National Healing: Race, State, and the Teaching of Composition

And to Go Beyond the Words

An d to Go Beyond the Words We know next to nothing about Lao Tzu, the contemporary of Confucius who wrote the great guide to Taoist living, the Tao Te Ching. In it, Lao calls on readers to follow the Tao, or Way, the entering of the process of letting go of desires and negative impulses in order to enter into harmony with nature and life. According to the Tao, to live effectively is to live ethically, aware, without harming, without the need to control. One does not have to read very far in Taoist literature, of course, to see the difference between Western rhetoric with its emphasis on persuasion and eloquence and Taoism, with its emphasis on letting go and simplicity. According to Lao Tzu: True words aren’t eloquent; eloquent words aren’t true. Wise men don’t need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren’t wise. (1988, 81) The decision to speak is, or should be, taken seriously. Hadrat ‘Ali, one of the first followers and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammed, fourth and last Caliph following the Prophet’s death, and honored Shi’ah teacher, left important writings about spiritual and civic issues, including the uses and abuses of speech and rhetoric. Many times, throughout the course of Living and Dying with Grace, and no doubt in response to the turmoil of the times in which he led his people, ‘Ali warns that he who “habitually engages in disputation will not see the dawn of his night” (1995, 68). Speech is a dangerous weapon: “Many a spoken word is more piercing than an attack” (60); consequently, it is better to seek truth and to use language judiciously, including in the service of God, because “The tongue is a wild beast; when it is let loose it wounds” (8). How different our classrooms would be if our pedagogies and actions were based in principles such as these! Imagine if writing and speaking were so valued in US society that we practiced performing them only when we had considered them, only when we were certain of our And to Go Beyond the Words     75 intention to do necessary work, to do good for the communities we would like to join. Imagine if writing and speaking were so valued in our classrooms that we practiced only asking for them when we thought that sharing would contribute to genuine harmony—not uniformity. What if, as a nation, we valued peace and significance as much or more than acknowledgment and prestige? I suspect that we academics would teach differently , not to mention behave differently in faculty meetings and at professional conferences. In our classrooms, we would simplify our pedagogies: clear away the clutter of exercises and assignment rubrics and composition textbooks. We would not assign weekly essays on teacher-sponsored topics or work that stifles a university and a student’s life with bureaucratic noise, the stuff of mechanical evaluation. We would, instead, ask our students to complete assignments that are at and in the moment, absolutely crucial. We would not ask students to write that which demonstrates allegiance to our political commitments, our activisms, or our public positions. We would ask students to write and explore their allegiance to their own political commitments, their own activisms (if they have them, and if not, why not), and their own beliefs (private and public). When one reads in the Taoist tradition, in a book such as Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping’s The Art of Writing (1996), a collection of poetry and prose from Taoist writers who lived in China during the first three hundred years of the Christian era, one sees insights into the nature of writing that are far different from those of the rhetoricians working in the West at the same time. This can be seen, for instance, in the writing of Lu Ji, a nobleman and military leader originally from the delta of the Yangtze River whose fortunes rose and fell with changes in the political winds, until his execution. Lu Ji lived from 261 to 303 C.E., between the time of Quintilian, 35–96 C.E., and Augustine, 354–430 C.E. After the time when Quintilian was writing about the training of a rhetorician and the means of persuasion available to a rhetorician, and before the time that Augustine was explaining matters of faith, study and discourse, Lu was exploring the ineffability and beauty of composing. For Lu...