could be the people who have the knowledge and ability to connect rhetorical resources in invention between fields, and for fields that haven’t thought much about it as an art. In short, debate coaches should be the Sophists-in-residence at their school. Instead of “come to us if you want to learn what debate really is” – something a philosopher might say, we should say “Come to us if you want others to learn from you.” For that is, if you get down to the root of it, what the sophists were teaching – the art of making sense out of something senseless, complex, or confusing.

I found this book the other day and the requisite praising of it among composition teachers. Where are the speech communication people? Where are the debaters? Books like this and their value should be standard issue for those teaching rhetoric. Why discriminate? Why did I not hear about this book in my PhD work? Why are we embarrassed to teach the creation of arguments? Why do we quickly substitute things like the tournament for the hard work of invention, or the criticism paper for the difficult work of confronting a difficult issue in front of an audience that wishes to be engaged?

Surely it isn’t simply because it’s difficult and hard to measure. A trophy is a clear sign. Too bad it’s not made equally clear how limited a sign it is.