The New York Sophist

Debate as a competition, contest, a battle, a winner-take-all proposition where evil is vanquished, virtue is on the line, and truth hangs in the balance. We can’t be stalwart protectors of the truth; we are inadequate to defend it. People won’t listen to scientists/information/facts. What can we do? We can repeat ourselves and become more intense. We can become angry and march around. But if we agree to debate something true, something that is noble and good, and we lose – well that’s bad because . . . it’s not true anymore? It’s not the right way to do things? Nobody is really sure what the bad thing is but it is bad.

Somehow if we lose a debate, it means that our good and true belief is no longer good. I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think what it means is that you need to find/create/orient new positions toward that audience. If you think that the position you hold is good, and good for more than just yourself (i.e. “I really should spend less time on the computer before bed” versus “using a screen before bed seriously harms your health”) why wouldn’t you want to enter into conversation with someone else about it? Why wouldn’t you want to convince them? Or do you just not care about people who don’t immediately hold your views?

There’s a strong sentiment out there that debate makes truth trivial, that it opens up questioning of things that are right, good, virtuous, and true. This is a very odd position, and one that unquestionably is anchored to a Platonic view – that appearances are more attractive than reality, and they will drive us away from the good and true if we are not vigilant. The truth has to appear in a raw and ugly manner, and if you don’t like it, you are an idiot.

But if things that are good and true need to be adopted and believed by a community, understood as part of a larger program of social good – laws and other sorts of policies, even everyday behavior between people – it has to be communicated. This means that it has to be engaged, questioned, interrogated, and altered. Everyone knows a suit is a great way to dress professionally. Simultaneously, everyone knows that a suit must be tailored, or it is going to look like a joke. If it doesn’t fit properly, it won’t be taken seriously – and neither will the person wearing it.

Adaptability in truth and good information is where debate comes in. If you lose a debate with someone over an issue or belief or truth you care about deeply, it can really upset you. You might feel like you’ve totally failed in the service of the good. This is a feeling based on the idea that you are totally responsible for making sure people realize what is true, and if you miss your chance, you’ve screwed up. This feeling is also based on the idea that people are incapable of seeing what’s good or right on their own and need someone to “open their eyes.”

These assumptions are not very productive. Instead, perhaps you can think of your own relation to your belief and re-examine it to make sure you really are right about it. That shouldn’t take too long if it’s a well-formed belief. Then you should consider what went wrong in the engagement you had with your opponent. What did you not have that would have really helped them get it? What did you have that really turned them off? What is the relation between these missing or present articulations and the background and attitude of the person? This can send you looking for people who are of your attitude and belief and see how they articulated their position to people like this. The internet is a great thing as it is primarily a collection of situated utterances that you can sift through and find articulations that work for you.

But also debating is a cooperative endeavor, like driving or dancing. You cannot just charge ahead doing what you want simply because you “know better.” You have to think about things like leading, indicators, yielding, speed, and merging. Tempo is also vital. The list can go on, but my point is this: If you think about what you are doing as cooperating both with your opponent and with the important concept/belief/truth/good that you want them to accept, you will find that debate is a very joyful examination of the different ways one can put something together (or take it apart). It’s in the realm of inquiry and making, not in the realm of smashing, destroying, or fumigating (which is what most people think debate is).

You’ll be able to find articulations of what is important and vital that you can adjust to many different people. And if they still don’t believe you, or walk away, or leave in a huff don’t worry – this is not the last time they will encounter this attitude or belief. You might be the person who has softened the landing for a future debate they will be in, or they will go home and google what you said and find a way to take it in that they would not have found without your engagement. This is the scariest part about debate avoidance: The idea that if you don’t win in that moment, there’s no other moment that might come along. People really do avoid debating because they are afraid, they won’t win or be able to convince their opponent, and that would be worse than losing. If debate is cooperative, as I believe it is, nothing could be further from the truth of what this engagement, this discourse, this art is.

People who believe serious social and political issues are harmed through debate are speaking from a position of egocentrism: “I know this is the right thing, if I debate someone, they will just use tricks and be stupid and make me angry.” If the issue is so vital, why not take the hit? The value is one that might appeal to the egocentric person: You find new and different ways to articulate what matters to you greatly. Secondly, you do the truth and the good a service by inserting your articulations into the mind of another. Although they dismissed them now, it might not be the right time, or it might be the first time they’ve thought about it. Later on, those utterances will return in their mind, and could prove to be very useful for a future encounter, far from you, far from this moment, where they will appreciate and even accept the truth you find to be so vital.

Completionism Perversion and Profit

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The music I was listening to when writing this.

