Rhetoric and Reasoning: Exploring Imaginative Arguments for Public Schools

• In Event: 25.068 - Educational Goods and Public Policy

Abstract

This project engages critical discourse analysis to probe examples of political speech about the purposes, meaning, and value of public schools within a democracy. It begins with the recognition that contemporary rhetoric and reasoning behind arguments regarding public schools, especially recent calls to shift toward privatization, bear faulty assumptions and beliefs that need to be exposed. Such arguments often rely on shortsighted metaphors and narratives which undermine the public’s commitment to public education. Once exposed, this project then turns to offering imaginative new possibilities for using language and imagery to describe the civic purposes and impact of public education, thereby opening new ways for the public to engage stories of schooling and better support the endeavor of democratic, public education.

Authors

• Kathleen Knight-Abowitz, Miami University

• Sarah Marie Stitzlein, University of Cincinnati