22: Classical Rhetorical Form

and welcome to classical stuff you should know the podcast about classical things from a bunch of classical teachers in the movement that is sweeping the world classical education I was looking at classical education statistics on twitter this morning and the most retweeted tweet of all time is classical education is cool and good wow that's incredible yes incredible I was retweeted tweet of the classical world no all time all time all time all time all time at that most retreat no that's not true I think the most retweeted tweet of all time is that guy that tweeted Wendy's to get free chicken nuggets right and and he and that and that young man he won his chicken nuggets so that just shows that classical the classical movement is gonna win everything that is tweeted on twitter popularly will eventually succeed was the most retweeted of all time there's what is happening yeah is a man needs this chicken nuggets man man needs this chicken nuggets is the most retweeted retweeted tweet of all time that's sad sorry man that man won his nugs so that is a happy unmanned so this is classical stuff you should know and oh who are we you have to say my name is Graham Donaldson and I'm here with AJ Hanenberg that's me a classical teacher at ninth grade english and my co-teacher of rhetoric and senior english and senior english as well and then we're also joined with Thomas Megbee hello named after as we all found out Saint Thomas Aquinas yes not Thomas from the witch do with yeah not Thomas from the witch not Thomas Aquinas he is the dean of the summer yeah Thomas Kramer yeah I'm not named after whatever be which sorry it's not very good story I wish I was sorry and yeah so this is we thank you for listening and today since you've clicked on the link you know that we are going to be talking about classical rhetorical form AJ what is classical rhetorical form and why does someone who's interested in classical education need to know about it oh man that was a great leading question I was playing on starting a different way so I was wondering how were you guys taught to write in high school that's what I would like to know is what what is your background in writing um we did the five paragraph essay and I don't even remember actual writing instruction I just kind of remember that teachers would talk to you as if you had received some instruction in the past and then you would just fake it by writing them something and then they would turn it back to disappointed and then and then it was and then I would take it home and take it to my dad who's a professor and I'd say dad help how do I do this and then he was like well it looks like they want to you to do this and then he taught me to do it that's that's what I remember I don't remember actually sitting down and doing any sort of grammar here's how to write a sentence I just sort of yeah I never had disappointed teachers they were like it's incredible this is amazing I'm I the teacher I have become the student wow that's not true and like second grade oh you these five paragraphs I say and I'll always remember that your intro is supposed to be an upside down pair triangle triangle yeah I don't know it's a pyramid but it's supposed to start with a really vague thought and then end with your thesis at the end and then you have your three supporting points for your thesis and then you have a right side up triangle at the bottom you start with your very specific thesis and you wrap up with a very vague general thing at the bottom how vaguely your vague thoughts like this guy's blue from the dawn of time man has thought about the causes of world war one and then it from the dawn of time yeah that's something my thought was like you know world war one I wonder what'll cause that start I don't know it was the same thing I got taught the five paragraphs I but not I think I was overtly taught it maybe one time they just sort of assumed I had it yeah and I sort of put together writing stuff as I went along like you read a lot you end up being able to write kind of and then it was the same sort of thing upside down triangle three boxes and then a normal side of the world period at the bottom yeah and that's I think that's how pretty much everybody has learned to write and what's odd to me is that you don't write a whole lot of those in college no the five paragraphs I say and I'm not sure I have ever read one in the real world have you guys ever seen one in a newspaper or in a magazine or no and we live now in the Bible maybe so when we were in high school the concept of maybe having some kind of career in writing was pretty limited but nowadays with there's so much online think piece articles and so many websites dedicated to turning out these think pieces that you could say in some respects writing can be more of a potential money making endeavor than maybe I wouldn't say career because I don't think people who write medium blog posts or I make more of those lists like 20 pictures of people who didn't plan ahead I have to say I admit I love those every time one of those pops up on Facebook that's like the reason I go to Facebook now is to go to those deeply post-its that's like people who got in over their head I'm like oh I got to click on this I've just sort of accepted it with myself but now it's like you know 20 reasons why Luke Skywalker would have been involved in the current hashtag movement of pick your social cause right and then so there's lots of people so there's I guess my point is there seems to be more writing nowadays than there was just because of the internet yeah and a lot of bad writing such bad writing so you think that like yeah I for us maybe our teachers were like well they're never gonna write anything anyway unless they work for New Yorker and that's never gonna happen but nowadays it could maybe make the argument that there is more avenues for writers who are persuasive but there's more potential maybe yeah but okay but why was it the five paragraphs I guess we're gonna get into this in a little while but like that's so I was not used anywhere and it well I don't know I guess we'll get into whether it's persuasive or not yeah it's effective yeah sure well I was curious about that and I did a bunch of research at one point and from what I can tell and I'm probably wrong about this right I'm just I'm a lowly 9th grade English teacher who did a little bit of research at one point but no one really knows where the five paragraphs they came from or how or why it rose to the fore it just became this utility thing that we did in school and it confuses me right because we don't ever use it in real life it's it's honestly kind of a bad format because at the beginning they encourage you to write vaguely right the first thing you do is give a vague statement that is bad writing everyone who has ever written about the writing process says do not just write vague sentences they're bad sentences so you are encouraged in this format to