Potential course in rhetoric of politics and argumentation
Occasionally a writing assignment comes to me and it is SO GREAT OMG I LOVE IT and then I wonder how, exactly, I’m going to justify it in an ENGLISH class. Especially when my lighting bolt is about politics, and I do not teach political science, or American studies, or anything of that ilk. But English isn’t a bad place to bring those ideas in, since their ideologic complexity and the expression of it is essentially what we do in composition.
The main idea
So here’s the idea I had today. After I put enough thought into the class in order to devise a pedagogical justification for it, I would divide the class into two, or maybe three if we’re feeling generous, political parties and ask students in each group to collaboratively come up with a figure they would like to see elected president. What positions, issues, background, education, experience, etc. would they want to see in their elected official?
But where it gets interesting would be to ask them to weigh idealism with pragmatism: what do they wish to see, but what would they be willing to accommodate — or, heaven forbid, actually compromise on — in order for the candidate to be electable?
Collaboration
I think the collaborative part of this assignment is the best part because students will have to grapple with the way idealism and cynicism collide when it comes to politics, and to me that is one of the toughest things to figure out: what is sacred, what is necessary, what is effective — and what isn’t. Groups, to me, are the best place to tussle with these issues because there is real dialogue, as opposed to what you often see and read.
Even better, students would have to dig deeply into issues that we encounter every day, but there’d be little room — if devised correctly — for them to keep to shallow preconceptions. Especially in a group. At the very least, they’d have to consider candidates’ stances on abortion, immigration, the environment, energy, entitlements, defense spending, education, crime, poverty, jobs — I could go on.
Breaking it down
I suppose that if I did this assignment over a quarter, there would be three main writing assignments. First, students could do early, individual papers on those issues mentioned above that they in turn share with the group at large as it collaborates on creating its ideal candidate. Students would need to be well informed on the issues in order to decide how to position their candidate, so if each student (approx. 13 students per group, so 13 issues covered) researches and writes a paper laying out the national conversation on, say, abortion, and presents the various sides of the debate, the group could use that paper — and each of the 13 papers — to become better informed as they make their choices.
The second assignment would be the collaborative, and hopefully creative and multimodal, presentation of their ideal candidate. Would they have a man or woman, old or young, conservative or liberal; would the candidate be a member of a minority group; what experience, background, and qualifications would help this candidate succeed; and most of all, what positions would this candidate take, and what positions would s/he be willing to compromise on in order to be elected? Students could actually create a candidate (like a doll, or an image), and would turn in a collaborative paper and/or portfolio laying out the stances on important issues this candidate takes. Perhaps a student in the group could even play the role of the candidate and give a speech in class. Students could design campaign ads and bumper stickers (using rhetorical moves learned in class) to include in the portfolio….
One of the troubles with this assignment is that students may disagree with the group in terms of what stance they believe their candidate should take. For example, a student may be ardently anti-abortion and have qualms over collaborating in a group with a pro-choice candidate. This final writing assignment is where the student reflects on the process whereby the group arrived at its candidate, and, if s/he felt it necessary, explain his/her position(s) that deviate(s) from the group. I would probably also have students talk about what they learned about rhetoric and persuasion. It is not my mission indoctrinate my students into my political beliefs; it is my mission to have students carefully consider issues and write about them thoughtfully. And there is no field better suited to the study of rhetoric than politics.
Optional activities and assignments:
- Political debate between the two (or three) candidates
- Class (or wider) election
- Research opportunities including surveys and focus groups
- Students could make new parties rather than keeping the traditional Democrat/Republican model
Constraints
Here are my current constraints, and there are many more I haven’t even had time to consider:
- I will teach ENGL 122, which is essentially argumentation. …This curriculum seems well suited toward argumentation, actually — I kept thinking of obstacles but they seem surmountable. But is it fair to ask all my students — a couple of whom are not even U.S. citizens — to spend all quarter on a political theme? Especially in a world already supersaturated with campaigns — although isn’t understanding that world part of what an education is about? Plus the inclusion of rhetorical analysis is well suited to political rhetoric….
