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Rhetoric as the Foundation for Political Education
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 May 2020
Extract
The serious study of the best examples of American political rhetoric can be used as the foundation for the introductory course in American government. The laws of most of our states understand the purpose of political education to be the creation of good citizens. Even at the college level, it makes sense to justify political education in terms of citizenship rather than with the benefits associated with a diffuse introduction to the technical discipline of political science.
Citizenship, after all, is a quality shared by almost all human beings in our democratic regime, while only a very few of us ever will specialize in political science. The most cogent way of justifying the general requirement of study of a subject is by showing its universal utility, especially in a democracy, where utility is often the measure of worth.
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- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1983
References
1 See Eugene Miller, , “What Political Scientists Can Learn from Teaching American Government,” Teaching Political Science 4 (1976), pp. 3–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 See, for example, Federalist 49.
3 But no concrete human being is simply a political scientist.
4 l am indebted for my understanding of Rhetoric, Aristotle's to Arnhart, Larry, Aristotle on Political Reasoning: A Commentary on the “Rhetoric” (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982).Google Scholar
5 Key, V. O., The Responsible Electorate (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 7–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 See Ceaser's, James illuminating discussion of Wilson's understanding of democratic political leadership in his Presidential Selection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 188-97.Google Scholar
7 See, for example, the argument for the correction between “free” democratic suffrage and large electoral districts in Federalist 10.