December 1, 2008, 1:53 pm by Brett

Hello class. My Capstone Project is available on iTunes.

Track 79 entitled, Capstone Final_A Progymnasmodcast. Enjoy!

, 1:32 pm by Brett

Hello, my name is Brett Jones. Today is Wednesday November 19^th 2008, and you are listening to Progymnasmodcast, a podcast about discussing how ancient discussion of rhetoric can be applied to modern pedagogy to better prepare our students to become successful rhetorical citizens.

 

Intro music

 

First, we’re going to have a discussion about progymnasmata, what it was, how it was used, and its importance in ancient Greece and Rome. Next we’re going to take a look at how long it continued to be a part of classical education and how it lost its central position in pedagogy. Third, we’ll hear some examples of the fable, the tale, the proverb, and the thesis, the four main aspects of progymnasmata to get more of an idea about how it worked, and what was involved with it. Fourth, we’re going to discuss how progymnasmata will make for better citizens here in America, what progymnasmata can do for our students, and why implementing progymnasmata into our primary education system will better benefit students to become successful citizens. And lastly we will examine just exactly how we might be able to implement progymnasmata into our primary education system.

 

So let’s get started. Progymnasmata is the ancient art of instructing rhetoric to students. Back in the day, the youth of ancient Greece and Rome required instruction in rhetoric to become successful citizens. All citizens were expected to be well versed in rhetorical techniques. All citizens were expected to have acute awareness of pathos, logos, and ethos were and how they were all vital to conducting one’s affairs in the city-state. The citizen used rhetoric to advance their position in their occupation whether they were a merchant in the plaza, a general in the battlefield, or a member of the senate. The citizen spent a whole lifetime studying and mastering rhetoric. The instruction began not at the university level, but early in childhood. We as students here in America really don’t get introduced to rhetoric until we go to college, and I think that is a hindrance to how our education system is set up.

 

The ancients intended progymnasmata to be a progressive and graduating system of instruction which developed in complexity as the child aged. From the fable, to the tale, to the proverb, to the thesis or the introduction of law, this graduated system of instruction allowed the students to progress through the system so that when they entered public life as a citizen they were ready to tackle all the struggles and hurdles that must be overcome in the courts and in the daily activities in Rome and Greece.

 

So let’s talk about what exactly progymnasmata is. George A. Kennedy cites in his book, Classical Rhetoric in its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times, states that progymnasmata literally translates from ancient Greek as, “preliminary exercises.” They say Aphthonius was responsible for constructing the most popular instructional text regarding progymnasmata. Brian Vickers goes over what Aphthonius listed in his book, In Defense of Rhetoric, quote, “composition models started with simple forms such as the fable, the maxim, the instructive saying, and mythological narrative, giving a set of rules for each. Boys would gradually move on to more demanding exercises, common place, encomium, denunciation, speech and character, or impersonation and description. By this time pupils were producing quite elaborate essays, and learning how to vary, and above all to amplify material. With such topics as praise and blame, thesis, narrito, and discussion of a law, students could make the transition into a rhetorical training proper.”

 

What this passage is talking about is that progymnasmata was just preliminary training. Not necessarily an in depth thorough discussion of what rhetoric entails, because that takes a lifetime to understand. Progymnasmata was merely a set of instructions to prepare a child to understand what rhetoric is and how to better prepare to live a life of rhetoric once reaching the age of citizen. In spite of this, exercises are still loaded with rhetorical devices.

 

Graham Anderson in his book, The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Greek Empire, explains some of the earlier stages of the progymnasmata as being a means to success. Quote, “From the very first exercise in the progymnasmata, sophists could expect to be trained in the art of telling stories as such. And some sophists at least would have made successful raconteurs in their own right.” End Quote.

 

So even though rhetoric takes a lifetime to understand, the progymnasmata could prepare some people to be successful citizens simply at their early stages depending on how well someone could tell a story back then in ancient Greece and Rome. However there are not so many of those professions here in modern America, not too many people make a living telling those stories. Implementing progymnasmata into our primary education would prepare our students to understand more of the everyday jobs one would have in business, finance, law, etc. While it would be great if someone could make a living by going out on the street and telling a story while waiting for someone to drop a one hundred dollar bill in the hat, in reality the business world consists of rhetorical debates, arguments, and discussions on how to proceed into the future with certain aspects of the given circumstances and how our actions will result in positive or negative consequences. Rhetoric is primarily a function that deals with this situation or this process. With progymnasmata students will learn rhetorical techniques to better understand their debate skills and how they can use their reason and rationality to progress through their careers.

