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My Approach
critical thinking
This is how ancient rhetoric, critical thinking, and design all fit together in my approach.
image of train and students
Solving any problem is more important than being right. - Milton Glaser
classical Rhetoric
a background for critical thinking

I teach critical thinking, composition and research classes to college students. From experience, students really make the skills "their own" when they understand where the skill comes from.

This is where rhetoric comes in – and it’s not just hot air!

Rhetoric, for me, is the art of persuasion.

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Aristotle argues that it has its own structures and rules. This makes it incredibly useful in everyday life.

For example, all three of the following situations could really benefit from a rhetorician’s input:
  • - A print ad persuades a shopper to buy a luxury car..
  • - A website persuades a user to sign up for their service over a competitor.
  • - A toddler throws a tantrum to persuade her parents to cancel naptime.
some nuts & bolts
artistotle and rhetoric
The rhetorician discovers, articulates and wields persuasion.

Ad agencies, web startups and toddlers persuade you to do different things, but they do it using the same system.

The rhetorician discovers, articulates and wields persuasion.

To show how this works, going back to our example, Aristotle believed that persuasion systematically appeals to the audience’s (1) emotions, (2) sense of language/reason, and (3) beliefs about the speaker.

A rhetorician would spell out these appeals, and make recommendations on how they can be fine tuned for an audience to make the ad, website, and temper tantrum maximally persuasive.

critical thinking
the jump from theory to use

Critical thinking is the act of taking a piece of information, understanding the ostensive meaning, articulating its structure, and analyzing it. All of these steps help us make good decisions about the information.

Design thinking is critical thinking about the user’s experience.

Critical thinking is a practical, generalized application of ancient rhetoric.

Rather than going through the philosophical work of discovering *why* language works in a certain way, it jumps straight to the *how* skills that help you analyze a situation and make good decisions.

Design thinking is critical thinking about the user’s experience. We can think of a “user” as an active audience. In this way, design thinking is application of rhetorical theories.

This is the background of my teaching approach. The skills I have taught blend perfectly with design and content consulting.