← Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast
Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast
Beyond Mere Fact: The Rhetorical Nature of History
00:14:58
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- [00:00]
A
Hi there, it's Bill Gray from Hillsdale College. Before you skip ahead, can I ask you a question or two? If you could teach 50 million Americans one thing, what would it be? Would you teach our great American story that this nation is unique, founded on self government and individual liberty? Maybe you would teach the truth about free enterprise, how hard work and opportunity allow anyone to rise? Or would you teach the gospel and the Christian faith that helps us live good and meaningful lives? At Hillsdale College, we're doing exactly that. Teaching the best that's been thought and said. Through our free online courses, K12 programs, Imprimis, podcasts and more, we reach and teach millions every year with the principles of liberty that make America free. And with your help, we can reach even more. Your tax deductible gift today will help us teach millions more people to pursue truth and defend liberty. Just text the word give to 7 1844. You'll get a secure link to make your donation in seconds. That's give to 718 44. Thank you for standing with us. Now back to the show.
- [01:16]
B
Welcome to The Hillsdale College K12 classical education podcast, bringing you insight into into classical education and its unique emphasis on human virtue and moral character, responsible citizenship, content, rich curricula and teacher led classrooms. Now your host, Scott Bertram.
- [01:35]
C
Thanks for listening. The Hillsdale College K12 Classical Education Podcast is part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio. You also can find more information on topics and ideas discussed on this show at our website, k12 hillsdale.edu.
- [01:57]
D
We'Re joined by John Peterson. He's assistant director of curriculum for Hillsdale College's K12 education office, also lecturer in education and politics at Hillsdale College, talking today about history as rhetoric. John, thanks so much for joining us.
- [02:13]
E
Thanks for having me, Scott.
- [02:14]
D
So what does that phrase mean, history as rhetoric.
- [02:18]
E
Good. I mean, it's meant to be somewhat provocative, but. So I mean, we think of rhetoric as being a distortion of the truth, right? Or as having at least having its aim is persuasion instead of comprehension. And I'm not arguing that the history teacher's goal is that. Exactly. He's not trying to persuade his students, which wouldn't be fair. And it's not really feasible for a K12 history teacher or even for professional work of history to aim at historical comprehension because there's always in history, too much to know. Rather, the historian or the history teacher aims at the student understanding what's important, how to determine what is relevant historical information in A particular context. So the teacher aims at cultivation of prudence, historical prudence, that is the knowledge of history as, as rhetoric. History as part of the education of the ideal orator would be the classical formulation. So if you think about what is necessary for prudence, you need to have a good principle, but you also need to have knowledge of the relevant particulars. And so that's what history furnishes. It's knowledge of the regular, of the relevant particulars and the discernment to recognize, you know, that they are relevant or which ones are relevant in which particular context. So that's what I mean by that somewhat provocative formulation.
- [03:45]
D
What are some of the more typical ways of talking about history and talking about history instruction?
- [03:52]
E
Yeah, good. So conveying facts about the past in a value neutral scientific way, or collecting them in a, you know, responsibly collecting them in some kind of account which relates them, but without any kind of demonstrative or persuasive purpose. So I mean, my point is history, like rhetoric is, is about relating facts, but it has to have a purpose. It's. It's a kind of demonstration. And like rhetoric, its purposes can be divided into persuade or dissuade or accuse and defend. And there are aspects of rhetoric that are inappropriate to history, like being maybe vehemence or having a particular persuas purpose at any moment, but it is rhetorical. And another way of talking about history is, maybe you hear more in classical education world, is it's knowledge for its own sake. So one of the provocative parts of what I'm arguing is it's not really for its own sake that it's not worth knowing. It's not liberal knowledge in that sense. And that if you look in the tradition, people don't actually make that argument. It can be interesting in itself, or it can be interesting because we recognize something similar to our own circumstance, or it's simply fascinating because of its novelty. But the argument that we find is that history is instructive for our own historical situation. That it allows us to recognize our own, the particularity of our own situation and furnishes us with examples to compare. So it's essentially raw material for our own situations and concerns. It's a kind of advice for the potential historical actor. So it serves as a kind of subordinate role to statesmanship or simply citizenship.
