Political Literacy in Composition and Rhetoric

During the 1970s, the National Council for Teachers of English issued a series of res­olutions calling for the teaching of “critical reading, listening, viewing, and thinking skills necessary to enable students to cope with the sophisticated persuasion tech­niques in political statements, advertising, entertainment, and news.” However, in recent decades, under the sway of multi­culturalism and postmodern theory, com­position and rhetoric pedagogies have strayed from these goals. In Political Lit­eracy in Composition and Rhetoric, author and teacher Donald Lazere issues a call to action for the return to an emphasis on critical thinking skills and multidisciplinary approaches in the teaching of composi­tion and rhetoric.Lazere also presents a keen sociocultural observation regarding the majority of the “Middle Americans” demographic—lower-middle class, rural, white students with a conservative leaning and an occasional resistance to change— and their learning behaviors and needs. Finally, Lazere offers a roadmap for a new kind of curriculum, one that he argues will enable teachers of composition and rheto­ric to foster a sense of civic literacy in their students and thus, by extension, American society as a whole.