I have an earlier post where I started this series of some of my operating assumptions approaching teaching in a real-life classroom after the COVID lockdowns. My assumption is that students see and feel the classroom quite differently than our pedagogy would assume, and some changes need to be made.

As the term is progressing, I am already seeing my hypothesis coming back in an altered form. Here’s what I initially came up with at the start of the term:

1. Visual Stimulation is Required

2. Students expect completion equals quality

3. Interaction in class is unnecessary

4. Class is a solo experience

I’m wondering about the first one, now that I find they are a bit more engaged when I use the board and not the powerpoint slides. Although the whiteboard is a visual aid, it’s not the type or kind of visuality that I assumed would be essential.

As for point two, I do believe that students think that if they complete an assigmnent on-time, or even during the course of the semester, that assignment should get an A. The highest grade is what one gets for finishing the work assigned.

The reasoning behind this is unclear, but I see a couple of different ways to make the argument for this work from the student point of view. The first is the argument from bad assignment design. It goes like this:

“This assignment is forced upon me, makes little to no sense in relation to really anything going on in the class or elsewhere, I don’t understand why we are doing this, I just need to get it done to get the points.”

This argument is based on a warrant of justice in equality. If the professor doesn’t communicate a sense of care or caring then why should I care? If the professor is unclear about the assignment’s connection to the class, the world, life, or even itself, then completion is the aim, and I should be rewarded. That’s the only think that is fair and just.

The second argument is a bit difficult but it has something I think to do with the idea that effort itself deserves recognition. This is not the boomer favorite argument that kids today all got too many participation trophies and therefore can’t function without serious recognition for basic tasks.

I see this argument as very capitalistic – I did what you asked me to do so pay me – but additionally and more interestingly I see this argument as a perversion of a claim that method matters – a twisted version of “show me your work” but taken quite literally.

I had a couple of students over the past year really get infuriated and perplexed that turning in assignments that didn’t meet the lowest requirements on the rubric in multiple categories didn’t pass. “I did it” was the refrain. It seemed impossible for them to understand that you could do all the assignments and fail the course.

A more direct and applicable explanation of how method is evaluated might be the solution here. As an experiment I go over the rubric a few times with the students and talk about how to improve quality. I also allow students to redo assignments if they made a low grade. What’s funny to me is that for most students a C or a B is a low grade and pretty much unacceptable, but sometimes when an assignment is redone it’s hard for me to see the difference in the two attempts. Perhaps their interpretation is still rooted in “getting it done” as the source of points.

Thinking of this as a perverse interpretation of a method-centric assessment modality is a great way to find inroads for addressing it. Yes, of course it feels good to game the system, get the reward, and also point out the silly relationship between action and pleasure by connecting the logic of it too literally (in classical perversion this is often discussed as an inversion of the letter of the law). But what do you really get out of it except a good feeling for yourself?

Assignment design should take into account this kind of pleasure and make sure that the idea of being able to do something with the material outside of the class, the school, the degree requirements is what is forwarded. Making the classroom the site of persuasive oratory, even on required assignments, helps change student attitude by articulating reasons behind the assignment (motives) that then the students will see as powerful, good, and helpful things. This can really move them away from the “pay me” or “perversion” mindset of completed work.

I hope to update some of these posts later in the spring to see where we are by that point. I’m thinking that all of these assumptions are going to change the more I work with my students this term.

Invention, out of the five canons of rhetoric, is to me the most difficult to teach. All of our materials are designed to, in Paul Elbow’s brilliant phrasing, help students play the “doubting game” – finding what’s wrong with the source, the source’s source, the strength of the argument, or the internal connection between the support and the claim. There is seldom any discussion about how to build an argument because school – no matter what level it is – has at its dark center the conviction that all graduates will be consumers, first and foremost.

Chat GPT is making the media rounds and scaring teachers and professors. Good. They are right to be afraid, as the market has created a tool that will render their terrible, consumption-based assignments useless. Good riddance to the essay that is assigned just to see if a student can remember to mention class discussion, lecture, Canvas discussion board notes, and readings in an interesting re-telling of the importance of a concept (concept’s importance pre-determined, by the way). This kind of education is exactly what Chat GPT interrupts, offering a more pleasant, more student-controlled interaction with the content of a subject.

This is just an example of the types of videos that are springing up explaining to people what Chat GPT can do in terms of teaching you things. From the point of view of teaching that we get in a film, or a TV show, this video is right. You get the information in how to do something on the spot, and it seems rather passable.