- I also teach similar classes in a penitentiary where my students’ do not currently have (and for some, will never have) the right to vote, so this curriculum would be useless there.
- The amount of time the collaborative part of this project would take seems prohibitive. I could easily see two or three weeks of the quarter disappearing down a rabbit hole while students self-democratize to get the collaborative part done. We might need an online (or Google Docs) forum for students to collaborate in their own time.
- Honestly, are traditionally aged college freshman going to be interested enough to keep up a full head of steam on this project for an entire quarter?
Ooo, fascinating assignment ideas! Random thoughts in no coherent order:
- I do think students can keep engaged with a political theme all quarter long. At least that was my experience on a semester schedule the last time I taught argumentation. I found that my students appreciated debating “real” topics and not simulations especially during an election year.
- Groups of 13 seem way unwieldly.
- The collaboration part does take time, but I think it’s worth the effort usually. Can you allot 10 minutes per class period for the teams to touch base? I tend to make my students develop a charter by the second week of the semester and then have regular meetings. (Of course, that it “small group” class, so it’s different)
- I just sat through a lecture on principled negotiation based on the book “Getting to Yes.” It might provide a useful framework to teach students *how* to negotiate their positions, compromise, etc.
Sounds like a great assignment!
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To your constraints: 1) Yes, definitely fair to ask your students to spend all quarter on it. If the class is argumentation, politics is the perfect playground for that. 2) Even without the right to vote, the abilities to speak one’s viewpoint or organize a group and get something done are great abilities to develop. 3) Even with some lost time, still seems like a good idea. 4) Do you have anything to bribe them with? Prizes, food, candy?
Basically, I say go for it. Sounds like a great idea.
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I think this is a fabulous course design. Have you read Team Writing by Joanna Wolfe? She has excellent ideas for how to help students effectively and efficiently collaborate. It might be a text you want students to read.
13 does seem like huge teams to me. I would stay with 5 or 6 per team.
When taught composition, I always used a central theme such as the enviornment, race and ethnicity, immigration, etc. I think it works well because they learn how important this level of depth with a topic improves their ability to write about it.
Karen
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Chelsey replied:
February 13th, 2012 at 17:31
Thanks for the text suggestion — I’ll look into it.
You all make good points about the group size; perhaps I would divide the class in half along traditional liberal/conservative lines, then have, say, a “primary” where there are two liberal groups and two conservative groups each presenting a collaborative candidate. I do think we need a wider range of papers per group so each group of 5-6 students isn’t just looking at 5-6 issues. So perhaps two larger groups for sharing research on issues (e.g. the groups of 13) and then four subgroups to devise candidates….? Or perhaps the groups of 13 are unnecessary and we could have 26 different researched issues that are shared with the class at large…? That’s a lot of issues, though.
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As someone who hasn’t approached these things from a teaching standpoint, I know my perspective is limited, but…
I freaking love it. It would provide a perspective that most people seem to lack. Something similar should be in the curriculum everywhere. It seems to expand on an area covered, to some degree, in a logic (philosophy) class that I took. It might be beneficial to start the course by covering some of that material as a foundation, or possibly have it as a prerequisite, although I guess it would have to be a 200 level class in that case.
I agree that getting 13 people to work together, particularly in areas which can become emotionally charged, might be challenging. It occurs to me that it might be beneficial to provide a semi-fictional political environment and fabricated issues for the candidates to address in order to avoid some of the emotional issues with current topics. Perhaps with the tools in their toolbox, the students could then apply them to real current issues in their papers, without having it affect the group dynamic negatively or “turning them off” before they’ve really acquired the critical thinking tools I assume you’re trying to provide.
I’d take that class (and everyone would hate me).
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Chelsey replied:
February 13th, 2012 at 20:22
Yeah, I mean it won’t be a logic or philosophy class per se, but we’ll cover the rhetorical triangle and rhetorical analysis at the beginning of the quarter, so they’d have a foundation to start building their arguments on.
Upon further review, the final paper would probably be a position paper (this is an argumentation class, after all) where students argue for their real candidate of choice.
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You have to do this in some form!
