It's ALL rhetoric

In my journey into the land of social proof, I received some cool responses that have helped me gain some confidence in my theory that teaching rhetoric at a secondary level is feasible and useful. I talked with Professor Gideon Burton, who gave me some great resources to peruse and also confirmed that rather than teach a full unit on rhetoric, that supplementing instruction into other routines can be a useful thing for students in their education. My uncle, who works as one the top people at Micron, also expressed his belief that all students, those who continue on to college and those who do not, can benefit from rhetoric. However, I did have some people comment that they had no idea what that meant and yet they are able to engage successfully in life. At first I was concerned that this debunked my theory, but I have decided it doesn't. I think that explicit instruction could have given these people even more ammo in their arsenal and that top producers reach this point because they can wield rhetoric with power. To some people this comes naturally, but everyone can improve their prowess of rhetorical skill and thus benefit from the power therein.

Updated bibliography: I have contacted some high school teachers about their ideas of rhetoric and I think I would really like to team up with one and put together a conference about using rhetoric in the schools. Although my paper still will be a research paper, the information I use as sources will be geared towards this purpose. I have looked up sources in both journals aimed at teaching rhetoric and also teaching Shakespeare. The product has been a really fun process!