Thomas Wilson

Last week, I enjoyed the discussion about Thomas Wilson and his Art of Rhetorique. I thought his views on rhetoric were important because he advocated for uniform composition practices. These composition practices can still be seen today. For instance Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Like Wilson, they outlined step-by-step ways to make writing better and they gave examples of good writing. Another thing I liked about Wilson was he used humor in his writing to engage the audience in his topic. In my technical writing seminar, we are discussing the appropriateness of humor in technical documents. While humor is not fitted for all documents, it can be useful in others that have a close relationship to the audience. At first, Wilson’s humor was lost on me. When reading through it by myself I didn’t recognize it because it was so subtle. According to the text in my other class, that is a flaw with using humor. An author shouldn’t be so subtle that the message is lost on the reader or the reader takes it for real information. When using humor, I imagine it is very hard to not be too sarcastic or too subtle, and I suppose it is a true art to find a happy medium.

Quintilian

Last week’s discussion on Quintilian was interesting in that it opened up a dialogue on schools and education. Quintilian was interested in a school that was conducive to teacher and student relations whether it be a school house, a forum, or out in real life. As for his students, he believed that they should be somewhat exuberant in their learning. He also allowed young women to study because they could pick up good mothering and parenting skills. As for the teachers, he believed that there should be different teaching methods employed depending on the student’s age. The very young students should have the most experienced and unbiased teachers, while the older students should have teachers that are well learned. These teachers should also be gentle with students, be interesting, be praiseworthy of student accomplishments, and be moderately corrective to not overwhelm the student.

For the most part, I believe that Quintilian had some interesting and new ideas about education. I am glad that Quintilian allowed females into his schools; however he underestimated their learning capabilities. Despite the beliefs of the time, women are just as capable as men to contemplate complex and abstract ideas. I also agree that young students should have experienced and unbiased teachers. Young students are very impressionable and usually don’t have the analytical skills like their older peers. What they learn early on serves as a foundation for years to come. If students learn the wrong facts a lot of unlearning has to happen. This unlearning then takes away from time that could have been spent on learning new facts. Some things that I was taught that weren’t necessarily true or effective were Columbus discovered America, phonics, pilgrims and colonists were nice to the Native Americans, and citizens elect the president. Granted it didn’t take a very long time to relearn the information, but I feel that it wasn’t fair I was taught only the shades of these issues. Sure, teaching how Columbus was not a hero and how he subjected the natives to slavery probably wouldn’t be the easiest to do in the elementary years, but it would be the truth. I think that by giving students an idealistic perception of American history can color their judgements about our role in the world. Anyway, onto another subjuect, I believe that learning language through phonics greatly hindered me because my spelling skills were behind my peers when I switched to another school district. The method of phonics made me consider language through sound rather than through its correct spelling. If it wasn't for the dictionary or spell check I might still be spelling cat "kat", might "mite", or school "skool."