This study assessed 1,706 eighth-grade students' reasoning abilities through a critique task in an integrated argumentative reading and writing test. Results indicate that the majority of students did not detect fallacious arguments or clearly explain problems in the arguments. They encountered various challenges in critiquing an argument: (a)…

Drawing upon the work of Foucault and Latour, this article reflects on 25 years of critique of competence-based education and its continuing strength as a way of framing education and training. Using an example from England, it rehearses the argument from Foucault that, despite its student-centred discourse, competence-based education can be…

Poetry is about the experience of meaning as well as the meaning of experience. To read a poem is to feel one's way into the inner workings of its language, rather than to peer through that speech to an extractable truth. Most students of literature today have difficulty in grasping the performative or rhetorical dimensions of the texts with which…

This essay takes a look at what I call anti-progressivism in education or, more particularly, criticism of progressive education that was so vocal and visceral that it earns a label, at least initially, of anti-progressivism. After a brief introduction discussing the terms in general, I look at three instances of anti-progressivism in the 1950s…

The ability to understand a speaker's or author's worldview better, whether an openly espoused ideology or one veiled and deeply hidden, should help students hone their critical thinking skills. This article describes an activity which attempts to do just that by applying new data visualization methods to a rhetorical artifact and examining the…

This essay offers a retrospective on the four special issues of this journal (1957, 1980, 1990, 2001) dedicated to the "state of the art" of rhetorical criticism. Drawing on Oscar Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." as allegory, the essay also functions to queer this retrospective in an ongoing effort to queer rhetorical studies. The essay closes…

At the turn of the twentieth century, the sound of presidential address changed from an orotund style to an instructional style. The orotund style had featured the careful pronunciation of consonants, elongated vowels, trilled r's and repeated declamations. The instructional style, on the other hand, mimicked the conversational lectures of the…

In this article, the authors examine the discipline of knowledge organization by harnessing the theories of Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas. The argument is that knowledge organization is not just a question of improved technology; as an academic discipline, it has to define and legitimize its relevance for society. The authors use the…