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Federalism in Education, Political Science 351, February 7, 2005

Broadcaster Fred Friendly’s television series The Constitution: That Delicate Balance presents, in its thirteenth volume, a discussion of federalism in the area of education. In the debate, a panel of leading politicians, constitutional scholars, lawyers and judges discuss what the Constitution allows in terms of power over education policy. The panel deals with two hypothetical scenarios in which the objectives of the federal government and the objectives of the state governments for education are at odds.

In the first scenario, the controversy arises from a federally-mandated education policy found in Public Law 94142, the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (1975). The law requires that handicapped children must be permitted to be educated with non-handicapped children, and that to make this possible, all neighborhood schools must install accommodations for handicapped children in their facilities. For example, a student who needs to maneuver about in a wheelchair must have a special flight of stairs, like a ramp, to move from floor to floor.

The federal government chose to get involved with the education of handicapped children because of the belief that educating all children is a national interest and, therefore, the goal fits into the realm of national governance. This view holds that the national government has an obligation to give handicapped children a fair educational opportunity in neighborhood schools, similar to its obligation to uphold civil rights for people of all races in the country. The constitutional argument for this policy is found in Article I, Section 8, which notes Congress’s power to levy taxes and spend money. Clause 1 in this section states that Congress shall “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

Therefore, the education of handicapped children could arguably fall under the interest of “the general welfare” and place it within the legislature’s constitutional jurisdiction (if not directly, then via the spending power). Others believe that the federal government did not have the constitutional authority to impose the requirements for accommodating handicapped children because such decisions should be made at the state and local level. The Tenth Amendment provides that powers not delegated in the Constitution to the national government belong to the states or the people.

In the second scenario, moderator Lewis Kaden of Columbia Law School played the role of President of the United States and offered a proposal for education policy. He proposed that the federal government would mandate that the schools follow a set of federal guidelines on school performance. The guidelines would establish how well a school should be educating students and how much they should be paying teachers. The federal government would also direct grants of money to the states for teachers’ salary supplements and funding of educational needs.

Advocates for the policy, such as New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, pointed out that Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the power to spend money for “the general welfare”. It could, therefore, be argued that free education is in the interest of the general welfare. Furthermore, Congress could attach regulations to the money if they did not violate crucial rights of states.

The governors on the panel expressed much opposition to the proposed policy because, as leaders at the state level, they believed that they understood the needs of their constituents better than leaders at the federal level. Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander pointed out that the United States is a large nation comprised of many small communities, with many differences among them. He suggested that if the federal government wished to direct money to the states, the money should be in the form of block grants. Block grants are given to the states without federal regulations attached dictating how the money should be spent. The governors argued that this method would allow the states to spend the money for education in ways that best met the specific needs of their constituents.

Many of the governors and like-minded panelists in the debate were willing to accept federal money without strings attached, but were unwilling to accept federal standards of educational performance or teachers’ salaries. They protested that different states with different needs could not follow uniform standards. The main question on the minds of many panelists was what the states had to do when they accepted federal grants, and whether they would lose control over how they educate.

Some of the governors claimed that if the federal government took away too much of their control over education, they would send the grant money back to Washington. This claim is an impressive display of principle, but it is dubious whether the governors would actually follow through on their vow. It is difficult to believe that leaders at the state level would refuse money when it became available, even with strings attached, because the states have many needs to address and they require money to do it.

If there was a significant amount of federal money for education available, the governors would be strongly tempted to accept it so that they could free up money and resources elsewhere to meet other state needs. The governors might want to put resources into areas such as transportation or health care, and obtaining federal money to help pay for education would make this easier.

The governors based their objections to the education proposal on the argument that the Constitution, as outlined in the Tenth Amendment, reserves all powers to the states or the people that are not specifically delegated to the national government. Thus, the states are entitled to deference and autonomy in areas such as education, which are administered at the state and local level. Furthermore, the governors outlined many practical arguments for leaving control over education policy in the hands of the states and localities. The leaders of state and local governments are more familiar with their citizens’ particular needs and can better act to address them.

The governors’ argument, in my opinion, was extremely persuasive because it is true that the Constitution reserves certain powers to the states and the people as per the Tenth Amendment. It is debatable exactly where to draw the line when it comes to federal assistance to the states in areas like education, but somewhere there should be a line that the central government cannot cross. Extravagant federal control over education policy, an area traditionally left to the states and localities, could take away state and local leaders’ ability to make choices about how to serve their citizens. They would constantly have to look to federal regulations to see what they could or could not do, even if they knew that a certain course of action would benefit their communities.

