Why Johnnie Can’t Think – Pt. 2

The first reason Johnnie can’t think is because we don’t teach logic as either a formal discipline or within a cognitive learning stage.  The second reason is like unto the first:  we don’t teach rhetoric (i.e., communicating one’s thoughts logically and persuasively) in the same way (as both a discipline and a stage).  So what we’re left with, and what we’ve left our youth with, is a lot of emotional manipulations, sentimental nonsense and irrational bullcrap.

There was a time in education when logic and rhetoric worked hand-in-glove together.  For the ancients, you did not (because you could not) separate the two.  One could not display good rhetoric without good logic and vice-versa. In most circles today, however, the word “rhetoric” has become a dirty word, and understandably so.  But not to worry.  Such an image has plagued this discipline for thousands of years, literally.  In fact, Plato and Aristotle went ‘round and ‘round about it.

Plato thought the orators of his day were too concerned with style and eloquence, to the point of submerging truth and content in it.  Aristotle countered by declaring that even the soundest of logic is incommunicable without the skill of persuasive public speaking.

This debate has echoed down through the ages even to the present.  With few exceptions, however, the attack on rhetoric is generally made with great effectiveness and eloquence, proving its unabashed necessity.

So Aristotle wins this one.  And one can’t help but agree with the old sage when he pointed out how limited the choices are:  either we persuade by trial-and-error, or we think about what we are saying and attempt to refine and improve how we are saying it.

That is why Aristotle put rhetoric and logic in the same boat as both an art and a science.  With rhetoric, communicating becomes an art; with logic, thinking becomes a science;  Together, for both to be employed (and enjoyed!) synchronistically, they must both be developed concurrently.  

Finally, it must be said that the logician and rhetorician are not inventors of logic and rhetoric any more than a historian is an inventor of history or the grammarian an inventor of grammar.  As Augustine said, “ … the validity of logical sequences is not a thing devised by men, but is observed and noted by them that they may be able to learn and teach it, for it exists eternally in the reason of things, and has its origin with God.”

The saint of Hippo continued, “... as he who points out the stars and their movements does not point out anything that he himself or any other man has ordained; in the same way, he who says,’When the consequent is false, the antecedent must also be false,’ says what is most true; but he does not himself make it so, he only points out that it is so.”

Teaching logic, therefore, is eminently logical, and the case for teaching rhetoric is more than just … rhetoric.  Young people will scarcely be able to point out what is and is not so if they lack the most basic building blocks.  Without them, Johnnie can’t think.

Brian Schroeder is the former Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, an ordained minister and founder/president of The ChrisCorps Commission (bschroeder081858@gmail.com)