In “Reviving Civic Education through Conversation” Ted Hadzi-Antich Jr. writes of the promise of community colleges to take up the role traditional colleges used to have. I understand his lament, but what Hadzi-Antich sees as a most salient problem of modern education—the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to draft essays and speeches. He writes:
Last spring, I found teaching my online courses demoralizing. While I could not prove anything definitively, almost two decades of reading student writing made me convinced that the work I was reading in my online discussion boards was not written by students. AI was completing my course, and it was pretty good at it — and certainly good enough to get an A in this introductory American government course.
I get Hadzi-Antich’s grievance. Besides making a significant part of his pedagogy obsolete, he sees AI as a demoralizing development. In fact, it may be dehumanizing as well. The rhetorician Isocrates, a contemporary of Plato and Aristotle, wrote that persuasion is the “power which, of all the faculties which belong to the nature of man, is the source of most of our blessings.” He continues, “For in the other powers which we possess, as I have already said on a former occasion, we are in no respect superior to other living creatures,” but because of rhetoric, “not only have we escaped the life of wild beasts, but we have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts.” If we are to accept Isocrates’ take on rhetoric, then when we use AI to draft essays, speeches, or anything, we are, in effect, outsourcing our humanity. This is a grim situation.
But where Hadzi-Antich sees tragedy, I see an opportunity. If colleges and universities want to re-acquire their civic relevance, mitigate the use of AI, and save money to boot, they need look no further than the field of rhetoric and composition.
Rhetoric and Composition
The primary charge of rhetoric and composition (rhetcomp) on most campuses is the teaching of writing as a general education requirement. I am sure you can see how AI could be an unwelcome component of modern education for rhetcomp scholars. Not only are writing teachers not immune to the creative destruction ushered in by AI, maybe the academic field is the most negatively affected by it.
That said, the field had its problems long before AI. Rhetoric and composition has increasingly aligned itself with critical theory, identity politics, and activism—what I broadly term “critical social justice.” The discipline now functions more as an ideological training ground than an academic field focused on logic and persuasion, eroding public trust in higher education.
Much of the scholarship in rhetoric and composition lacks intellectual rigor, particularly in social justice-oriented research. Unlike classical rhetoric or philosophy, the field has no clear epistemological foundation. Freddie deBoer’s critique, “Pity Writing Studies, the Field That Hates Itself,” highlights how identity politics overshadow empirical and theoretical research on student writing.
Jack Zorn, in “English Composition as Fraud and Failure,” rhetcomp has failed as an academic field mainly because of substituting jargon and untested pedagogical fads for serious scholarship, but also for functioning as a field sustained by institutional inertia, i.e., it is difficult for higher ed to change once a discipline has been entrenched, regardless of apparent inefficacy.
In “The Public Fallout of the Humanities: Critiquing the Public Turn in Rhetoric and Composition Studies” Pennington et al argue that the field’s embrace of social justice, though well-intentioned, produces ethical and methodological concerns—particularly about representation, authority, and the diluting disciplinary rigor.
It seems like the field of rhetcomp is ready for a makeover, anyway; it has outlived its usefulness. It has abandoned its classical foundations in favor of dogmatic activism and lacks the rigor to justify its place as the institutional hub for writing instruction. Institutional reforms, intellectual critique, technological advancements, and policy changes provide pathways to phase out the discipline in favor of more practical instruction.
Though many will argue that, because artificial intelligence (AI) cannot feel and empathize with a particular audience, it can never replace a human author, especially if that human has formal training in writing. By extension, the teaching of writing may benefit from the ability to feel and empathize with students. Sadly, I believe the non-expendable status of writing instructors is overstated and, by extension, writing instruction as a discipline has reached an impasse. Even Hadzi-Antich’s solution to have students record and submit video recordings in lieu of writing assignments cannot escape the ubiquity of AI; students can simply memorize an AI-generated speech. As a former writing instructor who found joy teaching, I take no pleasure in saying this, but writing instructors must face the music: the teaching of writing is heading toward obsolescence.
The (Re)Turn to Civil Discourse
However, rhetcomp scholars need not become obsolete, themselves. A shift from writing pedagogy and social justice activism to the study of orally driven, civil discourse could revitalize rhetcomp and strengthen participatory democracy, to boot. Such a focus would emphasize the importance of town halls, city council meetings, and other forums that enable citizens, themselves, to engage in governance. Scholars could lead efforts to foster civil discourse and promote viewpoint diversity in academia. This may be the field's best course of action. Simply put, if AI can write essays in any genre within seconds, then the value of being able to write essays in any genre is diminished significantly. Authenticity in writing is becoming increasingly difficult to detect.
A focus on extemporaneous speech, however, can ground persuasion in the here and now. In the immediacy of human presence, authenticity can be acknowledged in real time. In a sense, a focus on real-time, “kairotic” speaking can help us keep a firm grasp on shared reality! I do believe writing classes should be offered still, but they may fall into the “elective” realm of higher education (available but not required) or be reduced to a micro-course. Instead, we should prioritize the teaching of effective extemporaneous speech in the public square—in other words, civil discourse in its most authentic form.
Re-centering civil discourse would expose students to diverse perspectives and pragmatic problem-solving. A commitment to respectful deliberation—balancing hegemonic and counterhegemonic viewpoints—could redefine rhetoric and composition as the study of civic engagement and democratic participation. What’s more, we must remember that rhetoric is also about analysis: how to discern misinformation, disinformation, fallacious reasoning, and social media manipulation in general. This can include the biases and faulty information AI can produce. Rhetorical education can adapt.
Perhaps the creative destruction brought on by AI is a blessing in disguise for rhetcomp; it is giving rhetorical savvy in civil discourse more salience as an educational outcome. A rhetorical education focused on civil discourse is not just a form of civic education; it is also a moral obligation. Just as a person should learn how to swim before jumping into a lake, our students should learn how to communicate effectively before entering into a free and civil society as both a citizen and worker. Otherwise, they drown; voicelessness, the inundation of misinformation, and bad arguments may pull them under. Educators at all levels should dedicate themselves to preventing that predicament.