Congress indeed has the power to spend money for “the general welfare,” but it should not overreach and use restrictions that tie down state and local officials. Unlike some areas of public policy, such as civil rights and voting rights, education is not a guaranteed right in the Constitution, and thus the central government should not take arbitrary action to guarantee it. Instead, the responsibility for seeing that citizens receive education should lie at the state and local levels. The federal government can help the states and localities to achieve this goal, but not in ways that fail to take into consideration the specific needs of individual communities.

President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” Act for education is similar to the hypothetical bill in some ways. The law requires states to create an accountability system of assessments, graduation rates and other indicators to find out if students are performing up to expectations. Schools must demonstrate adequate yearly progress, as determined by state, by raising achievement levels of subgroups of students such as African Americans, Latinos, low-income students and special education students to a state-determined level of proficiency. The states must report results to the federal government and demonstrate that their levels of proficiency are being met.

The NCLBA is similar to the hypothetical bill in that states and school districts need to answer to the federal government in demonstrating that students are meeting educational standards (failure results in severe financial penalties). It is different in that each individual state is able to determine its own level of proficiency requirements. It is possible that some provisions of the bill are unconstitutional because many could argue that states and school districts are owed greater freedom to target assistance to schools with the greatest academic difficulties.

Rhetoric as Audience-Centered and Reader-Centered, English 501, October 17, 2006

When it comes to rhetoric, the most important thing that a speaker or writer must take into account is the audience. Rhetoric is essentially audience-centered, reader-centered, and user-centered. The speaker or writer always needs to know and understand the audience before trying to make a case for a particular position. The nature of the audience plays a significant role in determining how a rhetorician will attempt to use persuasion. Generally, different audiences respond to different types of persuasion because each audience is somewhat unique.

Different audiences are likely to have different concerns, beliefs, and values related to a given topic, so a rhetorician must take those diverse values into account when attempting to persuade. The orator will probably have to appeal to different values in different situations, depending on who the audience is. Rhetoric will only persuade the audience if writers and speakers can tailor their arguments to the questions, concerns, beliefs, and values of readers and listeners.

To understand why the audience is central to rhetoric, it is useful to examine some of the thoughts on rhetoric throughout history. Aristotle defined rhetoric as “an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion”(Aristotle 27). He explained that a practitioner of rhetoric is able to observe ways to persuade an audience in the context of a given case or situation and seeks a specific judgment on a given question or issue. As Aristotle describes rhetoric, the rhetorician’s task is primarily to find all possible ways of moving an audience to his or her position. Therefore, knowing and understanding the audience is one of the most crucial things that a writer or speaker must do to persuade others of their positions.

Aristotle proposes that there are different types of audiences requiring the speaker to employ different forms of rhetoric. Specifically, he suggests that there are three categories of rhetoric: deliberative, judicial, and demonstrative (or epideictic). The listeners of deliberative and judicial rhetoric are judges, while listeners of demonstrative rhetoric are spectators. Aristotle says that “it is necessary for the hearer to be either a spectator [theoros] or a judge [krites], and [in the latter case] a judge of either past or future happenings” (Aristotle 34). He goes on to say, “A member of a democratic assembly is an example of one judging about future happenings, a juryman an example of one judging the past. A spectator is concerned with the ability [of the speaker]” (Aristotle 34).

Epideictic rhetoric is demonstrative and ceremonial, featuring the speaker assigning praise or blame for something. This type of rhetoric revolves around events occurring in the present, and it proposes whether the present situation is good or bad. In this branch of persuasion, the speaker’s task is to focus the audience’s attention on the present situation and convince the listeners that they should either be pleased or displeased with the state of things.

Deliberative rhetoric attempts to persuade an audience whether a given course of action is a good or bad idea. We see this form of rhetoric in legislation and policymaking when speakers try to exhort or dissuade with respect to a potential policy action. In this case, the rhetorician must convince the audience to think about the future—to consider what a given course of action will do if adopted and whether it will have beneficial or harmful effects. This branch of rhetoric requires orators to speak in terms of what is best for the future if they want to garner the support of their listeners.

Judicial rhetoric tries to establish the facts in a given case to either accuse or defend someone in court. The primary audience in this instance is a judge, and the speaker must try to win the judge’s agreement by presenting the best possible case for what the facts are in a particular situation. In this form of persuasion, the rhetorician must draw the audience’s attention to the past so that the listeners can understand what actually happened in a given case.

