Start teaching rhetoric in schools and universities again

Reich heads a school of thought among policy analysts that proposes...what he calls 'the power of ideas.' Instead of relying exclusively on polling and marketing surveys, instead of balancing the pleading of special interest groups, Reich and his colleagues make the case for public deliberation in national decisions. 'Policy making should be more than, and different from, the discovery of what people want,' Reich says. 'It should entail the creation of contexts in which people can critically evaluate and revise what they believe.' But public deliberation works to foster changes in belief only when the persuaders on both sides subject themselves to opposing suasion, when the wooer is willing to be wooed. This active and passive art is not instinctive: it must be taught.

From this 1995 article about the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory. I'd much rather most children and undergraduates were taught this than the soft-soap ideological theory that passes for English Literature studies in many places or the culture of positioning and messaging that dominates professional politics.

Of course, if you haven't, do read Aristotle on this. And maybe Sam Leith.