do it at least twice and then they kind of do it less and less as you move towards your thesis and then more and more as you go out from your argument and that's not good like that's we are encouraging our kids to write badly like we are telling them those things to do and I think the five paragraphs say grew naturally from what we're talking about today classical rhetorical form which oh man it sounds so boring and I know it sounds so boring who wants to hear about how to how to format their writing that's not it doesn't sound like a kick in the pants really oh man oh I just woke up happening on this podcast but but I promise it's not it's not as boring as it sounds it actually comes in pretty useful on occasion and so whenever I teach this to my students I always relate it to them trying to convince their dad to buy them a car and I'm not really sure how I should do that with adults like what is what is a common thing that adults are trying to convince other people of promotion I don't know promotion might work okay so promotion might work I don't have to stick with these with the car one because that's you know the one and you know the one and you know the one related to our listeners I can I'm here so you'll think all of our I'm pretty sure our listeners are like under 14 all kind of I really doubt they're going through those dipply posts right now that 20 20 hot burns from Tinder sorry I think these are all actual articles that you've read oh I read a tender one yes okay so classical rhetorical form is how the old rhetoricians would organize an argumentative essay right we're not talking informative that's a different thing there are there are three different kinds of discourse right there is judicial discourse which is concerned with what happened in the past right you're talking about whether or not someone did something whether or not an event is a good thing you know it's concerned solely with the past and there's some argument judgment with judgment right and this is the kind of thing you hear in a courtroom there is argument there but it's maybe a different kind of argument and it involves different topics right we're talking about laws and precepts and what's the pre there's a word for it is there any like a law that's the one precedent that's not one thing for thank you and so there's things that come in there and then there's ceremonial discourse which happens at birthdays right if I was going to be a toast to Graham I would be engaging in ceremonial discourse which is concerned mostly with praising and condemning so that move gang so I would be at his birthday birthday you know what boys you're all here but he's the worst let's get out so that means it is the discourse for the present moment of the ceremony yeah and you're trying to make people feel better here today to honor Graham or to disparage Graham yeah I'm only kind of I'm not really necessarily judging his past I'm just bringing up the good stuff that he did to make everybody feel good about him so this is valed to try and speech this is yes about this is best man speech right about a toy isn't trying to judge what the school has done in the past unless he's really doing an awkward thing up there and he's not trying to judge where the school should go in the future that's not his job his job is like we're here for you we did it everyone's like we then somebody pulls out a beach ball they get in trouble and you know the whole thing that's ceremonial and what I'm talking about today is persuasive well there's a word for it I'm spacing on it I don't I haven't my notes anyway persuasive discourse it's concerned with what we're going to do in the future and every derivative and if you have a specific goal in mind you need to convince everyone else that this is the way to do it and so they organize this kind of discourse into kind of a format that would work and the benefits of this is that it's shrinkable you can grow it like that's that was the bad thing about the fiber graph essays and you got to college a pair of what did you do when you asked to write paper graphs or 10 pages I wrote an introduction with vague sentences at the beginning and then rambled for nine and a half pages and the road of conclusion what do you guys do same thing things similar things I was lucky in college in that I was when I started college I was doing a specialist in philosophy which meant that all of my classes were in philosophy and they had very strict ways of how they wanted their papers written and so that was the first thing that you had to learn was this how to write a philosophical paper oh it's awesome it was good but I didn't want to stick with the specialist and I turned it to a change of degree around but it was it was more of a like a mechanical style of writing and you had to be really particular with your words so that was really good but but yeah I think in high school I got to that point where my teachers were saying 10 pages you would I would be like I need five paragraphs and it's 10 pages that means that my second year graph is two and a half pages long yeah oh here we go and then it was rough yeah so classical rhetorical form can be any length right you could write 30 pages with this you could write you know 12 sentences with this anything you need if anyone says you need to give a speech convincing people to do things you can use this because you can shrink it you can grow it you can do what you want more fluid this is when we're deliberating over something so should Sparta go to war with Athens exactly should we go to Big Band Park this weekend should we replace all the company toilets with Japanese toilets oh that sounds awesome yeah they talk to you they were they were like those fancy Japanese toilet they were in your seat and they talked to you and then they said did you not when I was talking to one of our hotels man I went to Japan a couple of Thanksgiving's ago and wasn't a fancy hotel but they had like motion sensor toilets and so you walk into the bathroom and the lights would dim and the toilet would seat would come up and lights would appear under the chassis of the toilet and then you have to like from behind the toilet I understand and I swear it would say something in Japanese to the effect of like I do well I'm pleased to accept your waist or whatever it is and it was amazing Amanda loves them she we look them out they're like three grand and you need and we'll power outlet next to the toilet to power anyway sorry well let's rock and roll that sounds like a great thing to convince people of doing right so I'm gonna walk everybody through and we this is the way we have our seniors right there senior thesis which is a 20 minute speech over 12 pages that they memorize and then deliver and have to defend and so we are all three of us are on the thesis team and so we're all really familiar with this so feel free to chime in if I miss something but I will go through the steps and then talk about it the end how you can like