We need more rhetoric

Jennifer brought up a very powerful point in regards to the duplicitous nature of rhetoric.  In other words, there are two sides to rhetoric: a dimension of negativity and a dimension to contribute to the stability of humanity.  Furthermore, when Recchio asks, "What do students need to know about rhetoric, it is important that students know the ideas but not necessarily the theoretical foundation.  When a student writes a well-written paper, one of the reasons it is considered well written is because it contains at least the fundamentals of rhetoric: clarity, evidence and purpose of the writing.  Does the student need to know how much Plato, Cicero, Aristotle, and Quintilian contributed to the art of rhetoric?  It will be nice to know, but it will be even better that students are using the power of rhetoric as evidenced by the effectiveness of their paper.  So we as teachers are actually contributing to our students' understanding of rhetoric by the mastery of writing that students show.  In other words, as long as our didactic principles are founded in meaningful instruction to convey ideas, the students are already rhetoricians, they are just not all the way sure how they are.