Earlier this year, I took a cruise around some of the Hellenic ruins on the Aegean coast of Turkey. An Oxford lecturer on classical history accompanied us. I had a marvellous holiday, only slightly marred by the fact that the tour lecturer, a young man who doubtless knew a lot about the religions of the ancient world, lacked lecturing skills. Both in content and in delivery, he failed to engage his audience.
This defect was borne home to me the more forcefully because one of our fellow cruisers, a retired professor of philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, volunteered to give a talk at the great theatre at Miletus. It was on the three Milesian pre-Socratic philosophers of the 6th century BC, who were, in effect, the forerunners of Greek philosophy. Few of us had heard before of Thales, Anaximander or Anaximenes, but we were all enthralled by his lecture, and asked him to tell us more. Before the tour was over, we had enjoyed his discourse on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, on the Epicureans and finally one on the Stoics. I had read philosophy at Oxford, but none of the lectures I had attended as an undergraduate, including those by Isaiah Berlin, were as intellectually stimulating as these.
Perhaps because we were in the ancient world, I began to wonder what had happened to rhetoric. Since then, I have asked several academics how much importance is given to lecturing ability when filling vacancies. They agree that it helps if an applicant is known to lecture well, but much greater importance is attached to a candidate's research record and publications. Once an academic has tenure, no one questions his or her shortcomings as a lecturer. In Oxford, almost all lectures are voluntary. In my day, most of us abstained after a brief taster. Inspiring lectures were rarely encountered. I doubt much has changed. Higher education would surely gain if lecturers were tested on their skills in imparting knowledge and, if found lacking, were required to improve.
Schoolteachers are not released into a classroom until they have demonstrated that they can both master their subject and hold their pupils' attention. Barristers won't get many briefs if they lack courtroom skills. Aspiring broadcasters can count on expert advice on presentation and the techniques of interviewing. And, in industry, there are consultants standing by to instruct executives in the art of persuasion. I don't know whether students at theological colleges are taught how to deliver sermons, but I know of at least one archbishop who has been helped in his public addresses by a consultant.
There was a time-over 2,000 years ago-when skill in rhetoric was essential in a successful life. Aristotle wrote on the subject. The great rhetoricians of the past-Demosthenes, Pericles, Cicero, Quintilian, Brutus, Caesar and Marcus Antonius-were once household names. After the invention of printing, the term was extended to the printed as well as the spoken word. The subject flourished until the mid-19th century: Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Coleridge, Shelley, Hazlitt and Matthew Arnold would all have acknowledged their debt to a rhetorical education. It is only recently that the word has acquired a derogatory meaning-suggesting insincerity, a striving for effect or "spin."
Rhetoric should be restored to polite use and put on the core curriculum at the secondary level. The art of using language to persuade, influence or impress in speech and writing is surely more relevant than ever. More important still, our universities should take seriously their vocation to teach and insist on decent standards of lecturing, something so often neglected at present.
