At a recent conference on Creative Strategies for Promoting Cultural Change
(Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome), I was struck by the many links
between what are regarded as effective communication strategies and good
teaching methods. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that teaching is the
art of communication par excellence.
Good teaching takes places when a
knowledgeable person communicates something about this knowledge to others in a
coherent, systematic and lucid way. It is not the throwing of facts at a wall
of students but involves the proper use of rhetoric.
The ancients knew much about rhetoric. It
forms part of the classical trivium alongside
grammar and dialectic. We urgently need to reclaim the art of rhetoric from
those who regard it as mere manipulation of words or the soulless repetition of
empty promises. On the contrary, rhetoric is about the nobility of learning, a
means to ensure that traditions and cultural inheritances are preserved as
living realities in the soul of a people. The teacher aware of rhetoric will grow
in stature and enhance the dignity of the profession.
