Notes for History, Rhetroic and Humanism

CCR 760

Rutter, Russel. "History, Rhetroic and Humanism." Central Works in Technical Communication.

Rutter calls for more inclusion of imagination and liberal arts education in technical writing. He argues that technical writing has gotten too pragmatic and generally ignores the rhetorical nature of any communication. He opens with a powerful example from the the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

Quotable quotes:
It is intellectually simple, though astronomically dull, to regard writing merely as a matter of polish, but worse yet, it leads to a trap. Colleges and universities turn out graduates who discover by experience that recipes for writing that their college instructors once adopted in response to sudden demands for technical writing courses do not satisfy the needs of science and industry as they are now constituted. (28)

Technical communicators, because they depend on both "knowledge and practice," because they rely on learning as a guide to experience, and because they need to bring elogquence, empathy, and imagination to the world of work are--should be expected to be--rhetoricians. (29)

General comments:
As this is new terriory for me it's difficult to consider this essay critically. So far I buy it. I think all communication typically needs to be considered rhetorically. I also like how he points to the importance of theorry. He approaches theory in terms of its importance to the "applied" science in order to strengthen the argument for more attention to the liberal arts in science and technology education. I also like to see this in writing classes. In other words students need not only immulate models of how to write but also be introduced to theory of communication practices so that students can be the problem solvers. I see this analogous with the saying that goes something like "it's better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish...."