Rhetoric at The Margins (Gold)

CH. 1

FRAMING: 

• Creating exigence, 
• articulating how he will work
• explaining what his history does
• articulating why we should care

Although a number of scholars, such as...have called our attention to rich African American rhetorical practices outside of formal educational settings, the wide-ranging diversity of practices within diverse institutional settings of higher learning has only just begun to be explored. (15)

Moreover, an examination of historically black colleges and universities, such as Wiley, reveals a fascinating counterstory to received rhetoric and composition histories. At many private black liberal arts colleges, the classical liberal arts tradition persisted well into the 1920s, with Latin and Greek retained as requirements long after such courses had become electives at elite white schools. Oratory, moved to the periphery of the curriculum elsewhere, continued to play an important role; speechwriting was frequently incorporated into freshman composition courses, and debate and drama were enormously popular campus activities. (15)

In this chapter, I examine the pedagogical practices of perhaps Wiley's most famous professor, Melvin Tolson, through the lens of both African American educational history and Wiley's own unique institutional circumstances. Tolson's style of instruction, which integrated wide-ranging rhetorical traditions, challenges and enriches our understanding of the development of English studies and offers lessons for developing rich responsive classroom practices of our own. I hope not only to recover and describe the pedagogy of this important figure in American letters but to explain why it succeeded--and what that suggest for the contemporary composition classroom. (16)

Toulon's teaching speaks to several concerns of central importance to contemporary rhetoric and composition scholars. First, it demonstrates the limitations of traditional taxonomies in describing rhetorical instruction. While James Berlin's descriptions of epistemological differences have been immensely useful to our understanding of the development of rhetorical instruction in American colleges, his categories have sometimes been treated as mutually exclusive and discreet--one is either epistemic or current-traditional in pedagogical practice and never the twain shall meet. Melvin Tolson's rhetorical practices, however, fit into no simple category; rather, he combined elements of classical, current-traditional, liberal, social-epistemic, and African American rhetoric as he saw fit. [...] His teaching also calls into question our understanding of the functions and effects of current-traditional rhetoric. By classifying current-traditional rhetoric and its attendant pedagogical techniques as both positivist and hegemonic, we have allowed ourselves to ignore the potential value of disciplinary, prescriptivist, or agonistic language instruction... we have paid too little attention to how students in other environments might have welcomed instruction in speaking and writing that gave them access to the language of power (17)

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On Oratorical Education

At literally hundreds of sites of instruction throughout the country, students were being taught that writing and speaking were fundamental to public and professional life. Oratory and public speaking, discontinued or truncated elsewhere, were often integrated into the curriculum... (Gold 4).

The role of oratory at private black colleges also differs from that at many white liberal arts colleges. Scholars of rhetoric generally concur that by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, written composition had replaced oratory as the center of rhetorical instruction. (20)

The role of oratory at private black colleges also differs from that at many white liberal arts colleges. Scholars of rhetoric generally concur that by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, written composition had replaced oratory as the center of rhetorical instruction... While black colleges established courses in written composition that mirrored those offered at white institutions, oratory remained an integral part of rhetorical instruction and campus activity through the 1930s, long after it had moved to the periphery of instruction elsewhere or had become the province of departments of speech. (20)

Note that at NHC, as of 1902, there was a requirement for continued work in oratory:

Looks like rhetoric first year, theme writing the second, and three declamations (one per term) during the final two years.

On Hybrid Pedagogies

...blending of teacher- and student-centered pedagogies (10)

...integrated pedagogy (31)

I hope to show the diversity and complexity of rhetorical practices in American colleges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While each site in this study displays elements of what Kates has called activist rhetorics—instruction that encouraged students to interrogate their social and political roles through writing and speaking—I am less interested in demonstrating the presence of specifically activist rhetorics than in locating the broad confluences of competing and complimentary rhetorical traditions within individual sites. Indeed, I argue that the epistemological schema that we have long applied to pedagogical practices may actually limit our understanding of those practices. What we have dismissed as current-traditional rhetoric often represents a complex of interwoven practices, both conservative and radical, liberatory and disciplining, and subject to wide-ranging local and institutional variations. (5)

Educators of this era (1873-1947) were faced with many of the same challenges as those of today, including increasingly diverse student bodies and ranges of academic preparation, cultural pressures at odds with institutional goals, the desire to teach practical literacy skills without forsaking a humanistic education, and a conscious awareness of the need to address students in their own language while acknowledging the language of power (10)

Tolson demonstrates that it is possible to join both conservative and radical practices into a pedagogy that serves both students and society. (17)

As was common with English teachers at small black colleges, Tolson taught a wide number of subjects, including composition, literature, debate, and drama. Toulon's rhetorical instruction was grounded in two distinct traditions: the classical liberal arts tradition...and African American oratory. Both of these mixed with a homespun, muck-raking, democratic populism... The key to his approach was an unabashed integration of traditions and embracing of contradictions. And was his favorite conjunction (31)

On the Extracurriculum

When we examine the history of college English studies, we must look beyond the boundaries of departments of English in order to gain a fuller understanding of institutional practices; if we cannot find evidence of certain kinds of practices in departments of English, we should not automatically assume that such practices did not exist" (Alison Elizabeth Regan, qtd in Gold, p. 11)