Besides Aristotle, others also took the view that there are different audiences that correspond with different forms of rhetoric. Cicero described rhetoric as the task of a public speaker to “discuss capably those matters which law and custom have fixed for the uses of citizenship, and to secure as far as possible the agreement of his hearers” (Cicero 41). This definition of rhetorical art places the “hearers” at the center of the art because the public speaker’s mission is to garner as much agreement as possible from an audience. It is the extent to which a rhetorician can win agreement from others that best measures skill or success in rhetoric. Ultimately, the speaker or writer must keep listeners or readers foremost in mind because it is the audience that ultimately decides how effective a piece of rhetoric is.

Like Aristotle, Cicero mentions that there are three branches or species of rhetoric: epideictic, deliberative, and judicial (Cicero 41). All three of these branches are unique with respect to how the speaker attempts to appeal to the audience. When we look at all three branches of rhetoric, we can see that the audience plays a large role in determining how the speaker tries to make a case. In each branch, the listeners have certain questions that they expect the speaker to answer. They will ask questions such as: Why should we care about what is happening at present? How would this course of action affect our lives in the future? What really happened in this case before the court? These questions depend in part on the moment in time that a rhetorical situation involves, whether it is past, present or future. In this respect, Cicero’s view of the audience’s importance in shaping rhetoric is similar to Aristotle’s view.

Others also note the importance of the audience’s role. According to authors Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren, the audience is inevitably going to ask questions such as: What are the speaker’s objectives? What are the means he will propose to achieve them? As the authors note, it is the responsibility of the writer or speaker to win the audience to his position, and this is especially true in practical writing (Adler, Van Doren 197-8). The purpose of practical writing is to persuade people to think and act in a certain way, and this purpose requires the writer to be a type of orator. In practical affairs, people must be persuaded to think and act in a certain way, so rhetorical argument is necessary for convincing people to take certain actions. A practical writer or orator needs to understand not only the minds of the audience members, but their feelings as well. The orator will often have to appeal not only to logic, but emotion as well in order to draw the audience’s attention (Adler, Van Doren 198). Carolyn R. Miller agrees that practical writing is rhetoric, writing that practical rhetoric “seems to concern the instrumental aspect of discourse—its potential for getting things done—and at the same time to invite a how-to, or handbook, method of instruction. Technical writing partakes of both these dimensions of practical rhetoric”(Miller 61).

Aristotle’s views on rhetoric also agree with Adler and Van Doren’s description of the audience’s role in communication. To gain the audience’s support, the orator needs to establish ethos, or credibility. Aristotle writes that there is persuasion “through character whenever the speech is spoken in such a way as to make the speaker worthy of credence; for we believe fair-minded people to a greater extent and more quickly [than we do others] on all subjects in general and completely so in cases where there is not exact knowledge but room for doubt” (Aristotle 28).

In addition, although Aristotle held that logic, or logos, is the correct way to persuade, there is a role for highlighting relevant emotions, or pathos, in a rhetorical situation to gain the audience’s attention and awareness. Aristotle wrote that persuasion takes place “through the hearers when they are led to feel emotion [pathos] by a speech; for we do not give the same judgment when grieved and rejoicing or when being friendly and hostile” (Aristotle 28). This agrees with Adler and Van Doren that rhetoric must account for both the mind and the heart, both logic and emotion.

Rhetoric can be described as audience-centered or reader-centered because the audience plays such an important role in determining what a speaker or writer must take into account when attempting to persuade. The speaker or writer must be aware of the audience’s expectations and questions, their role as spectators or judges, the moment in time they should refer to, and their responses to logic and emotion. The orator’s fundamental objective is to persuade the audience of a given perspective, and to do that, the orator must know what the audience may think or feel. In this way, a speaker or writer will compose a persuasive argument and win agreement from others.

Sources

Adler, Mortimer J. and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. pp. 197, 198

Aristotle. “Excerpts from Book I, Rhetoric.” Translated by George A. Kennedy. Peeples, Tim. Professional Writing and Rhetoric. New York: Addison Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc., 2003. pp. 27, 28, 34

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. “Excerpts from Book I, Rhetorica Ad Herennium.” Translated by Harry Caplan. Peeples, Tim. Professional Writing and Rhetoric. New York: Addison Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc., 2003. p. 41

Miller, Carolyn R. “What’s Practical About Technical Writing?” Peeples, Tim. Professional Writing and Rhetoric. New York: Addison Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc., 2003. p. 61

The Role and Skills of the Professional Writer, English 501, November 7, 2006

Professional writing is more than the ordinary writing that you may see in secretarial or administrative work. Organizations have much to gain from employing writers who can apply their compositional skills to a wide variety of publications and topics. If you have a large organization with many individuals doing different things, it works best when they can serve the organization with their primary skills. To let them do this, organizations should take on individuals whose primary skill is writing. Then others in the organization will not have to worry about too many writing tasks, and the written work will be much better because professionals will compose it.

