If you could make one change as to how rhetoric happens-- this could be large, like getting rid of all censorship of television shows or small, like revising the book about the danger of comic book violence--what would you do, and why?

Well, this is simple. I would do all that I could to render flagrant, pathos-laden rhetoric null and void.

I think about this a lot. Take for instance the teaching environment in SC schools: the teachers lecture, the students take notes in order to do their best to regurgitate the information on anything that is graded, then repeat as needed (this stucture is mostly do to the fact that we are taught to go to college not to learn, but to get a job).

I've been told several times by professors and fellow students from up North (Yankees? How dare I!) that this is completely different from their education system. They are taught first that an education is important to be empowered, not that it is meant for employment. They are taught not to regurgitate what they have been taught, but to reach their own conclusions with reason.

So, I wonder why northern states have a typically liberal (this doesn't mean "democratic") voting body? They're just naive? Perhaps, they've been taught to question the information presented them. They see through empty rhetoric because they do their own research on what is being said.

This could be applied to journalists too. Their job (aside from on the major news networks) is to research what is happening. Perhaps, the fact that they aren't taught to ingest everything that is put before them is the reason that journalists, when surveyed, lean left.

Just a hypothesis.

People on the right tend to think that it is something to do with the way they "are" (Journalists are all liberals). I would beg to differ. Perhaps, any reasonable person presented with the same information as these people would come to the same conclusions.

So my approach would be to stop letting the teachers talk the whole time in class and to start teaching kids how to do reasearch (not in the manner that we do in SC, teaching kids how to do it but not actually making it an essential part of the curriculum).

Teachers should give extra credit to kids who take time to present an argument that is in disagreement with what that teacher may have taught the class. That's to say the kid presents an argument and proves it with a body of research.

People would say that this is impossible, that kids would never do that. I, again, beg to differ. There is a teacher who for the last 20 years has been teaching elementary students (1st graders I believe) to do just this. Not only that, he teaches the children to recite shakespeare, they play (the whole class together) un concierto before recess, and, get this, the kids LOVE it! This professor has won many awards in the US and has gotten one of teh highest awards possible from the queen of england.

This guy is so loved by his students that he was actually saved from financial ruin by a student of his that he had had twenty years before.

Oh yeah, the thing is too, all of these children are very poor. It's a public school in California, and all of his students are the children of immigrants (disproving the idea many people have that poor kids don't want to learn).

Yet, here, when someone says something that is clearly wrong, like the fact that Sudan had no relations with bin Laden, if I tell them they're wrong they look at me like I'm rude or I think I'm better than them! I would like people to tell me that! How ironic is it to say you believe in education while also ascribing yourself to the belief that it's impolite to tell someone when their glaringly incorrect?! I don't get it.

I honestly want people to tell things like that, and if they show me why then I'd have no choice but to change my views.

All I want is for people to have reason. If people would approach life using reason, we wouldn't have many of the problems that we have now. First and foremost, people would start with the understanding that disagreements aren't personal, they're a means to figure out the best approach to solving a problem. If anyone can disagree then you haven't diffinitively proved your point.

Also, rhetoric that is void of a definitive meaning would be rendered useless. For instance, no politicians would ever be able to use terms like "freedom is on the march," "Lock box," etc. Before anyone would ever even let them use words like that, they would have to explain exactly what they meant by them, and how they logically intended to implement their plan.

It's funny, people said that they were always so unclear as to what Kerry wanted to do, yet when there was a study done to see how much people new of what either candidate wanted to do, they had the same responses for both candidate as to what their objectives were. However, people still felt that they new what Bush wanted. It's important to remember that Bush is the first Harvard MBA holder to be el Presidente. You think that has anything to do with Bush repeating over and over the same slogans to "sell" his platform? Read In Your Face (which is not a partisan book.....that's to say it is not a Bush bashing book, its written by an economist (implied "conservative") from Georgetown....his last name's Johansen, I think). Anyway, if people used reason, if people had been taught the importance of education aside from getting a job, then we wouldn't have MANY of the problems we have now.

I think this is a product of the post-GI Bill/WWII generation that was able for the first time to go to college. Going to college for them was so important because it was so uncommon, and the people who went had to work hard, which is why they got jobs (i.e. they really were better qualified, they really did have a passion to learn). Now, it is normal to go to college, college is the base. It really doesn't mean much of anything. People don't come to learn, for a large part, but the generations above us still push all of us to go to college with the mindset they had when they went to college.

Am I being redundant?

I'll quit...here's the story of the teacher in california:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4608476

Voila....