Past Is Prologue: Transforming the Discipline and Democracy

The dynamic nexus of communication, democracy, and education expressed in the classic liberal arts trivium--logic, grammar, and rhetoric--underscores the interdependent iterative connection between thinking, writing, speaking, and listening. As indicated in rhetoric's inclusion in the trivium, communication instruction, theory, and practice perform essential functions across disciplines, contexts (e.g., classrooms, residence halls, communities), and cultures. Democratic institutions, including K-12 and higher education, face crises of communication--failure to communicate and provide for the indispensable importance of liberal arts and civic education to productively discuss differences, engage disagreement, and come together to collectively understand and address these and other issues of social change. This analysis is not new. In "The Public and its Problems" (1927), John Dewey contended that "The essential need is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is THE problem of the public" (p. 208). Discursive practices are at the heart of controversies and divisions faced in communities, on campuses, and among families.