move around and shrink them and what you need and what you don't and then how I'll talk is I go how it relates to the five-paragraph essay because I really do think the five-paragraph grew naturally from classical virtual reform right so the first part is known as the exordium which means leading off right the beginning because if I get up there and I just start jumping right into my argument everyone's gonna feel real weird about it right as a pastor you got to lead off with a joke or a story and a sermon as a teacher you got to kind of they call it a hook right if you're teaching a lesson it's the same thing in diswars I can't just get up there and be like that's yeah we should stop testing on pigs and everyone's like what are you talking about right you got you gotta kind of butter up the audience a little bit and there's a few reasons why you do this you want to render the audience attentive benevolent and docile they want to be paying attention you want them to like you and respect you want them to not be pushing each other and punching each other and that sort of thing it's probably more important way back in ancient Greece where people be yelling and you know you had to get them all seated the same is true in like a third grade classroom but most of the time adults are pretty respectful if you're getting up to speech Parliament yeah which they still do by the way it's a fact you should go check it out it's great so the exorium is to do that and one of the problems with writing in college and writing at any time is the blank screen syndrome where you sit down you have no idea how to begin and the great thing is the the ancient rhetoricians gave you five ways right there are pretty much five ways to start an introduction and and all you got to do is just kind of pick one and roll with it so we got five we have the corrective which is to show that your subject has been misunderstood by the world at large or by your audience specifically so you can get up and be like you all think that American toilets are the best toilets I'm here to prove you wrong right that have an American toilets in our company is the best way to go because they're American made I'm gonna show you why that's wrong or why that's different where everyone misunderstands Japanese toilets they think that talk to you and it's weird who wants somebody talking to you while you're going to the bathroom clearly I'm gonna tell you why it's soothing why it's necessary why we gotta have it all right so that's the correct so you need to have assumed your audience's position before you you get into it that can be dangerous not you don't have to assume a position you can if they really have misunderstood you can say this might be how you see this where you can say this is how my topic is largely perceived or you can even pull up like an article disagreed with you right this guy says this he's wrong I'm gonna show you why how is how is coming off the bat with a corrective going to render them benevolent and docile and partially it's just interesting to be careful not to be like you all are a bunch of dopes yes right one of the things we talked about when we talked about ethos logos and pathos is that you want your audience to feel as though you care for them and so when you correct their error it has to be like look you might you are misunderstanding this very important topic you are missing out on Japanese toilets because you have assumed that American porcelain is the best porcelain there's an entire world out there ways to use the bathroom exactly all right so that's the corrective and it's good it's okay all right that's that it's a good one we stopped doing the we're talking about how we're gonna get its people promotions is that I think we've got a lot of people use the corrective not often it's it's a tougher one unless somebody really doesn't understand we had a kid do fluoride in the water a couple years ago and he's he just went through a lot of the IMF blogs I've talked about the IMF all right so in thesis we have a term for something on a phenomenon on the internet we call the IMF and that's the internet mom force the folks who post stuff about vaccines and fluoride in the water and nutrition that's sort of thing not to say that they're all wrong but there is a thing research but there is definitely an internet phenomenon where things get posted that gain traction and get blown away out of proportion and they have maybe anecdotal evidence as opposed to scientific evidence and we call and yes so our kids bring this evidence all the time and they're like this article and we're like this is IMF man there's there's no scientific basis for these claims so that's the IMF and we had him just he just read a whole bunch of IMF quotes about people hating fluoride in the water and then his whole thesis was saying you know it's actually not that bad fluoride in the water it kind of helps your teeth I'm thinking international monetary fund every time I'm there's all IMF is also the name of the special forces name no it's the mission impossible movies the IMF is what Tom Cruise's character is part of impossible missions force yeah great yeah so that's the corrective right that's a pretty base level one and then we have the inquisitive which is probably how you were taught to start a lot of introductions when you were young you asked a question right what would you do if you were Abraham Lincoln right what do you think about the war of 1812 probably nothing because no one knows what happened at that point Canadians are really big on the war of 1812 really yeah oh man we have like many made for TV movies about it because we have no like Americans have no idea what even it was because Canada like quote unquote one we were even Canada we were England at the time but the Canadians take like goofy pride in the fact that at some point we burned down your building your president's house which was called the Brown House and then you built it as the White House I think that was a positive move yeah well thank you for taking over that yeah it's all the problem there hey you know friendly Canadians all right the inquisitive can also be to show that your subject is curious or noteworthy right so when you ask the audience a question everybody automatically wants to answer it with their brains which makes them interested so they that's the hook it's a hook right as you say what would you do if you're Abraham Lincoln they're like what would I do and I could have been because look how honorable I am right they might be a vampire slayer right yeah exactly so they sorry yeah or to show that it's curious right giving weird statistics and this is and the funny thing is that this is so effective that the internet has really latched on and advertising has really latched on how many how many times have you heard like do you own a car do you have $500 then come on down a blah blah right do you have old nasty furniture do you want new furniture and then you your brain is