My brief experience up to the present in professional writing informs me that a professional writer's role is a valuable one to any organization. When I worked as a junior technical writer at the United States Coast Guard, the writer's role was crucial. The Coast Guard division covering marine safety was filled with brilliant individuals who continually developed new ideas and programs to improve safety for ships and crewmembers. However, these experts needed assistance from writers who could describe their ideas in ways that would reach their intended audience. Composing these kinds of documents required more than conventional writing; it required the skills of individuals who specialized in the art of composition and who understood how to communicate concepts to readers.

Working currently as a part-time editorial assistant at an education magazine in Washington DC, professional writing again shows up as a clear asset. Sometimes I must write introductions to a section of the magazine, and to create an effective introduction, I need to use the skills of a professional writer. The introductory piece needs to explain the subject matter of the section concisely and credibly, so writers of introductions must be knowledgeable of the subject to make themselves persuasive to the readers. The introduction also needs to appeal to the primary audience—teachers and students—by explaining how valuable the topic is to academic studies and education.

The skills involved in professional writing are substantive and important to the functions of any organization. Professional writers can make an organization’s communication efforts more effective because they know how to compose clear and compelling prose which will attract the largest audience. Knowledge of graphics allows the professional writer to make documents more appealing and artistic. Writers’ skill in using rhetoric and argument will also help in this regard because the organization presumably seeks to persuade large numbers of people that its message is a good one.

A professional writer can foster better communication both inside and outside the organization, informing people on the inside and on the outside of what the organization is doing. This allows for more efficiency in the organization's work and for more public knowledge of the organization's activities. It is the job of the professional writer to connect readers to the organization's mission and to describe what the organization has to offer the intended audience. When it comes to communicating outside the organization, the writer serves as a bridge between the experts and the general readers. By taking on the task of communicating ideas to the public, the writers save time and effort for the experts in the organization.

The writer serves as a database of information on topics he or she writes on, so a professional writer requires good research skills to find and absorb important information. Careful research and study of a topic is the only way to communicate it effectively to others.

A professional writer can offer much in the way of drawing in audiences by using an artistic literary flair in communicating. Eloquent literary techniques can help tremendously in getting readers' attention when done correctly. If the writing style is compelling and enjoyable, readers will want to know more about the message that the writer is sending. For example, the physicist Stephen Hawking has enjoyed a rich reputation as a popular scientific writer because his writing is so interesting and eloquent. Hawking’s books on physics and astronomy make the science material attractive to large audiences because his style of communicating is accessible and polished.

Finally, professional writing is a unique skill because it requires using argument and rhetoric as tools. Within an organization, the writer's goal is to show that the organization has something valuable to offer readers, so the writer needs to be able to persuasively argue any point. Good rhetorical and argumentative skills go hand-in-hand with a professional writer's purpose, and they cannot be easily duplicated by just anyone because rhetoric and argument require analytical and critical thinking work that professional writing entails.

Professional writers are essential to an organization's efforts to communicate because they offer specialized knowledge of how to write, edit, format, and publish effectively. Good writing takes more than just the printing of words; the words have to be coherent, and the publications they appear in have to be effective enough to draw and persuade audiences. As James R. Kalmbach noted, "Writing and writing systems are forms of technology. They are technologies in terms of how written symbols represent the sound system of a language, and they are technologies in terms of how those symbols are formed, preserved, and transmitted" (Kalmbach 221). If organizations want their messages communicated effectively with sophisticated publications, they need professional writers who understand the technologies of writing to deliver the best products possible.

So professional writing is indeed a crucial resource that organizations should use to promote public knowledge and connect others to their activities. Professional writers need to serve as messengers, as keepers of knowledge, and finally as skilled makers of arguments.

Sources

Kalmbach, James R. "Publishing Before Computers." Ed. Tim Peeples. Professional Writing and Rhetoric. New York: Addison Wesley Publishers, Inc., 2003. p. 221.