The fear is so real among all the mid professors and mid teachers out there that they are scrambling to find electronic tools to scope out if students have used Chat GPT on one of their terrible assignments. Please note that these are the same people who can barely use computers, have trouble with the internet regularly, and can never get their PowerPoint to work. This is all laughable to them: “Oh, technology!” they say to peals of laughter from colleagues. This is all funny to them, but they are all to eager to use laughably bad and cringe technology like Respondus Lockdown Browser (super-popular among my colleagues) to really catch students in the act of cheating/being evil/exposing their horribleness, etc.

These same people now feel they are qualified to understand a technology in its infancy, something that detects AI generated text (whatever that means) and then fail the student for “cheating.” But students are already getting ahead of this horrible game, spending even more precious study time preparing to protect themselves against their technically illiterate professors.

The reason student writing looks artificial and triggers the app is because you are asking students to produce flat texts. You want a report on what you think is important, professor. This processed meat assignment is exactly what Chat GPT has come for with a faster, cheaper, and better processed meat. Why are we making this again?

What Chat GPT does that is more profound is raise the question of what “education” is. What does it mean to learn? What does it mean to be educated? Perhaps instead of measuring “doing something” perhaps we should switch to this concept of “process” – something we hear administrators and professors talking about all the time without really doing the work to figure out how to measure it.

We have to realize that the people who might ask Chat GPT to write a bland and uninteresting paper in response to a bland and uninteresting “prompt” are not saying they are bad people, they are criticizing the professor’s bad assignment design. There’s nothing worth their time here, why not mail it in and spend their precious time working on something else that matters more?

Many times where I work, I’ve had students come to me confused and frustrated by the (too many) philosophy courses they are required to take in the core curriculum. I always suggest going to YouTube to find supporting lectures and material on the difficult texts they are asked to read and write about. Some of the best lecturers in the world are on YouTube, from the finest universities in the world – no artificial here in the intelligence – as students learn from the top teachers at Yale, Stanford, Oxford, and the like. Is this not a threat to the traditional university structure? Or is this not cheating?

Invention – creating something meaningful from the interaction of a mind, a perspective, a collection of texts, and an audience to reach – is the solution here. Rhetoric is the solution to this problem. Asking students to create something where they use the material of the course to make a claim or series of claims about something they care about renders Chat GPT to the level of the philosophy YouTube videos: Engagement with a source that can help spark composition.

Chat GPT is like ancient modes of teaching rhetoric. Have a look at examples, then more examples, and try to figure out why and how they work. Then you can see why something is appealing. Chat GPT is appealing because it is often pitch-perfect on certain asks. The question is why and how is that appealing to us, the human audience? If we can investigate that, Chat GPT becomes a wonderful tool to help spark more engaging, human composition.

Imagining students writing or speaking in a way that is pleasing to the professor is gross if unexamined. That’s not education. Having students think about an audience and trying to connect with them through composition is tough. That requires more than the night before, cut and paste, fourth result from Google search. Is that really worse than Chat GPT? Is it really different?

Thinking about teaching a process of creation and making something that would be pleasing to an audience, move them, and make them interested in your thoughts and ideas is what students want. It also happens to be what teaching is. It’s too bad so many colleagues spend so many hours worried about rule-breaking, unfair grades, and other such nonsense. That’s not what teaching is about. It’s about process, and figuring out how to use any arriving system or tool as such. Chat GPT – and whatever is coming after it next year – must be incorporated into our teaching, and our teaching must be oriented toward invention.

Attention and the Visual in the Classroom

My Current Listening Habits

I offer this series of posts as a way of thinking through what I’m doing in class this semester after what I painfully learned last semester. I’m not trying to box in these students, but unbox them in a way. The pandemic, and its educational requirements boxed them in pretty well and not just figuratively. Zoom classroom is very boxy and has given rise to some assumptions and practices that have to be recognized. I have a very short list here of some things I’ve identified but it is not meant to be exhaustive or universally descriptive of all students.

This is just one post of about 4 or 5 I’m thinking about. Here’s the full list of what’s coming:

1. Visual Stimulation is Required

2. Students expect completion equals quality

1. Interaction in class is unnecessary

1. Class is a solo experience

This post is on the first one, about the role of visual stimulation.

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Argument 1: Students need a lot of visual stimulation

One of the mistakes we make as professors is thinking that our title, status, and deep understanding of a field is enough to garner and capture attention from our students. We don’t feel that it is necessary or even appropriate to try to make the subject matter more accessible and interesting for students, particularly in the required classes that are often called the “general ed” or “core” courses that, theoretically, are meant to help all students get on the same page or starting point for the rest of their university work.

Rhetoric holds as a central and primary principle that the speaker needs to work to both prepare the audience for what they are about to speak about and also show them the value of it to get and keep their interest. One of the ways of doing this is to figure out what the audience already finds valuable and important. Once you understand these assumptions, you can work to link what you want them to believe – the changes in feeling and thought that you want to have happen – to things they already hold as good and valuable.