like oh my furniture is gross and nasty take my money yeah exactly so you we have heard this so often because it is affected and then the other version showing that it's interesting is the clickbait article right this guy fell into a hole and you won't believe what happened next no I won't it's yeah he broke his leg and had to be rescued okay three million people bought this last year and then you're like oh how okay I got to see what they bought and it's like so I hope more than three million people yeah yeah yeah so it's just a show that's inquisitive and but the problem with the inquisitive is that it's so effective that it has become overused and it's so overused that if I get up on stage and I ask a question to begin a few things happen first I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about you don't want to ask a question it puts you on bad footing and then you also sound like a car sales right you can do the showing noteworthy things and like bringing up interesting statistics but if the first thing you do out the gate is ask a question you're gonna sound like an idiot and you don't want to do that what's the potential debate where the guy got up there and said who am I what am I doing here yes and people laughing responsive yeah right and that's not that's not a good way to not go off some right so far we talked about the inquisitive and the corrective and we're gonna talk about the paradoxical next it's where you present a paradox to your audience and then promise to resolve it right so I say the the tomato has has often argued whether it's a fruit or vegetable I'm here to tell you that it's not only both of those it is also a woodland creature right there was like ha ha how can this be and I'm gonna show you how or I could say right now above me highly civilized and honorable men are trying to murder me from the skies and everyone's like wow how that worked right how can they be civilized and murders at the same time so you give them a paradox or like you think Superman is your greatest hero and I'm here to tell you that he's also history's greatest villain he's both and the audience is like how can that be all and then they have to know right yeah and so you hooked him right with by giving him this paradox and then showing how you are going to resolve it so those are the first three and they're pretty effective I think the inquisitive showing things are curious are really good and the paradox is good the corrective can go wrong if you're not tactful with it the next two I think are one is used far less and then one is I think he's probably the most effective so the next one is preparatory the preparatory is if I'm gonna do something weird in my speech like if I'm going to whisper the whole speech I need to tell you why I have to say why I got to say I'm sorry I lost my voice because I was so stoked about 1812 yesterday yeah so yeah I have to tell them why or if I asked my class to meet me in the parking lot and I was there with no shirt on they wouldn't be able to concentrate unless I told them why right so I have to prep them for that I'm preparing them for the weird thing I'm gonna do and I could say I'm here we're studying Exodus and I am here in the parking lot with no shirt on to show you what happens over a single hour of exposure to the Sun and now imagine what that would be like for 40 years in the desert right that kind of thing was this was preparatory like the Gettysburg address when they were standing in the fields where battles happened and Lincoln is talking about the battle that happened here is that I think they could put it together okay if he if he had started the speech somewhere else and he's like we are all gonna stand up and we're gonna walk to the field where this happened we're gonna do that so you get a feel for what those young men felt right that is the preparatory introduction okay they'll stand up and they go walk right it's weird it's a weird way to develop a speech you got to tell people what you're doing or else they're distracted that one is more an introduction of necessity right or if you're gonna write the whole thing in pig Latin or in Latin itself you're gonna have to tell your teacher why or he's gonna be kind of miffed yeah right the last one of the five is the most effective I think and it's the narrative and this is where you start with a story and anyone who sat through a sermon knows how effective these are especially because they're effective all the way through something right narrative is something that humans automatically key into it's why the Bible was written as a narrative right because we love story it's it's why you every time the pastor tells a story like and then he goes back and then he goes back and then he's like and my third point you're like and lunch think about lunch think about what I'm gonna do after church right I'm not accusing you it's just people have a hard time paying attention yeah when you say the most common one that the students use also yeah just I part of my teaching up because I say it's most effective they think that they've got to do a story we have a few great branching out this year but we find that is it is really effective right sometimes the heartstrings are really punched and people sit down and listen when you're using a narrative so corrective paradoxical preparatory narrative and inquisitive are the five so all you got to do when you sit down is just sit down and pick one and go I have also heard the I call it the maximum one where you start with a maxima aphorism like we've all heard that a fool and a money or soon parted while I'm here to tell you that's true and then they'd show you a thing I'm poor some I mean sometimes I can be the corrective but often it's just an easy lead in for something short to me so the when speaking when speaking when speaking what when speaking was taught in integrations the program that was the program that they would use to teach that and one of the steps of that is telling a fable with one of those maxes attached to it the end of this program is being able to give a political speech which is what you're talking to argue about a law yeah and they actually have the projamas matter has a variety of things they even tell you how to say quote somebody yeah you're supposed to praise the person you're quoting like I'm I'm about to tell you something my friend Graham once said and Graham was a good man he was a thoughtful man he's a great teacher and he said Japanese toilets oh man those are the bees knees and then you got my attention yeah so you're supposed to praise and then you're supposed to say it and then you're supposed to give and they have this whole program we don't necessarily follow it today and it's kind of weird so I used to do with my students and I kind of face it out okay that's the first part that's the exorium that's the leading off and that happens in maybe the first two lines of your introduction of a five-per graph essay maybe just the first