As I was reading Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria my mind kept making parallels to the educational structure currently in place in the United States. First there is the idea that there is instructional methods and study materials that are age appropriate, which sounds a little like the distinctions we make for the education received in elementary schools, high schools, and college. We also see the idea of students learning in environments that best match their own learning needs. According to Quintilian, “the eloquent professor must also be a man of sense, not ignorant of teaching and capable of lowering himself to the capacity of the learner” (96), which sounds a little like the distinctions people sometimes use when placing students in a beginning math course or an advanced math course when they reach college.
Then there is the idea, according to Quintilian, “of how much better it is to be imbued with the best instructions” (95), which sounds a little like our concept of best practices and the college student’s desire to be taught by people how specialize in the subjects they teach. Later in Book II, we also see the idea of students gaining a complete education in their chosen field. So like Quintilian’s students of rhetoric, those of use studying Rhetoric and Composition should “strive to excel, not merely in one accomplishment, but in all the accomplishment that are requisite for that art” (117), which for us means begin prepare to past a preliminary examine that covers composition theory, ancient rhetoric, modern rhetoric, postmodern rhetoric, and empirical research. By passing our eventual prelims, we are actually demonstrating a collect excellence in the field of Rhetoric and Composition.
In Book X, Quintilian also provides a very interesting goal for education, which is to move beyond imitation and into invention. According to Quintialian, “[e]very species of writing has its own prescribed law, each its own appropriate dress … yet all eloquence has something in common, and let us look on that which is common as what we must imitate” (136). In other words, as Rhetoric and Composition students we must strive to imitate good writing and come to understand the nuances between the various publications available to use for publication, but to be successful and get our work published we must create new material.