Although presidential candidate Donald Trump has recently shifted his focus of hate from Mexican immigrants to Muslim immigrants, the sentiment of his rhetoric remains the same: stay the fuck out of America. If Trump was just one batshit reality TV star with the white house in his sights as some sort of sick publicity stunt (which many were hopeful of in his campaign’s infancy), his words could be easily dismissed with eye rolls and head shakes. The grim reality is, of course, that he is currently leading in many polls over both democrat and republican hopefuls. What’s more, his words have broken the barrier of merely disconcerting political rhetoric and entered the realm of inciting violent action–proving that rhetoric matters and should be given much more gravity in academia than it currently receives.

According to an article written by Russell Berman which appeared in The Atlantic on August 20th, 2015, “Police in Boston say that one of two brothers who allegedly beat a homeless Hispanic man cited Trump’s message on immigration as a motivation for their attack. “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” Scott Leader, 38, told officers, according to a police report.” Trump, in response to this news, had only this to say: “…the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again.” He takes zero responsibility and expresses no remorse for the innocent 58-year-old man who was “urinated on…and then assaulted…with a metal pole.”

Clearly, there is a point at which words are no longer just words. I think we can all agree that a good place to draw the line is when hate-speech influences violent action by others.

This is why the study of rhetoric, English, and/or composition is crucial for all students and should be taken just as seriously as any/all of the sciences. All students should know how to proficiently navigate the rocky terrains of rhetoric as they exit the university, lest the academy wishes to produce citizens who are susceptible to being easily swayed by such hateful ignorance; lest the goal of a college education is to leave students unequipped with the tools necessary to discern sound from poor logical constructions and argumentation; lest violence is an appropriate response to rhetorical interpretation.

If that is the case, continue to defund our programs, call our studies pointless, and laugh at our earnest pursuits from behind your Ivory doors while, outside, hatred flourishes and innocent people are beaten half to hell with metal pipes and pissed on. Cut our budgets. Piss on us while you’re at it. Our study doesn’t matter.

Apathy abounds in our students. I am not qualified nor do I possess the intellectual patience it would require to explore the question of why this is. I could probably rattle off a few lightly informed reasons for this, but they would do nothing more than exhaust you and have little to no solid theory to back them up. Fear not, dear reader, I will spare you my pseudo-academic social critique of the larger cultural forces at play here. If hearing a rant of this sort is something that, against all odds, does intrigue you, have a few drinks with me some night and they will most likely stumble their way out of my mouth around midnight.

However, here I am, in the sober light of day, and the question I wish to explore is “how?” More specifically, how can we create care in our students? As my last post posits, care is the prerequisite to good writing. I do not think that The Sequence is the answer (which is why I urge all of my colleagues to deviate from it wherever possible). I, of course, would never do such a thing…but, in theory, there are better ways to foster inspired writing in our freshmen.

One way that I think could work (and would still satisfy the text requirement of The Sequence), would be to let each student pick an essay from Emerging to write about. Encourage them to choose a piece that somehow speaks to them. Did it give them chills? Good. Did it blow their freakin’ minds? Sweet, dude. Did it piss them off? Even better. This is the Affect Effect. After about the third class of Restak talk, my classes had little to offer other than groans and boos every time I brought him up. Their brains shut off in unison at any mention of the R-word. The didn’t care. Not even a little bit. And, what’s worse, the content made them feel condescended to–like they were the problem and this doctor guy was preaching to them about the evils of their ways and how they were the ones destroying the sanctity of Human Interaction every time they glanced at their phones.

This is not how writing should be taught. A good essay can’t be produced on a text the essayist couldn’t give a damn about with a gun to his head. Call me soft, a hippie-dippie expressivist in a sweater vest, but I believe in the Affect Effect and I look forward to giving it a shot in ENC 1102.

I’m not sold on the idea that there needs to be a distinction between viewing thought/communication as either natural or artificial—at least not if the central concern at play is whether or not writing is an effective route toward learning. Honestly, what practical takeaway does such a juxtaposition offer when it comes to the process of learning? Learning, regardless of its origins, will either take place or not. The methods by which teaching is implemented is what should be of concern. The problem is not rooted in how “to ask students to see the natural as artificial,” (Bartholomae) but how, as teachers, we might best exploit all of the tools we have at our disposal—writing, reading, talking, and listening—in concert. Rather than wondering whether or not “Writing is a learned behavior” or “talking is [a] natural, even irrepressible, behavior,” (Emig) we should engage in conversations regarding how to best employ every possible language process in order to yield the most learning.

That being said, it is important to note: I had no prior idea of where I stood on this question before I sat down and wrote it all out. I have actively learned here—at my own rhythm and before my own eyes. Furthermore, when I get to class in about 45 minutes, someone else might offer up a highly persuasive thought counter to my argument, using (my god!) his or her voice; this could alter (enrich?) my stance. After class, maybe I’ll read some other blog posts and fall in line with another way to view the question. Reading, writing, talking, listening. Learning, at this point in human history, is a byproduct of thinking; and it is impossible to imagine life without thought. Is that natural or artificial? You tell me.