sentence but you tell a quick little story the great thing is it doesn't have to be vague you can tell a story you can correct you can prepare you can do something other than like in Japan they make toilets and we need toilets like that's just a vague sentence that everybody knows and nobody cares what you're saying it's a throwaway all right next is the neuroto it's the background it's any background information that's necessary for your audience to understand your thesis when it comes it needs to be brief lucid and plausible right doesn't need any extra stuff it needs to be short or else you're gonna lose them and they need to believe it like if I if I'm convincing them to install Japanese toilets in our company and first thing I say is in the 60s when the aliens landed in Japan and handed down their toilet technology yeah we gained a great gift it was a great gift for us and let me tell you what technology from the aliens is left in the toilets and everyone's like oh I have to believe your first few facts it has to be a little bit lively it doesn't have to be dry it's got you can have sort of a vividness to it but it should be brief lucid plausible right and they're sort of a necessary like you don't need to say like human beings have been creating waste since as far as human beings have existed like you don't need to give every single piece of background information just like or the first toilet was invented in ancient Rome or you know like you don't have to go all that that far back so there needs to be so there needs to be relevant relevant information yeah and there's often a an inverse relationship between brevity and clarity right the briefer I am the harder it is to be clear and the clearer I am the harder it is to be brief and the mark of a good writer is someone who can be both brief and clear in a short space yeah I guess you would be brief in short space they can be both brief and clear all right so that's an eratio so you hook them and then you tell them the problem the state of things what's going on so I would say welcome to you may think that American toilets are the best kind of toilets for our company and I'm here to tell you different so we have had toilets in our company for the past you know since since we were founded and everyone uses them you know in right now we have this many toilets in the building this many bathrooms that you know handle this many people that's kind of interesting to know right we need if we're gonna replace all the toilets we need to know how many toilets we have maybe how many break every year that we have to replace anyway how often they are used how many times maybe the average person uses the bathroom in a day and so it's it's a record of how much really toilets are gonna use by our company and how much temperature is a frigid ten degrees Celsius and then if you had really done your work you could I mean later you could be in this argument but you could say that 60% of the people who use our toilets are dissatisfied after they leave the bathroom okay so that's just background and it's all the stuff that's necessary for when you arrive at your thesis to say this is why I think we need to replace our toilets with Japanese toilets right that is it is a one-sentence nugget of what you're going to do and this is known as the proper city of proper city of thesis same thing what you're proposing yeah one sentence of proposal and this is we're still in the first paragraph of a five-year-old's I don't wear the rest of this is going to be your thesis statement thesis statement proposal proper city of same thing so we've done introduction we've done background and then you have your proposal what I would like to see happen right and then right after that you have your part itio which is the you tell your audience the three points you're gonna talk about we replace Japanese toilets because they provide for a better experience for the user they dispose of waste more efficiently and they promote cleanliness and the prevent the spread of disease in our company all right so I've got three good reasons I was like oh okay I can I buckle up on this human human beings have a hard time just paying attention in general so if you tell them where you're going it helps them to organize stuff in their mind and then if you review later it'll help them to organize again now in the five paragraphs that what I was taught was you if you have three body paragraphs your three reasons you would try to work those three reasons into your thesis statement and now of a sudden you have just the most unwieldy terrible sentence ever right yeah it's in our company because one two three it's this big long kind of unwieldy sentence and I still tell my students like you have to know how to do this but it's not the most ideal way if you need to you can take that part itio and put it before your proposal you can say because they promote cleanliness because they are more fun to use and well because they suppose of waste more efficiently we need to put Japanese toilets in our company right so that's that's one element like I said you can move things around if you need to and the part itio can sometimes go really well above your actual proposal but you would never teach them to start a sentence with because no you absolutely can because is that wrong because I went to the bathroom I felt better later right that's it's just an inversion of the sentence that's totally okay you would never do it as a sentence fragment because Jenny said so right that's a fragment but you can infer it hey Jay is correct it is okay to start a sense with because you just have to make sure you're writing complete sentences and not sentence fragments my love my resignation just goes to show that it's a little bit of intense that's why my the tenth graders just come out like you know just banging rocks together they come into times like these wonderful scholars swirling branding and glass yeah and then they hit tomorrow professor 11th grade bang bang bang bang bang bang and Kevin fixes that 11th grade yeah and then by 12th we just sort of roll them out the door right there they're done so we just got to sort of keep them in class until they finished all right so we have our proper video and part video from video part video and then you move in your your actual three reasons are con for money on this is the bulkiest part of any speech right the sermon it's the three reasons they actually going to get it so that this is 10 to 12 pages correct right and you all give page ranges free to these parts don't you will we find that they are most effective in a certain range so your your introduction needs to be about three quarters of a page if it's shorter you don't really prep the audience enough if it's too long it's sort of drags when you have a speech you're doing different things on a speech you need that exhortium to have a little bit of like almost like chaff just for the audience to settle down quiet down turn their brains on to listening yep so you need the hook but you need like even just 40 seconds of sentences that are good to listen to but not mission critical to their understanding just to like render them docile and benevolent you would probably do less of that when you were writing something because you can always go back and reread something and they're already sitting benevolent and like yeah like they can't do them docile already so you just have to make them like you that's all with with thesis we also the neurotio changes sizes depending on how complex your subject is and how much people know about it like a big genetics that might be a little more complicated than talking about toilets right everyone knows how toilets work okay the con for Mario is there's plenty about how to write those you just want to break your big idea up into three arguments so mine were cleanliness so I be like all right so Japanese toilets promote cleanliness here are some statistics about how they do so here's some features that they have that help with that here's how often are people get sick I would want to break it up into some points if it was a really big speech but it doesn't have to be could be short and the big thing the renovation that comes with the class work or form here is just learning how to organize these and there's three different ways chronologically so I could talk about if I was arguing that we should do something I could talk about the first step the second step in the third step or just what happened for second third you'll see this most often in judicial discourse and then I could also talk about logically so this needs to happen and then it will lead to this and then that will lead to my third thing and then my conclusion right so one two and three leading logically from one to the other most often it will be by strength so I will want to organize them how good they are and it's kind of it's kind of a bad idea to lead off with your worst one because then you lose your audience and then won't pay attention to the rest and it's also bad idea to start off with your best one because you'll be like oh this guy's a genius and then it's just downhill from there so you want to start off with something medium right now that's pretty decent and then bury your poopy one right in the middle right where everyone's thinking about lunch where everyone kind of wants to go home or they're tired of looking at your face and they're wondering how long this is gonna drag on that's where you can bury your worst point because they're not really paying attention anyway your best point is what you need to end with so by strength it goes to three one middle worst best all right would you do this with writing to absolutely yeah you have to organize it somehow why if one of them is a bad one why do you include it why not just have two better points that's not bad it's worse than the other two but if there's a weakest third one why not kick it out and just have points one and two like there's something bad two and only have one and then we're never Jedi that just happened to become a house first and then we have to think if there's a magic to three so three two sometimes isn't throw enough for gets a little glorious for some reason free it tends to be the number everybody sticks with it's what pastors do it's what speakers do it it's what I forgot about that what I forgot about that and I'm not super married to it we've let students do two points before there's like a clear division in their research or we've let them do four if there's something that you know they just don't have enough for any single one it happens but any more than that and it gets tedious any fewer than that and you don't you haven't done your research oftentimes two arguments will be related to each other and then if you have that third one that's completely a completely different style of argument that's more persuasive because if we're just talking about cleanliness with the toilets and two arguments are kind of about cleanliness getting rid of waste and cleanliness if we don't talk about if we have another argument that's talking about cost or whatever then we're coming out the argument from a totally different angle and that's even more persuasive yeah but I think when we start putting four or five or six arguments in there it begins to sort of undercut the thing entirely and then just becomes kind of pedantic and boring or just overload yeah okay let's let's you know keep on cruising the next one is the refutation so this is where you anticipate counter arguments and head them off right so you as an American may feel unfamiliar with Japanese toilets and I can tell you that it's it's an easy transition right they work the same there's nothing really that different the buttons are easy to work you won't have to read a manual everything is kind of self-explanatory right so if you're worried about the learning process I'm telling you there isn't really one right if you're worried about the cost I can say that I mean it's a pretty populous place and they sell over the place and they've gotten really good at producing these so the cost is actually pretty minimal for these toilets it's actually only 50 cents more per toilet which is incredible so all together to replace every toilet in our company is gonna cost us 50 bucks right only 50 dollars right that's that's nothing I have it right here and I'll put it in the box right you put it in a box in your audience like yay look how generous right so that's the reputation you anticipate counter arguments because everyone sitting in that audience is going to be arguing with you in their head they just do that's what people do and so you need to know those are coming and then answer the biggest concerns you can and it also shows that you are really thoughtful right you've done your research you're considering the other side and why your side is still important and this this particular piece doesn't really exist in the five-paragraph essay it's the one piece that's left out and I think much to its detriment but our students usually spend a page on this and they usually talk about two different points but this can go poorly when someone does not fully consider the opposing argument so they'll say you're worried that they're crazy toilet monsters and that these toys are gonna murder people but I can promise you there have been no toilet murders in the last year it's like well that didn't really that wasn't really my big concern that some of the best ones that I say are like they stick with the cost is a big opposition and they'll say this is a real cost like this is a real thing that will have to bear and it's worth it for this reason this reason yeah really have considered the opposing view right exactly okay and the last part is the peri-audio or conclusion and these are notoriously hard to write right this is a matter of style it's a matter of personality but there's a few things you can do you want to review right go back over your arguments and tell them what you told them just to kind of refresh in their head your reasons you want to really hammer any points that are important and remind them of those you want to if you can end with a favorable opinion of you and maybe paint your opposition and not that great a light although you have if you're gonna do it you gotta do it I encourage my students not to think about it if they're gonna do it all and then but the most important thing you got to do here is make an overt play to emotion right if you have convinced your audience now you have to make them want it so this is where I'll be like imagine walking into the bathroom you open the stall that now goes down to the floor and you don't have to show your feet everybody goes down to the floor you open it up mood lights come on because the toilet senses your presence the seat heats up or cools down because it you have a little fob and it knows the temperature you like it's clean no one has peed on it you don't have to worry about wiping down the seat beforehand you have to worry about even touching the flusher that everyone else has touched with their nasty diseased hands because it does that for you imagine it's like it's like going on a cloud it knows you're there but you don't know it's there right sounds right so you make a you make a play to emotion and so you can tell another story you can finish the story you began in the beginning the story about someone who slipped and fell and busted their head open on that hard porcelain toilet and then you can say and what they bought was a Japanese toilet and since then they've never slipped they've gotten three promotions they feel better at home if reconciled with their strange daughter I think about all the change that could come from a Japanese toilet I was wondering that if the type of exoriting you do influences that your paradio your conclusion like so narrative it's easy to you start with a story and then you end with that same story I wasn't sure if there's something like for inquisitive do you then I don't know answer question or you're not gonna end your paradox you don't have to end with the same story and if you make it a little too matchy-matchy I think you have the same problem that you have on project runway if you're doing too matchy-matchy it's that it just yeah it looks a little thing yeah for my project runway watchers out there you don't talk about I do not I definitely do sorry he also watches we just out ourselves make work yeah may work alright so that's that's the whole piece I can go back over it and I'll try to relate it to how I do with my students convincing their parents to buy the car so the first thing you want to do you let you you got a plan this you you want a Mustang right you really want the new Mustang 2018 it's amazing it's a hybrid electric but the electric is weaponized to make it faster that's not even necessarily more efficient you're just burning coal and gas to make that electricity happen alright so you need to convince your dad to buy you this car so you think you're exorium you need to render him a tentative and evanant and docile well you pick one of the five what is your dad unless you've really been through things up lately he should already like you know and if you want to talk to him he should already be attentive and fathers are easy so what I recommend for an exorium there is just hand the man a sandwich but in this face he won't be talking he will love you and he'll be docile good and if you're planning on making this argument you need to be making yourself useful around the house beforehand right do the dishes take your kids take your siblings to school if you have the permit or whatever it is like really work on making yourself loved around the house you say hey dad can we talk and that's your whole audience right it's short doesn't have to be long and then you hit the nirotio this is stuff you should probably know but you can remind him hey dad I'm I'm turning 18 in a couple of days I've I've been driving that jalopy at 79 Ford Fairmont you bought me a couple years ago it's been giving me headaches because of all the carbon dioxide leaks into the cabin and I mean it's on its last legs right we all kind of know it at any given time it's got three out of the six cylinders working so it's it's gonna go and I'm gonna need a new car right so there I've told in the background I'm going to need a new car and then you you can go right into your thesis and you can say so I've done the exorium the the hook give a sandwich and say hey dad and then I've done the nirotio which is my car is gonna die I'm gonna need a new one and then I do my thesis what I would like is the 2018 Mustang and your dad is instantly going to scream no in his brain which which means that your form is gonna change a little bit you're gonna take the refutation right anticipating counter arguments and you're gonna move that way up if you ever meet a hostile audience you want to assuage them and you know address their fears first because they already don't like the idea she said dad I know I know what you're thinking it's expensive and I'm gonna wreck it but I've been working for the past three months and I have this much saved up it won't be that expensive and I can put seven grand towards it that's a lot of money to put towards this car and I have an impeccable driving record not only have I've been driving with no wrecks for the past two years but I've also in my spare time been doing driving simulations and I have even in the extreme mode where they put you in rec situations I have a hundred percent success rate you know oh here's a letter from State Farm yeah exactly showing that I have completed their like trick driving course right so you are all set and then you'll like okay and then you want to give them your your three reasons so the reason I want mustang is for these three reasons because it's got the highest safety rating of any sports car because its resale value is incredibly high mustangs are renowned for going up in value and because it'll get me girls and I know that you want me to find someone and get out of the house I'm turning 18 and you want me out of here it'd be help if I had a girl to be interested in you know I smell weird but car would help and I was like okay I'll hear you out so then you want to give me three reasons so which one of those three do you think is the strongest safety rating resale value I would think safety rating with your dad if you sell value is maybe a little bit you're gonna keep it because that doesn't appeal to him so I would actually probably trade that argument to you can drive it so I see that's gonna be the strongest the girl is probably the weakest safety so you're gonna want to lead off with safety so this car as opposed to the Mozami Auto or whatever else is out right now all those cars crumple like tin cans in every crash test they just turn it to mist but you could toss a Mustang in there and it comes out without