As I briefly mentioned in my homeschool article entitled “Could You Define Classical Rhetoric?“, rhetoric is the art of oratory. Today we generally refer to oratory as “public speaking” or “speech;” however, I think you’ll agree that the principles of rhetoric can be appropriately applied to written communication like homeschool essays, homeschool research papers, and even homeschool journalism articles. Other than impromptu speeches, which happen on the spur of the moment with limited preparation time, most contemporary speeches start with a written script or at least an outline of the speaker’s (1) idea or claim, (2) proof or evidence, and (3) call to action. So for our purposes, I’ll define rhetoric as:
a system for gathering, selecting, arranging, and expressing our material whether in oral or written form.
Remember that rhetoric is one of the seven liberal arts of ancient Rome. If you were to examine the other six liberal arts (language, logic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, and arithmetic), you would realize that each of these arts involves a system for gathering, selecting, arranging, and expressing the material.
Let’s modernize this concept. You could probably list a vast number of “arts” that also involve a system for accumulating, organizing, and presenting the material. For instance, the “art of cooking” involves deciding on the recipe, gathering the ingredients, combining the ingredients in a certain measure and order, cooking the mixture, arranging the final presentation, and serving the delightful dish to the audience. In a nutshell, the chef has concocted an idea, presented evidence to prove her idea, and announced a call to action: “eat and enjoy!” The art of gardening, the art sewing, and the art of singing are just three examples which follow a similar pattern of idea, proof, and call to action. Likewise, the master writer or orator develops an idea, presents the evidence, and calls the audience to action.
In other words, rhetoric for the classical homeschool is not a stage of educational progress, but rather a set of procedures and criteria that guide the author or orator in making strategic decisions during the composition process. During ancient and medieval times, this system was tightly defined as three kinds of persuasive discourse: deliberative, forensic, and epideictic oratory. Like the ancient orator or the contemporary chef, the homeschool orator crafts a persuasive speech that presents the idea, proves the idea, and calls the audience to act on the idea.