I realize it removes some of the “punch” but if you shifted it away from presidential politics to some other backdrop, it might allow certain people to engage in the course material more? My best idea is a more local race. As ones stance on abortion really doesn’t matter for the mayor of WW, but a lot of the ideas you want to teach would still apply.
As a varisty level slacker of a student I believe I can provide other unique perspectives…
Groups are hard, especially large groups like that. After somebody is elected leader, usually by playing a quick game of “not it”. I would pretty much pick the path of least resistance going toward completion. One person usually ends up doing most of the work, once I learned that, I just made sure it wasn’t me. The coloabaration will be dominated by those that already have some skill and inclination toward debate. Pushing the others into will need to be done very intentionally. Also it feels very broad, which as a slacker, I always loved, as it really opened up my options for how I could throw something together quick that still seemed legit. The more you can focus this down the easier it will be to get them to focus on what you are trying to teach, as opposed to how much they hate people that want to ban birth control.
It might streamline things if you gave them something more to start from. Building political parties and platforms from scratch seems like an insane amount of work from where I sit. What elements are going to just add time and busy work vs. what will tie into concepts from argumentation? What if you just grabbed the official party platforms as starting points?
What if you left the polarizing political stuff in, but figured out what their big issue was, then made them take the other side? I’m not sure I love this…
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Great idea — sounds like a lot of fun to me. At least a lot of fun to participate in as a student, but perhaps not to grade… A few thoughts:
- I agree with others that groups of 13 or so might be difficult. I’d recommend smaller groups for a couple reasons — 1) It encourages actual discussion by making it more difficult for people to intentionally slip into the background and also making it easier for those who want to speak up to feel comfortable doing so. I think smaller group dynamics are generally just easier for discussion all around. 2) You could have a wider variety of nuanced opinions divided among smaller groups — more than just “you be conservative, you be liberal, and you be moderate”. It would be more like a parliamentary system than the U.S. two-ish party system. Which leads me into my next point…
- If you have a larger number of nuanced groups, you could say that they have to try and form a majority coalition, which would force them to decide what things they are willing to give up for the sake of ruling power and what things they are going to keep even if it means not having the ability to actually implement their closely-held ideas. Again, the parliamentary system, of sorts.
- It is going to be easier to get these nuanced opinions if you tell them what their opinions are, which is more work for you and might somewhat go against what you’re trying to do. A way of making this more simple, though, would be to assign them to basically pre-existing small parties (Green, Libertarian, Tea party (call it a separate party for the sake of the assignment), etc.). You could perhaps draw from other countries’ parties, too, if you were having a hard time getting enough parties with diverse enough opinions. Assigning them to parties might also allow them to take a more unbiased analytical approach since they are not personally vested in the viewpoints held or expressed. It would also help them see different angles on things because they are being forced to look at it from another viewpoint — for instance, whenever arguing a case I try to think it through from the other side’s point of view before actually going to court, if only so I can better predict what they might say in their own arguments. Being assigned positions might also make it less interesting for them, though. But my concern if you didn’t assign them their parties would be that you wouldn’t get enough nuance or diversity of opinion within the class.
- I think you can definitely use this at the pen. Political discourse can still be engaging aside from whether you are actually able to vote at the end of the day.
- If you have any concerns about you personally coming across as trying to impose your views or about them viewing you as trying to impose your views, an interesting little extra credit quiz at the end of the quarter would be to have them answer multiple choice questions on what they believe your actual stance is on specific issues. You could have a set amount of extra credit points to divide among those who get the right answers — that way the more people who answer correctly, the more obvious it apparently was and the less extra credit value is placed on their correct answers because they are all divding up a “pot” of extra credit. Just a side thought that might be fun for the last day of class…
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You’ve already received great feedback and encouragement, so I would add just a few thoughts…
1. Definitely not useless at the pen. Being able to think through and articulate arguments of any sort is an invaluable life skill, regardless of life circumstances.
2. Might a wiki work for groups to coordinate outside of in-person or class time? I don’t know much about them, but have a vague sense they might be useful.
3. Psychological research shows that the quickest way to form bonds within a group is to have them complete a difficult task together. I think this would lead to a bonded group (FTW)!
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