 

So if progymnasmata was so effective in instructing rhetoric for the ancients, why did it ever cease to be a part of our education?  Truth is, it never really stopped. Progymnasmata has been around forever. Over the millennia there have been plenty of changes to the variety of instructional methods through which progymnasmata have been taught. Progymnasmata remained fairly untainted by any of these changes until the late 18^th century. According to Donald Lehman Clark in his book, John Milton at St. Paul’s School: A Study of Ancient Rhetoric in Rennacaince Education, progymnasmata has been around for a while. Quote, “There was so little change over the centuries that progymnsamata, written by the Greek teacher Aphthonius of Antioch in the fourth century, translated into Latin and edited for use in the 16^th century was the most used manual for theme writing when Milton was a school boy.” End Quote. So we see that even John Milton, one of the great poets of the English language, was trained in the same methods that the ancient Greeks and Romans were trained. A journal entry by Mark A. Gring, entitled Epistemic and Pedagogical Assumptions for Informative and Persuasive Speaking Practices: Disinterring Dichotomy, the progymnasmata are, “the mental gymnastics introduced to train young minds in dialectic, rhetoric, and declamation, reinforced the conception of education as persuasive agnostic interaction. These exercises were employed in some form from ancient times until the late 1700’s when communication instruction either neglected oral for written, or deemphasized eloquence and argumentation in favor of grammar, sentence construction and diction.” End quote.

 

While the ancients understood rhetoric to be the art of persuasion by way of presenting ideas backed by reason, proofs, truth, and logic, The folks in charge of saying what’s what, decided at one point that rhetoric and logic should be separated. Logic ceased to reside under the rhetorical roof. A heavy emphasis was placed on delivery and style sometime in the 1700’s rather than the other parts of the rhetorical canon like invention and arrangement. Other factors pushed progymnasmata to the sidelines as well.

 

When the industrial revolution came around it was all about making profit, it was all about putting people on the assembly line. The emphasis was placed on vocational labor, about learning a trade, or learning a skill. The professions that had to do with rhetoric had less of a demand than the professions that demanded a particular skill in a trade or manual labor. So that’s another reason why progymnasmata became less important in modern times.

 

But that’s all changed. Since the 1970’s there has been more and more rhetorical instruction at the university level. Progymnasmata has still been around. People in pedagogy have implemented aspects of progymnasmata whether or not they are aware of the fact they are teaching it as progymnasmata. There is still a heavy emphasis on teaching children how to read through telling stories; lots of children are still familiar with Aesop’s fables and different things like that. It’s just not so much of a graduated system of instruction like it used to be up until the 1700’s. I would argue that should we implement that kind of instruction into our primary education it would better prepare our children to become more successful citizens.

Progymnasmata really is the future of our education because more and more now a days we outsource all of our trade skills to other countries. There are very few trade skills in America that pay well enough to put food on the table, so intellectual labor is becoming more and more valuable and more and more important as we advance into the 21^st century. Silicon Valley, the Finance District in New York, and other aspects of the American Labor force are heavily embedded with rhetorical skills and advance skill in rhetoric and oratory will definitely allow citizens to become more successful both in their careers and in their obligation as a citizen, as a voting citizen in fact. Because part of what voting has to do with is the ability to interpret what our leaders are saying through their rhetoric.

 

Rhetoric has become kind of a dirty word because it has been misinterpreted. Logic has been separated from rhetoric so rhetoric no longer means something that is backed by reason. It’s more something that is used to manipulate an audience to gain votes. Well if we were to instruct our children in the progymnasmata, and they were ready to understand what rhetoric is more fully at the age of 18, they could listen to the rhetoric of their leaders and make worthwhile decisions on whether or not that rhetoric is backed by reason or whether or not it is just empty rhetoric being used in order to gain a vote. I think it will allow for students to become more willing to enter the field of politics. It will enable students to be less intimidated by the aspects of politics that have to do with persuasion and rhetoric as sneaky ways to gain votes. I think more and more students would vote right at the age of eighteen. I think that if this progymnasmata is implemented into our primary education system it really will benefit our country in so many different ways because it will increase our youth’s involvement in the democratic process. It will also better prepare students to become more thoroughly trained in skills required for intellectual labor and they will be able to pass on these tools to their children and their children’s children. America will become this intellectual labor force to be reckoned with compared to the rest of the world.

 

I believe the ancient training exercises of progymnasmata can easily be adapted into our primary education system through legislation and through training our secondary education English majors or teachers in the progymnasmata and how to implement the progymnasmata into a graduated system of instruction into our primary education. As children they can be exposed to the fables, then the tale, the proverb, and the introduction to law. The rhetorical instruction will not only included the progymnasmata through their example but also by interacting with the progymnasmata by composing the exercises themselves so the students may be exposed to the rhetorical canons at an early age. I believe this will really enhance the quality of our children’s education.

