Saturday, September 5, 2009
Ah, To Be a Roman Schoolboy Again
What I find most striking from the reading in Conley is the huge difference in the importance that is placed on speaking by the Greeks, and later Romans, and our modern culture. He discusses the extensive programs that young boys went through in order to become educated men. While this enkyklios paideia (rounded education) focused on many different areas, it is clear that the end goal was to produce a young man who could speak well on a number of different subjects. The success and prosperity of these students depended on both their natural abilities as a speaker and their assimilation of skills and knowledge from an experienced rhetorician. This is not the case today. Most courses that address the area of speech and rhetoric are seen as optional. They are electives that students may choose to either take or avoid altogether. There is no focused effort applied to a student’s ability to speak well in any formal setting. The result is clearly seen in the world we live in. You do not have to speak well in order to gain power and notoriety. We have world leaders who are among the worst offenders in terms of their speech and rhetoric skills. Even the leaders of educational facilities can be found gravely lacking in their ability to speak and reach a group. How far we have come.
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I was thinking a lot of the same...and will be blogging about some of it. =) I find it fascinating how we've come from making it an cornerstone of education to roundly ignoring it. The results on our society are evident. Not only are people unaware of how to use it, they are also unaware of how to see through it or to actually think through things they hear.
ReplyDeleteI see a fear in our society directed toward those who are skilled in oratory. A part of this might have its roots in the "snake-oil salesmanship" atmosphere that some of the early speculative philosophers and orators created (or perhaps accidentally created) in stressing eloquence over content in some respects. Note the uproar over the proposed presidential speech scheduled for tomorrow for school children. America ate up Obama's rhetoric during the campaign. All of a sudden he is being accused of using those same skills to brain-wash the youth of America and subvert our democratic principles (didn't Socrates end up with the hemlock cocktail for similiar reasons?). We are such a convoluted species. Loving our entertainment but fearing the entertainer.
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