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 demographiclower-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.