"Rhetoric!" English professor Robert Polhemus declared with a dramatic flourish, moments before the Senate approved changes to the freshman writing requirement in May. "I want to rescue the beauty and the appropriateness and the precision of the word 'rhetoric,' the age-old art and science of effective persuasion and logical ability in writing and speaking."
The new Program in Writing and Rhetoric is a continuation of the first-year requirement that has been in place since Stanford's founding. It differs from the current program in two key ways: students who earn a 4 or 5 on Advanced Placement tests in English will no longer be able to take a one-quarter course instead of a two-quarter one, and students will learn oral and visual communication skills in a state-of-the-art multimedia classroom. Writing classes will remain small -- 15 students, tops -- and the 150 different syllabi that instructors now use will be consolidated.
The AP test is "trivial," says English and linguistics professor Elizabeth Traugott, who chaired the committee that recommended the changes in the writing program. "It gives no evidence of ability to write at the level expected here." In other words, it doesn't evaluate rhetoric.
