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 Rhetorical Education for Political Influence The LWV and Political Literacy We believe that as women we need the training ground given by the League of Women Voters: first, to teach us the facts about the contribution we wish to make, and to enable us to form public opinion; second, to teach us how party and governmental machinery operates and how it can be improved so as to permit increasingly of the open expression of views at the right time for action. —Gertrude B. Smith, President of the Connecticut LWV, “Thinking Party Membership” When political party leaders hesitated to appoint women to powerful administrative posts or to consider legislative concerns of importance to many women, former suffragists responded by establishing the LWV. From its location outside of traditional political parties, the LWV worked to involve women in local,state,and national political discussions by training them in techniques of political influence. While nonpartisan media might raise the political intelligence of women voters,the LWV hoped to teach women citizens to do something with—to act on—that intelligence. Their goal, as Ludington explained in ,was to “develop an intelligent and active electorate ”(Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association ).To this end,the organization developed educational methods to encourage women’participation in electoral procedures and to train women as political rhetors. Promoting Active Political Literacy The LWV wished to prepare women for what they called “political literacy” (Fletty ). The League understood literacy to mean something similar to Royster’s definition of it as “the ability to gain access to information and to use this information variously to articulate lives and experiences and also to identify,think through,refine,and solve problems,sometimes complex problems , over time” (). Political literacy, in this configuration, involves both access to politically relevant information and,perhaps more importantly,the active and strategic use of writing and persuasive skills in political arenas. 5  Rhetorical Education for Political Influence The League contributed to the development of women’s political literacy in the decade after suffrage by increasing members’access to political information and by teaching them rhetorical strategies for political influence. Because the LWV desired to cultivate active women citizens, their educational practices often involved women directly in the processes of political influence through experiential learning. Just as Dewey’s understanding of the link between communication and democracy influenced LWV activity ,so too did his emphasis on the link between active education and democracy .1 According to Dewey, progressive education in a democracy should prepare citizens to conduct research,engage in debates,and enact solutions to problems alongside (or sometimes in opposition to) the officials they elect. Democratic education, Dewey argues, should not be based on “scholasticism ”—by which he means a concern for theoretical arguments rather than the current experience of learners. Too frequently, he suggests, traditional educational practices remove learners from their immediate experience by teaching them ideas that have been developed by remote individuals: one has only to call to mind what is sometimes treated in schools as acquisition of knowledge to realize how lacking it is in any fruitful connection with the on-going experience of the students—how largely it seems to be believed that the mere appropriation of subject matter which happens to be stored in books constitutes knowledge. (Democracy and Education ) Rather than book learning,Stephen Fishman and Lucille McCarthy explain in their study of Dewey and composition instruction, Dewey advocates the teaching of concepts “not as isolated ends in themselves,but as interdependent tools for addressing pressing social problems” (). According to League historian Valborg Fletty, to instill in women the desire to do something with the political education they acquired through the LWV,“John Dewey’s philosophy of learning to do by doing was adopted. Study was related to use and action....The end sought was not mere interest in government,but doing something about government”().The LWV’s Handbook for League Workers encouraged LWV officers to help members “experienc[e] a relationship with government”through experiential education methods such as field trips and participation in focused campaigns (). League experiential education was geared to help women witness firsthand the rhetorical tactics of public influence. Field trips, for instance, involved small groups “visit[ing] for purposes of observation or of securing information ”a variety of important sites,including courts; boards of education; and city,county or state legislative bodies.After observing these arenas of influ-  Rhetorical Education for Political Influence ence, LWV members were encouraged to follow up on the arguments they had observed by...

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