Views of Rhetoric From Broadway to Education

After discussing definitions of rhetoric in class on Monday, the song “Wonderful” from the musical Wicked kept running through my head.  The song is about how the language used to discuss something affects the way the thing is viewed.  Specifically, the line I was thinking of is when the Wizard tries to convince Elphaba he’s not really a villain: “A man’s called a traitor or liberator.  A rich man’s a thief or philanthropist.  Is one a crusader or ruthless invader?  It’s all in which label is able to persist.” He goes on to retort to the accusation that he lied by saying, “Only verbally.” The Wizard also says that he’s “Wonderful” because that’s what the people in Oz call him.  He is wonderful because “it’s part of my name.”  It’s the name, the word used, that matter.

Here’s Joel Grey singing “Wonderful” in the original Broadway production:

The song led me to thinking about how labels apply to the way education gets debated in government and the media.  Education in the U.S. is governed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  When Congress reauthorized the law in 2001, it was given a new name, the No Child Left Behind Act.  Talk about a loaded phrase.  Who could possible be against something called the No Child Left Behind Act?  Clearly anyone who would oppose a law called that wants children to be left behind.  Never mind the details of the policy and whether or not those policy prescriptions benefit or harm children and their schools.  How can teachers be against accountability?  To oppose accountability is to want incompetent teachers to keep their cushy union jobs with perks like summers off. (Ask me some time what teachers have to do during the summer when they are allegedly not working.  Also ask me about my experience teaching in Texas.  I always thought it was funny to read letters to the editor denouncing greedy union teachers in a state where teacher unions have no power, no collective bargaining, and no contract with the state or any school district.)  And we must reward teachers who raise student achievement.  Only bad teachers are unable to raise student achievement.  Of course using terms such as “accountability” and “student achievement” begs the question exactly how we are going to define those terms.  In education research, the researcher must clearly define, or operationalize, a term like “student achievement” for the purposes of their study.  How would you define “student achievement”?  Is it test scores?  A portfolio of student work?  A project?  The results of education studies, the direction of education policy, and the way classrooms are run depend on how terms like that are defined.

Then there’s the biggest irony to come out of the tragic elementary school shooting in Connecticut.  Overnight, teachers went from being union thugs to being the last line of defense protecting students.  Teachers carrying guns in class?  Having taught in a high school where there were gangs and where my students missed classes and even final exams because they were in jail, let me count the ways that could go wrong…