- [05:41]
D
How has history been considered as part of liberal education or liberal arts education in the Western tradition?
- [05:50]
E
Yeah, great. I mean, it hasn't typically been considered a liberal art. And in that sense, like I was saying, it's not really for its own sake. It's not really its own art. I mean, in the language of classical liberal arts, history would be included under the material in support of rhetoric. And so, I mean, the purpose of learning history is in support of the fundamental human or humane activity of what rhetoric does, which is speech in support of the noble and the good, persuading and dissuading, accusing and defending. Like I said, however, the teacher himself is not usually directly making that case, but presenting it or re presenting it. This is how that case has been made. Now, in the tradition history, like I was saying, it's something like a device for statesmen, for the elite. So Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, many famous historians, they're explicit about this. It's practical help for a statesman. But that emphasis really ended in the 19th century through the influence of Hegel, who mocks the idea that great men move history through their actions, that they can look into the past for help in making a decision. Because, you know, according to Hegel, you know, people are not really agents. They're not the subjects, but the objects of history. They're being moved themselves. They're not moving. And so really, the only choice is to be on the right side or the wrong side of history. But even then, there's ultimately not a choice because has a direction.
- [07:23]
D
How does thinking of history as a kind of rhetoric then affect the work of a history teacher in the classroom? How does that change his or her teaching?
- [07:33]
E
Yeah, good. I mean, so on one level, it just means that the history teacher has to be thinking of what he or she is doing, not as just sort of relating facts or information, but thinking in terms of argumentation. That is, not that the teacher necessarily is making an argument or persuading the students of a thesis, but rather they're thinking along the lines of facts always are supporting an argument. So they're thinking in terms of how the historical actors in each case looked at the circumstances and related to how they thought about the noble and the good, the just, the advantageous, the kinds of things that rhetoric is concerned with. And so that means, you know, showing students not just to recognize events, but also arguments, that is, make them good, suspicious readers of history and other kind of abstractions about historical events. So that means they need to be practicing, making arguments for both sides, as it were. What would this person say in this circumstance? What would those on the other side of this question argue? And then just not thinking of what they're doing as teaching expert knowledge of the of the past, thinking of what they're doing as training students how to exercise prudence, historical prudence. Another implication would be history teachers need to be giving a lot of biographies, a lot of character studies, because that's another feature of rhetoric. It's personal. It's not, you know, events or movements or abstractions, that kind of way of talking about history, that's not. Those are not noble or base in themselves. It's the human beings who are. It's their actions that have to be celebrated or condemned. So those would be several ways.
- [09:13]
D
Talking with John Peterson, assistant director of curriculum for Hillsdale College's K12 education office, about history as rhetoric. How are speeches and arguments important in history?
- [09:25]
E
Yeah, I mean, a good example would be Thucydides, history of the Peloponnesian War. You know, there's a lot of facts. You know, the Corinthians came with as many ships at this time. Right. But he's always. The account is punctuated by these speeches. Often there's an assembly and there's a representative on different sides, and those are the real highlights of the account. And so he's putting the meaning to the history into the mouths of the different people who are historical actors at each point. And they contradict each other, and they're often contradicted by the events. And without that kind of dynamic interplay, the history wouldn't be really meaningful or important. That's the real meat of the work. And so, I mean, we don't always have this monumental work like Thucydides for the period of history that we're covering, but we do have primary sources that you can use to punctuate your own history direction or writing along the way. And unless you're really doing that and letting those words and accounts speak for themselves, then you're not doing a full service to the history. And so, I mean, that's what I would advise to the history teachers. Yes, you need to be giving this narrative account of the history, but then you also need to be giving serious weight to the historical actors in their own words, but also in representing them yourselves. Of course, Thucydides himself is often making up the speeches, or he's saying, this is what they would have said, or something like that. So it's a kind of beautiful representation of it. The history teacher can do the same thing.
