There is no rhetoric without a preceding dialectic. The kind of rhetoric which is justly condemned is utterance in support of a position before that position has been adjudicated with reference to the whole universe of discourse–and of such the world always produces more than enough. It is "love" because it is something in addition to bare theoretical truth. That element in addition is a desire to bring truth into a kind of existence, or to give it an actuality to which theory is indifferent....So rhetoric at its truest seeks to perfect men [sic] by showing them better versions of themselves, links in that chain extending up toward the ideal, which only the intellect can apprehend and only the soul have affection for (Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric 25).

This semester, I am teaching a section of "The Teaching of Composition in Grades 4-12." On the first day of class, I invited my students to introduce themselves and to fill in the following prompt: "I will know that I got my money's worth from this course when I learn about ______________. I've taught the course many times before, and I had expected that my students would want to cover "the writing process," "writing workshops," "encouraging students to write about Kevin Bacon," "grading," "portfolios," "teaching creative writing, "integrating reading, writing, and speaking." However, this semester, all of my students indicated that, first and foremost, they wanted to learn how to implement Virginia's Standards of Learning.

I was first struck by the verb "to implement." My students were no longer wondering, first and foremost, how or what they might teach; they were interested in how to implement these standards. And I asked myself, "Do I implement and/or do I teach?" Over the past fifteen years of professional employment, it has never occurred to me that I should be implementing. If someone were to ask me, "What do you do for a living?" I would say, "I teach...students; I teach...English." Now, I must wonder if, in future, teachers will be asking each other about what they are implementing: "I implement standards; I implement ...what?"

Without a doubt, it is possible to use the same ol' lesson plans as responses to the English SOL document; one need only substitute some such thing as "SOL 7.8" for the phrase "class objective." So, what's the problem? I'm afraid that we may lose the sense of teaching as a creative response to the conflicting demands (without embracing the contraries) of "I teach students" and "I teach English." When an implementer implements standards, that's what the implementer does--full stop. There is no competing demand provoking the implementer to balance the opportunity costs of one pedagogical decision against another (for example, striking a balance between the pro's and cons of formative vs. summative evaluation). Now, I understand that I may have constructed a bifurcation, here. "Craft or Standard," you say, "why not both?" What is more, using the same reasoning, one might suggest that the standards of learning introduce another set of contrary demands into the classroom? We then substitute "standards/?" for "students/English"--Big Deal! Indeed, we find that a number of teachers who are willing to share their ideas about how to implement the SOLs do, in fact, couch their contributions in terms of the contrary demands of the standards versus the contrary demands of "something else."

The following is a sampling from the Spring 1999 issue of the Virginia English Bulletin:

1. Karen Rhodes who teaches at Hopewell High School (Hopewell, VA) finds that she must learn to respond to the contrary demands of composition researchers and the demands of politicians and school administrators.

From Rhodes" "'Teaching to the Sol Test' Doesn't Mean 'Teaching the Test'":

Despite assertions by Richard Lloyd-Jones and Andrea A Lunsford that "it can be misleading and dangerous to compare test results on a state-by-state, region-by-region, or school-by-school basis" (43), the political climate wants accountability. We all have to pass the test--administrators, teachers, and students" (18).

2. Diane Demott Painter (Technology Resource Teacher at Deer Park Elementary in Fairfax VA) tells us that "Virginia's teachers are faced with the daunting challenge of meeting those standards as well as the goals and objectives mandated by their own individual school districts" (19).

3. Greg Lewis, an MA Student at Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA), finds that the SOLs themselves are an attempt to reconcile the conflicting demands of two philosophical approaches to teaching: the classical and the naturalistic.

Standards have a legitimate place in any educational theory, though the Virginia standards, as they actually exist, have serious flaws which seem to reflect an unholy compromise between a social, classical philosophy and an individualized, naturalistic philosophy. Classical education, as used here, demands an essential core of knowledge distinguishable from the knower. Naturalistic education desires an intuitive approach, assimilation rather than memorization and pursuit of individual interests. The two are often mutually exclusive, yet the two philosophies often appear together in the Virginia standards. (28)

4. Donna Logan, a gifted student coordinator for Blacksburg Middle School and High School writes that teachers sense that teachers will be torn between the demands of making their students life long learners and making them regurgitaters of facts and rules.

"I don't have time for that! I have to concentrate on teaching the SOLs to my students," so say most of the teachers that I hear talk about teaching these days. The "that" is the creative, innovative lessons that hook students into enjoying learning and help to transform them into life long learners, not just regurgitaters of facts and rules. Teachers all over Virginia feel they have had to put their creativity on a shelf in order to "teach" the SOLs. (39)

So, the SOLs are a good thing. They prompt teachers to the sort of dialectical, creative and complex, thinking that is prompted when someone is asked to perform two contradictory actions at the same time. The standards, then, encourage teachers to not merely follow orders but to reorient the orders (to make them their own). The standards promote individuality rather than lock-step obedience to a single master--whether the master be "research says" or "creativity is important" or "students want" or "a good paper does this and that."

This isn't to say that a single master might not assert "truthful statements." Rather, those who accept that a standards-based educational model may have a positive effect believe that the truths of our masters must be transformed into something "good" by our informed practice (what Weaver would call a "rhetoric" in the citation above).