For some reason I have been reflecting on my career and work a lot lately, probably because I’m starting to feel strange about how the days are not broken up by wandering from room to room at the university. Those walks are so essential for clearing the head as you are preparing to teach, or wondering what that book you are going to get from an Interlibrary loan will contain, or going to meet a colleague to talk about a writing idea. These are important spaces where intellectual work goes on that remain unappreciated and unexplored (at least to my knowledge).

My career was very aptly summed up accidentally in a recent conversation I had where the phrase “big lift for small impact” was used – that’s been everything I’ve done here at my university.

Obviously this applies to the work I did for the debate program here – no need to post about that again – but also for nearly anything else that I write or post or create. It’s a lot of time and effort. But there is one aspect of it where this might not make sense, and that’s teaching.

The common view of teaching at the university is “Professors teach as part of their job.” Using a traditional rhetorical means of invention, I inverted that to see what could be said: “Teachers profess as a part of their job.” This didn’t seem accurate.

Teaching is professing, it is in the heart of rhetoric, because not only are you saying “this is important, you must learn these things,” you are simultaneously creating that reality for the students: “This is important, here’s how you know it is important, because of these feelings and thoughts.”

This is lost on most professors who believe that their external markers of expertise are enough to generate this desire to know and desire to learn among students. At the high school level, bad teachers use authoritarian power moves to communicate importance as well as mind-numbing activities that produce discipline rather than interest. 

What is the rhetorical mode of professing? The verb means to declare or avow something. This seems like the mode of making a case, a persuasive address that proves that the subject is vital, important, or significant. Since it’s rhetorical that should be to the audience you are addressing, which nearly all professors miss. The attitude of the professor is “they are the ones who need to work hard to get it, they are the students.” This is often couched in terms of responsibility, which is always lacking among students. A quick survey of the history of rhetoric would indicate that this is a common trait of most assembled audiences too. 

When teaching, you are professing, you are making a case for your declaration or your passionate avowing of the importance of a concept, some information, or whatever you are teaching that class. And since all classes are different audiences, each one needs adaptation. 

Is there a case-based, rhetorical theory of teaching out there? The closest I’ve found is in Buddhism, particularly in Tibetan debates, but there’s a debate pedagogy tradition in the early U.S. as well. 

What about Rome? It is known that from time to time the rhetoric teachers would take on the unpopular opinion on a declamation case to show the students how it’s done, but did any take on the position of how to craft oratory in a particular way?

I guess what I’m looking for is models of how to speak when you are pushing the value of a central text to students, and you cannot do this without your take being involved. You can’t assume they are there because they are interested. So how do you convert them from people who have to attend, and hope it won’t be miserable, to people who feel lucky to be there, and who look forward to the next one?