- [10:57]
D
Is there a difference between history as rhetoric, as we've been discussing, and history as storytelling?
- [11:04]
E
Yes, storytelling is subordinate. It serves the purpose of setting the stage, but it doesn't make the necessary argument. It Helps to put the student in the place of the historical actors to recognize the moment, but it doesn't take that next step. So if you think about, I mean, the parts of arrangement, the classical parts of arrangement, Naratio is one of them, that is to say, a kind of retelling of the facts that in an artful way that is meant ultimately to support a thesis, the proof of which is in the confirmation, the confirmatio. And so it's incomplete, it's subordinate, it's necessary and subordinate. I mean, another way to think about this is eloquence, this classical idea of eloquence. So Cicero talks about this in his work on the Order. He says, look, history, poetry, philosophy, oratory, they're all parts of. They're all forms of eloquence. Eloquence in the classical sense is not just sort of florid, beautiful speaking, but it's something that aims at the truth. And they're artful expressions of the truth. And history is more like oratory or rhetoric than storytelling or poetry is, although they're both. They're all kinds of eloquence, but it's more like rhetoric because it has more in common with what he calls, Cicero calls the whole species of discourse, which the Greeks call demonstrative. So I would say history as a storytelling is a good model, but it's incomplete and it subordinate to the rhetorical purpose.
- [12:43]
D
How has this understanding been part of American education in the past?
- [12:50]
E
Yes, good. So, I mean, the American founders were very explicit about this. They were explicit about the purpose of studying history, especially classical precedents of republicanism, so especially Roman Republic. The Roman Republic, but also the failures of the Athenian democracies. So it was for the purpose of citizenship and statesmanship, that is to say, Americans exercising prudence in their individual case, that history would be instructive for that. Like Jefferson says, you know, you need to be able to recognize ambition in all its forms. That's what history will train you for. So, you know, and that also means what did people say to justify what they did? So you have to take into account the rhetorical context. Old school ways of teaching rhetoric in America also included history indirectly. So through exercises like declamations on historical themes, learning to recite and imitate historical speeches, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. So as a good example of this, the most popular schoolbook of the first half of the 19th century was the Columbian Orator, essentially a reader, which includes a lot of these brief selections, sometimes little brief dialogues, but it's mostly speeches. It's not all political, a lot of it. There's some kind of scientific speeches like Harvey on the, the glory of the heavens, but there's a lot of like, speech of a Roman general, speech of a, of a, in the, in the House of Parliament. Here's what Washington said to his troops, things like that. And this is the first book that Frederick Douglass bought with his own money when he was he, when he fought for his, after he fought for his freedom. And he could do that because he had seen other kids with this book, right? This is what he thought. This is what an edge being educated looks like. And so ostensibly a work to train in oratory because it's got general instructions for speaking at the beginning of it, but after that introduction, it's just full of all of those sources that I described. Speech of an Indian chief, a speech on Christ's crucifixion, speech on the wonders of nature, speech in defense of the rights of man, things like that. So those things were blended in the understanding of American education in the past. History is fundamentally rhetorical, or it's in support of rhetoric.
- [15:12]
D
John Peterson is assistant Director of Curriculum for Hillsdale College's K12 education office, also lecturer in education and politics at Hillsdale College, talking about the history as rhetoric. John, thanks so much for joining us here on the Hillsdale College K12 Classical Education Podcast.
- [15:30]
E
Thank you, Scott.
- [15:31]
C
I'm Scott Bertram. We invite you to like us on Facebook search for Hillsdale College K12 classical education. You also can follow us on Instagram hillsdalek12. That's hillsdalek12 on Instagram. Thank you for listening to The Hillsdale College K12 classical education podcast, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio.