The piece of humanities literature that most caught my eye from Chapter six of our textbook Practical Argument, entitled "Rogerian Argument, Toulmin Logic, and Oral Arguments," was that of the ex-hippie professor - Suzanne M. Kelly's "The Sensuous Classroom: Focusing on the Embodiment of Learning." In this essay, Kelly evaluates online versus in-classroom learning. Her main claim is that "online courses are just a substitute for traditional education because a classroom full of bodies is quite literally full of real, living matter." While I do not particularly like the format of the essay, I admire some of the risks Kelly takes in her writing and the impact those risks have on the reader.
My main complaint about this essay is the structure. I am a little confused why it was in the Rogerian, Toulmin, and Oral Arguments chapter because it did not seem to stick to a solid organization of any of those types of argument. Instead of introducing the issue and thesis in the beginning of the essay, Kelly begins the essay with an anecdote taking up three small paragraphs. While interesting to read, this approach does not provide a clear direction for the essay. Afterward, Kelly does not really sufficiently present the reader's view of the issue as she would have done for a traditional Rogerian argument, nor doe she exactly follow the pattern for a Toulmin argument, although I suppose that's how I would categorize her argument (as Toulmin). Throughout the essay she weaves in many anecdotes, some of which do not seem essential to supporting her argument, or at least not efficient for the time she spends on them. In addition, I did not find the conclusion to be strong enough. Although it was an interesting anecdote that successfully illustrated a point of hers about the importance of the body, I did not feel it reflected the message of the essay as a whole or served as a good wrap-up to the essay. I was left feeling like "Oh, that was the end? Oh... Okay." Although I did not like Kelly's alternative approach to his argument and overuse of anecdotes, there were some other chancy choices Kelly made that I did like.
By writing so much about bodies and the abstract ideas relating to them in such imagery-based phrases, Kelly risks losing her readers. By opening with an anecdote about her women's-studies classes, mentioning her hippie background and later her wrongly buttoned coat and non-traditional teaching practices, she also potentially undermines her authority. Appeal to authority, one source being the author's own authority, is one of the essential tools for argument, so this did not seem like a wise choice for Kelly's argument. However, Kelly makes a comment in the essay that made me reconsider my quick semi-dismissal of her and her ideas: "It should come as no surprise that educators consider the body expendable, given the long Western tradition of playing down the body's knowledge in favor of the mind's." This sentence brought on a sort of mild guilt in me, for having dismissed a way of knowing and the form of knowledge that comes from using one's body to experience life, which is very difficult to explain in ways that do not sound too abstract.
Works Cited
Kelly, Suzanne M. "The Sensuous Classroom: Focusing on the Embodiment of Learning" in Practical Argument (pp. 177-179).
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