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PAH..TISAN REVIEW
war against China?" and "Has not the civilization of mankind been as
much affected by the influence of the fair Sex as by any other cause what–
ever?" Not bad for Saturday mornings.
Most evident in Mr. Biemiller's article is the adoration the students
had for language and debate. One student's speech, entided "What Makes
the Orator?" concluded that, "No gesture or attitude; no beautiful allego–
ry or simile; no boisterous emphasis or soft cadence can make a man
eloquent. True eloquence emanates from higher sources.
It
is only when a
speaker is carried away by his passions and forgets these artificial and stud-
ied formulae, that he becomes truly eloquent."
.
Such literary societies-like England's wars against China-eventual–
ly came to an end. And like those wars-the Opium Wars-the aftermath
was monstrously destructive. The eloquence the students of that age dis–
played is now no more than an historical artifact. In its place we have the
easy opiates of "self-esteem" and television culture and talk-show chatter.
For this state of affairs, we in higher education should not expect to be held
blameless. To do so would be to ignore what we all know: colleges and
universi ties are setting the bar too low. One of the principal reasons that
students do not mull the issues of the day on Saturday mornings in favor
of sleeping in, is, sadly, a consequence of the academy asking too litde.
It is discomforting that in 1880 only one in two thousand people went
to college. By 1997 about 67 percent of high school graduates matriculat–
ed at some school of allegedly higher learning, and many educators today
vindicate lower standards by lauding higher participation.
Can we have both high standards and high participation? They are not
logically
opposed. We may draw some encouragement from the fact that
demand for entrance into the nation's most challenging institutions is, in
most cases, higher than demand at less challenging colleges and universities.
On the other hand, much larger numbers of students attend those colleges
and universities that act as if setting high standards would drive off students.
Is it practical in this context to harbor hope for something like the re–
birth of serious study of the rhetorical arts? I am divided on the question.
Rhetoric is by no means a tradition reserved for the social elite. It is a tra–
dition broad enough to include Aesop as well as Cicero; John Wesley as
well as John Donne; Abraham Lincoln and WilliamJennings Bryan as well
as Daniel Webster and Franklin Roosevelt. Mastering rhetoric was once
the high road to social mobility for those not born to wealth or position.
In that sense, restoring it to a more central place in higher education is
deeply in accord wi th democratic sentiment.
On the other hand, American culture is currendy in a phase of pro–
found self-satisfaction. Low intellectual standards prevail along with
infatuation with celebrity and confident cynicism about the way the world