a scratch it looks like nothing happened I could run that through a football team and it wouldn't even have blood on it like it's the most amazing thing ever and then the next one so it also help me get girls I need one of that you kind of brush out one of the rug and then say most importantly dad you can drive it if we buy it together I will consider it a joint ownership so so that's what we should do we should buy it together and then I'm sorry I got distracted something started playing out my headphones yeah it's the music so from our editing it's it's playing it hit that spot where our music usually comes in so so yeah you can drive it dad imagine how great that would be and then I want to go into my conclusion which is just a paint in his mind a vision of driving a Mustang dad what car did you want when you were young did you want a 79 Ford Fairmont on its last legs is that what you wanted did you want a hand me down minivan or do you want something nice imagine if you had gotten to live that you have the chance to give that to me and you're not just giving it to me you're giving it to you right you get to give it to both of us I know that I'm shooting for the stars here I know that this is a long shot I just want to have you think about it and maybe go test drive one that's it we can just go sit one drive around we don't have to buy it because if you get your dad in that car you are 98% of the way there he's gonna want it and he's gonna buy it for you so that's that's the whole thing that was classical for me what like a paragraph and a half maybe not very long I could have lengthened that to 10 pages and gone really into the safety value into how cars attract women I could have talked about how often he would get to drive it in as opposed to how often I would get to drive it all those things can make very long points I don't need to I keep it short and that's why this is so versatile things can move around I can toss out pieces I don't need I can move around things to help it fit my audience better but that's what we do for our kids and moving around to the refitarios fair game third game is if they're hostile audience it needs to go right after your part it or maybe right after you're these these senior thesis have to do that yeah oh really absolutely I think there was a kid who is arguing for waterboarding one year and man you got to move refitario there for the real real real fast and if you don't know what we never ask that joke okay we are you're talking about how waterboarding sounds like waterborne sounds real fun if you have no idea what it is what about going to obey so it's super fun if you don't know what it is we want to be patient we waterboard it want to obey anyway well that's it and birth that was great hope that was important so if you're convincing someone to give you a promotion consider that like give an intro give a little bit of background show you've been working hard on the three reasons ways you get promotion a swag their fears but I know I'm not a team player but I've been working on it and then conclude by paying them a vision of how you would work in the new place so in keeping our tradition of classical things that we got wrong long-time listener and friend of the podcast miss Catherine Ball second reference within the same she was on it she was a guest the podcast has informed us that we have gotten one classical thing wrong in fact I have got one classical thing wrong and that is on but only one only one actually no she had a couple I'm so in the future podcast on the one where we talked about the four-way trip to the fact that in the acts of the Apostles Paul had a dream where God was asking him why he was saying that Paul was saying the things were unclean that got a clean in fact it was Peter that had that dream not Paul that is a pretty egregious error she kicked down my door you know just in a rage of this demanded that I make a retraction on the podcast and so that's what this is I humbly retract my mistake it will never happen again in Catherine Ball no if you know Catherine Ball you know that kicking down a door in a rage is not something that we could ever picture her doing she would like gently open it yeah and have brought you up and and then talk about asking questions about your weekend very sweetly and then as she was leaving just in passing just like oh by the way and then that was the reason why she was there what she made you feel good about making a mistake that's what she can do yeah does anybody have a quote we got a handbag I know you wanted to do a have a section where we read a commonplace book quotes it to close off the podcast look at that let me see what I got and maybe how's your commonplace book potential coming is something that you are still thinking of doing so I'm not sure if I guess I'll show this comment now because here we are so I never heard of a commonplace book until coming to this will a year and a half ago and if anyone else dares this deep-seated fear that I do of like that blank page and like the first thing that's when you go on that page I just was always thinking myself that whatever I put there is gonna be the most important thing that I write down in this commonplace book so it's like beautiful quote that summarizes the nature of humanity and like it's gonna be like spiritual or also a bad Christian and like all these like thoughts of what have to go into it but then I found out that I believe a degree me well do this to but the students do this as well they'll put funny quotes in their commonplace book in addition to pieces from literature and so I decided to break the ice by putting a funny quote from a student at the top and I now feel much better about using this one I've got a bunch of funny quotes in my eyes I was approaching it so super seriously that it kept me from like doing anything with it so as an encouragement to you listener just write anything you want to do on that page and just get started with it so okay I've got I've got a couple of them they're both from obi dick so this one is real strength never impairs beauty or harmony but often bestows it and in everything imposingly beautiful strength has much to do with the magic you're talking about whales I assume he loves talking about whales and then the next one will flip in loves he loves whales all right the next one it's in manor fish wriggling is a sign of inferiority awesome good well dear listener thank you for listening to classical stuff you should know this we are your hosts Graham Thomas and AJ we thank you for listening if you have any questions comments feedback or if you want a like a breakdown of classical reform I can send you the notes right so you can email us at classical stuff at veritasacademy.net you can visit us at classical stuff.net you can download us on wherever you get your podcast step by five come on Sweden you fair listeners we thank you and we will catch you next time yep man we really have to work on the side no bye bye