A Closer Look at Education as Epideictic Rhetoric Dale L. Sullivan Late in 1993 and early in 1994 lively discus.sions of the relationship between leaching rhetoric and teaching values appeared on the Internet and Bitnet listservs H-Rhelor and Purtopoi. On Il-Rhetor the discussion wa.s carried on under the heading of "Ethos and Authority" in the clas.sroom. and on Punopoi it was earned on under several headings, but mostly with a subject line titled "rcification." On H- Rhetor, the conversation tended to revolve around the question of how to grade papers the teacher finds offensive. Dcbra A. Combs initiated the discussion by describing a colleague who argued, "if a student argues a political position that we. Ihe teacher, find ethically repugnant, then we. as teachers have ari ethical obligation to nunk the paper" (November 19. 1993). Don McCloskey opined, "...we teach virtue in the classroom, and should.. .But virtue does not mean. say. the Baltimore Catechism and the nuns to enforce it. My Lord, if we don't teach intcUectuai virtues, which have some connection with other virtues (though not so tight that the others merely follow from them), we are doing bad by tlie world" (December I. 1993). On the Purtopoi listserv. the issue tended to be the teacher's ideological stance. Chuck Pctch was accu.«itory: "I wonder what we are doing in a society that sponsors academics...who shirk the responsibility to teach students how to succeed in their culture and teach tlicm instead to undermine their culture at every tum" (Dccetnber7.1993). Comments along these line.s are not re.stricted to fleeting electronic conversations. For instance. Alan France comments in a College English article. "Wlicn we teach students to con.struct an 'authentic' .self and to subordinate that .self to the rules of a dominant discourse, we are reprcMlucing ideological formations of truth, whether we intend to or not" (593). Lester Faigley points to the political undercurrents in the writing ebssroom when he says. "The freedom students are given in some classes to choo.se and adapt autobiographical assignments hides the fact that these .same students will be judged by the teachers' unstated cultural definitions of the selP (410). Susan Miller characterizes traditional methods of texhing composition as a means of regulating and mapping individuals according to "well-constrained subjectivities" of the dominant culture (90). Atid Carl Herndl suggests that by exploring the "relationship between discourse, teaching, and social reproduction, we may he able to discover ways to intervene and initiate cultural critique within our rcsear:h and pedagogical practice" (350). Objecting to what she perceives as leftist radicalism in the classroom. Maxine Hairston says. "By the logic of the cultural left, any teacher should be free to use his or her classroom to promote any ideology" (188). She then goes on to list a series of belief systems she assumes her readers wish to restrict. Her article, in turn, elicited several rebuttals, containing, among others, this comment by William Thelin. "Hairston would better serve our profession by foregoing the pretense that any classroom can be apolitical and concentrating on ethical ways to negotiate race, class, and gender in a politically overt classroom" (253). RSQ, Vol. 23, Numbers 314. StimmcrlFall