The CEA Forum - Summer/Fall 2006 - THREE WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBOARD

Oct 15, 2026

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“Three Ways of Looking at a Blackboard” presents a “trivial” approach to teaching writing and speaking to college freshmen through classical rhetoric. Hal McDonald argues that common classical-rhetoric texts are either historically interesting or vocabulary-based, yet not practically transferable to students’ real communication tasks. He proposes grounding freshman composition in the trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—framed as a pragmatic preparatory program that equips students with systematic methods and usable tools for academic and everyday language projects.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time11 min

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THREE WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBOARD

A “TRIVIAL” APPROACH TO WRITING AND SPEAKING

Classical rhetoric as a practical curriculum

The trivium: grammar, logic, rhetoric

The CEA Forum Summer/Fall 2006: 35.2 THREE WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBOARD: A "TRIVIAL" APPROACH TO WRITING AND SPEAKING Hal McDonald Like most everyone else who routinely engages in that singular pedagogical experience called 􀳦 Freshman Composition,􀳦 I have spent my career searching, quite in vain, for the 􀳦perfect􀳦 approach to teaching that class. Perfection being, as it is, a hard thing to come by in the dull sublunary realm of academe, I have adopted and abandoned far more freshman 􀳦 rhetorics􀳦 than I can count. My experience having convinced me, argumentum ad ignorantium notwithstanding, that the perfect text simply doesn't exist, I nonetheless concluded years ago that the closest approximation to such perfection lies in the direction of 􀳦classical􀳦 rhetoric, the classical world being, as it is, the origin of the study of rhetoric. I fail to see how one can teach 􀳦 rhetoric,􀳦 freshman or otherwise, without passing through pedagogical territory first cleared by Aristotle, Quintilian, Erasmus, and the like, any more than one can teach physics without covering the ideas of Galileo, Newton, and Kepler, even if these luminaries are never mentioned by name. So, I wish to teach 􀳦classical rhetoric􀳦 to my freshmen. But what exactly does that mean? It is, after all, a term that covers quite a lot of ground, and is thus subject to a number of interpretations. As treated by some texts, for instance, it becomes a history or philosophy class, recounting the development of public discourse from antiquity through modern times, and highlighting the theory and practice of such 􀳦great men􀳦 as Cicero, Socrates, and the Apostle Paul. Other texts adopt a 􀳦 handbook􀳦 approach, treating classical rhetoric as a collection of Greek and Latin terms that, when correctly applied to words, create interesting verbal special effects (e.g. , synecdoche, metonymy, anadiplosis, and other such words that fall trippingly from the tongue) . For all their virtues as histories or handbooks, however, neither approach is remotely practical as a freshman 􀳦 rhetoric,􀳦 for neither provides students with tools that are transferable even to other college classes, much less to their communication experience outside of academia, and it is, after all, practical tools which the average incoming freshman most needs. The impracticality of most classical rhetoric texts is not merely frustrating to the classically minded freshman comp teacher; it is highly ironic, as well, given the concretely pragmatic nature of classical rhetoric as it was taught in classical times. What I seek for my freshmen is an approach that is genuinely classical in both substance and in spirit. I want a freshman rhetoric that will ground students in the rich 2500-year history of rhetorical theory, yet be as practical and useful to them in their various language 􀳦projects,􀳦 from history essays, to formal job interviews, to casual conversations, as a 100-piece Black and Decker toolbox is to a carpenter in a woodworking shop. To reach beyond the glittering façade of tropes, figures, and fascinating 􀳦classical􀳦 people and grasp the truly pragmatic heart of classical rhetoric, one must look at it within the context of 􀳦classical􀳦 education as a whole. Early in the evolution of Western education emerged the paradigm of seven liberal arts, which held fairly uncontested sway throughout antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early part of the Renaissance. Rhetoric was one of those liberal arts, but not just any one. Rather, it was the capstone of a three-subject sequence that prepared students for all higher learning, which in those days consisted of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy􀳦four courses collectively known as the quadrivium. The three-subject sequence, starting with grammar and logic, and culminating in rhetoric, that functioned as an indispensable prerequisite to the quadrivium, was the trivium. In its original context, rhetoric was not merely a study of verbal ornamentation,

FAQs

Why does the author argue that “perfect” teaching approaches are hard to find?

He states that searching for the perfect method for teaching freshman composition has repeatedly failed, concluding that such perfection does not exist and that the best approximation is classical rhetoric.

What shortcomings does the author find in typical approaches to classical rhetoric for freshmen?

He says some texts function as histories/philosophy or as handbooks of terms, but neither gives students practical, transferable tools for writing and speaking beyond academia.

What curriculum does the author propose for a classically based freshman composition course?

He proposes the trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—as the ideal curriculum, giving students both a method for processing information and practical tools for connecting information to their world.

Oct 15, 2026

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