So now that we’ve had a really solid discussion about progymnasmata, let’s have a look at what the progymnasmata actually consists of. I am going to list them off and briefly describe each one starting with the fable. The fable is something everyone is familiar with. There are Aesop’s fables. Aesop, according to G.K. Chesterson, in his introduction to Aesop’s Fables written by V.S. Vernon Jones, Aesop lived around the 6^th century B.C. G.K. Chesterson made it a point to say that Aesop didn’t necessarily write any of these fables, merely he collected them. So fables have been around long before Aesop, they are just a means to tell a moral about living in the human world. One of the things Chesterson said in his introduction is, “Whatever is authentic is universal, and whatever is universal is anonymous.” So we can’t attribute these fables to Aesop as being the author of them, he is just the one who complied these fables into a collection and presented them to the public at large. So have a listen to this fable about some frogs and the sun and we’ll get back to the discussion about the progymnasmata:

 

Fable intro music:

 

Present the Fable.

 

Alright, I hope y’all enjoyed that fable. One of the things I would like to talk about this fable is the rhetorical techniques implemented into it and how a child can take this fable and learn from it. We see at the beginning of the fable it starts with the scenario with simply frogs croaking at the sun. Jupiter sees it, gets inquisitive, says frogs what are you croaking about? The frogs say the sun is thinking about taking a wife, if he does the marshes are going to dry up, and then what will we do then? Now the purpose of this fable is to portray a moral. The moral of this story is that if you are in a position of authority then you have to think about the life that you are supporting, if you take a wife, then you won’t be able to do your duty. It is better to stay single, or else the frogs are going to get angry. It is a weird moral, I could be off, but what I suggest is this fable should be used to inspire children to come up with their own fables and tales. There are rhetorical techniques like logos. The logos in this fable is the fact that heat dries up marshes. The pathos is the frogs pathetically appealing to the audience for their desperate state should the sun choose a wife and heat up the marshes. The ethos is found in Jupiter’s inquisitive nature by asking the frogs what the problem is. Jupiter is displaying kindness by tending to their need. Those are some of the artistic proofs the children should be instructed in. The children can use this fable to be inspired to construct a fable of there own.

Fables have animals, whereas the tales have people. G.K. Chesterson said, “there can be no good fable with human beings in it and there can be no good fairy tale with out them.” He said the “fairy tale revolves on the pivot of human personality and that in the fable simpler and stronger creatures are connected to simpler and stronger truths.” As we can see the fable revolves around a simple tale involving animals and their interactions in order to communicate some moral of human existence. The tale works along the same line, just more complex and detailed, and always involving human characters. So with that being said, I will introduce you to a tale by Hans Christian Anderson. Once we come back we will get into some other aspects of progymnasmata:

 

Intro music for tale:

Present Tale.

 

Well, I hope y’all enjoyed that tale about the naughty boy. Upon reviewing that tale we see the moral of the story involves love. You can’t escape Cupid’s arrow. This tale is meant to be introduced to the student at a later age due to the complexity of the story. Love is a complex subject and a smaller child can not understand them until a later age. So here we see the graduated system of instruction at work. So with that being said, we will move on to another aspect of the progymnasmata, know as the proverb.

 

Present Proverbs.

 

So we see with these proverbs are concise and packed sentences full of some aspect that can be contributed to an important part of human existence like the fable or the tale. The proverb would be introduced in the first stages of high school. Once they understand what the proverb is about they will be exposed to the final stage of the progymnasmata, the thesis or the introduction to law.

 

The students would learn how to compose a thesis, the elements of the thesis and how to defend the thesis. They then will move on to advanced exercises like proposing a law, defending a law and attacking a law. This is a really good place to end the progymnasmata because then the student will soon be of the age to vote and become involved in the democratic process. The student will have a solid concept and grasp of the rhetorical devices necessary to move into college or the business world. The student will be well versed in rhetorical techniques and have a solid grasp of how to apply these skills to further and deeper study of rhetoric, how to apply it to their careers and how to become successful citizens.

 

So with that being said, let’s discuss how we can implement the progymnasmata into our primary education system. Progymnasmata has already been implemented into our education in some form or another; however it is not as graduated or precise as it used to be. So being that we live in a free market system, we should raise the money to erect an institution that will train students in the progymnasmata. The institution will have instruction in arithmetic and science; however the reading and writing portion of this school will be based on the progymnasmata. The implementation of the fable, tale, proverb, and thesis will be included based upon Aphthonius’s graduated system of instruction that were used up until the 1700’s. Through this system, should it succeed, the free market will notice and people will flock to it in droves and soon enough there will be legislation to mandate the progymnasmata into public schools. The reform I am suggesting is neither radical nor risky. The progymnasmata worked for over two millennia and it has the ability to work again. While it isn’t my job to make laws or mandate education reform, it is my hop this podcast will reach the ears of the people who can make changes happen. The progymnasmata will benefit America’s society at large, should we only give it a chance. Let’s do what we gotta do ladies and gentlemen. That’s all I have to say.

 

So in this podcast, I have discussed what progymnasmata is, how it was used in Ancient Greece and Rome, how we can implement it into our education system today and why the implementation of progymnasmata into our primary education system will better benefit society at large. My name is Brett Jones, thank y’all for listening.

 

Outro music:

 

The music of this podcast is provided by Jamendo, by the artist Revolution Void from the Album “Increase the Dosage.”