Professional Writers as Authors, English 501, November 28, 2006

Anyone who has any experience in professional writing can tell you that writers need to play different roles at different times. In some ways, professional writers need to have a protean talent to transform themselves in order to fit the needs of the text. The writer's role depends on the purpose of the text, the subject matter, the audience and more. As writers shift in their roles, they can develop a much better understanding of their own skills, and they can also form clearer identities which define their areas of expertise. When writers try their hands at different writing styles and at different topics, they gradually establish an identity. The best way for them to get used to changing roles is to act as authors.

Jennifer Daryl Slack, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak propose that professional writers act as authors through articulation. This means that the writer contributes to the meaning of a topic by providing a fresh perspective on it. The author earns the ability to articulate meaning in the text by building ethos, credibility and authority. Interestingly, the word “authority” has the same root as the word “author”. This commonality suggests that authors necessarily possess authority to articulate. But what does it exactly mean to articulate?

Slack et al explain saying, “Articulation asserts that any identity in the social formation must be understood as the nonnecessary connection between the elements that constitute it” (Slack et al 90). Articulation “points to the fact that any identity is culturally agreed on or, more accurately, struggled over in the ongoing process of disarticulation and rearticulation” (Slack et al 91).

In the role of author, professional writers do not just convey information; they also articulate the meaning of the information. Writers can contribute much more to a text by their own thinking when they take on the role of author. When a writer is an author, it is presumed that the writer possesses a certain authority to influence the direction and meaning of the text. A writer acquires authority by demonstrating that he or she has special expertise in the composition and production of professional documents.

Being an author means that you are providing your own interpretation of a topic's meaning, and it means that you have the responsibility of articulating the most persuasive interpretation possible so that your text will do what you want it to do. Slack et al write, “The consequences of extending authorship to technical communicators are significant. With recognition that the communicator articulates and rearticulates meaning comes the responsibility for that rearticulation” (Slack et al 94).

When I wrote articles about crew and ship safety for the United States Coast Guard, I had to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the topic and rhetorical ability. When I articulated a perspective on the Coast Guard's safety proposals, it was important to make the perspective cogent and readable so that the text would be useful to readers such as mariners.

Good writers need other skills too, and they can use those skills to be more effective authors. Skills in the production process, such as research, layout design and critical thinking tie into being an author because they enhance your credibility as a professional writer and enable you to have more input on what the final product will look like. The more production skills that you have, the more capable you will be of rearticulating a topic convincingly.

In the production process, writers can also exercise influence as authors through their knowledge of layout and design. They contribute to the document’s meaning and purpose by helping to decide how the document should look, which is crucial to draw and maintain the reader’s interest. Skilled professional writers can contribute ideas on graphics, text styles, color tones, and arrangement of items. Knowledge of page design software is also vital. All of these things were very important to my work as a professional writer, and they are also important now to my work as an editorial assistant.

As an editorial assistant for an online education magazine, I have assisted in areas such as research, and also in designing some of the magazine sections. For example, if I were compiling material for the social studies section, I might conduct Internet research to find scholarly articles on history, government or world affairs that could be reprinted. Then I would organize the articles into a section to appear in the online magazine, and I would have to do it in a way that looks neat and professional from the reader’s point of view.

By participating in other aspects of publications production, my writing improves substantially. When I write introductory articles to sections focusing on a certain academic topic, I am more informed on the topic because of my research and my work in section design. Writers increase their ethos as they become more knowledgeable, and this increases their rhetorical effectiveness. A professional writer becomes an author when he or she builds enough skills and credibility to make a decisive imprint on a publication, an imprint that clearly shows that the writer made his or her distinctive mark. Then the writer is truly rearticulating the meaning of information.

News writing is an area where professional writers have a large opportunity to be authorial in their role, which I know from my experience in a newspaper internship. When writing articles for a newspaper, you must interview people for a story and then make all of the information you obtain into a coherent story. As the writer, you can highlight the story’s meaning based on your interviewing and research, and your article reflects your perspective on the story, or your articulation of it.

Professional writers act as authors when they are able to use articulation and play a role in defining the meaning of what is in the text. They become more valuable the more they learn to change roles and produce many types of writing. Writers become authors as they accumulate more ethos, which means that not only should they learn the right skills, but also cultivate good relationships with colleagues.

Sources

Slack, Jennifer Daryl, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak. "The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority." Ed. Tim Peeples. Professional Writing and Rhetoric. New York: Addison Wesley Publishers, Inc., 2003. pp. 90, 91, 94.

Learn as much by writing as by reading --Lord Acton

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