One of the things the lockdown provided students was the ability to look at multiple visual stimulus at the same time they were in class. On Zoom you can easily open other windows and be engaged in other things while listening in class. This creates an ecology – or a system – of attention and engagement that students came to rely on during the pandemic that is obviously not going to appear appropriate or work well in the traditional classroom.

Perhaps the classroom projector, smartboard, or other video source could be used in this way, to show background video without sound to keep attention while listening? Tik Tok offers these videos now as a form of attention keeping where the split screen shows something unrelated happening that is somewhat interesting while listening to someone speak on the other half.

Mirroring the digital environment they are used to – the old rhetorical strategy of mimesis, is thought of by those invested in “Truth” and “Fact” and “really real” things as an unethical and inappropriate discount. From the sophistic perspective, it’s the only way to get buy-in on the issues that matter – comfort and familiarity are as important, if not more so, than information and research. Perhaps we could go as far to say they make those latter two categories identifiable.

Fidelity to the students before you rather than fidelity to some standard of purity of the field, or purity of information – or even the idea that I’ve heard professors say that students should adapt to what professors do because they are so lucky to be in college – are all failing propositions if you really do want to educate people.

When I was a graduate student in speech communication rhetoric, we never read any composition rhetoric scholars. I would find people like Steven Mailloux and Jan Swearingen and others back in those days, and I was told that the trouble with such work is that compositionists focus too much on teaching, not the larger picture. I was very confused by this because teaching is nothing but the larger picture. I wonder what the value of rhetorical criticism is, outside of a class environment, considering nobody but a very highly limited, paywalled, difficult to access journal in the deep corner of some database is the only place where you will ever find such work.

I believe this year I’m going to transform into a compositionist both theoretically and practically. The biggest advantage I have here is that I work in the oral tradition – speech and debate. Of course there are forms like speechwriting, and of course we can have debates that simmer on for centuries across thousands of pages of books. But what I know best, what I’m focused on and really feel like I have something good to share and help others with is with ideas shared via speech.

Speech gets a bad wrap, primarily from its own field, where it’s tossed aside as a collection of modalities one teaches like a ritual to young people. Again if rhetorical criticism was so important, why is that not the public speaking course? Anyway I can ask that question after everything I say here so I’ll just stop. The point is an easy one: The distance between our public speaking courses and what most speech communication rhetors do is so vast that most of our students wouldn’t be able to connect the introductory public speaking course to any other course in the major at the university.

Composition though is a direct line. All people teaching in writing programs, or teaching WAC, or composition, are also writing themselves, often a variety of different kinds of texts for different audiences, and are grappling with writing because they are engaged in the conversation with themselves in a way we aren’t. We are not interested in quality presentations, oral presentation, persuading and engaging audiences (just attend any NCA panel and you’ll see this first hand). Compositionists are very interested in reaching audiences through practice because they are doing it and they are deeply engaged in teaching themselves through a regular practice of writing.

Teaching public speaking this way would require a regular practice of speaking. Few rhetoricians do that in speech communication; they are too busy writing for an audience of 5 to 10 in paywalled journals. I wonder if podcasting/vlogging could ever gain legitimacy as a publication in the way that people are forced to treat written production in the academy?

Teaching this way also requires immersion in some other substance than modality. Modality is not about anything; it’s transparent. So teaching a “how to” speech isn’t teaching anything other than a mode of address. Wouldn’t it be better to engage some texts and then determine a mode of reaction/engagement/concurrence?

What I’ve done is assign a few books along the lines of Aristotle’s idea of three kinds of rhetorical approach: Forensic (speech about the past; what happened?) Epidictic (Speech about the present; what matters?) and Deliberative (Speech about the future; what should we do/be done?)

For Forensic rhetoric American Dialogue by Joseph Ellis; for Epidictic On Dialogue by David Bohm; and for Deliberative, On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason. Each one tries to engage in this kind of rhetoric that it is associated with: Ellis on arguing what happened with the constitution and rights and what that means today; Bohm setting up dialogue for high praise over other forms of discourse in society, and Magnason using family stories, nostalgia, illustration, and reflection to argue for immediate and swift response to the global climate crisis.

The other big change is that I’ve moved the speeches out of the classroom and onto the internet. I think web video – the technology of laptop and phone cameras and computers – is to be taken advantage of for the practice of speech. Where is the public now if not on the other side of some laptop screen somewhere? How are you my audience without ink and paper? It’s the same move and it should be investigated if not fully practiced. More on that later.

At the end of this semester (sometime around June I imagine) I’ll report back and follow up on this post to see how it went.