Mere Rhetoric

When you were learning math, I bet you didn’t start by trying to solve P versus NP. When you were learning Spanish, I bet you didn’t start with creating your own translation of Don Quixote. When you were learning to write, did you start with writing thirty-page rhetorical analyses and speeches? Probably not.   The ancient Greeks thought it was probably not such a good idea to start out young rhetors on writing full speeches, so they came up with a series of exercises that teachers could lead their students through, exercises that would help students become more comfortable with language, learn the conventions of their culture and generally ease their way into the kind of speech writing they’d be doing when they became generals and politicians and whatever else they were planning on doing when they grew up. These exercises were called progymnasmata, which mean “early exercises.” You may recognize that middle part as sounding like “gymnasium,” so it’s easy to remember what progymnasmata means—exercises.   Ancie