“One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time.”

Terrorism.  It is a word we are all too familiar with, especially since 9/11.  It is an international problem. Through the books that tell his story- Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, Greg Mortenson presents a solution: education. 

When Mortenson, a mountain climber, finds himself lost in the peaks of Pakistan, he stumbles across a native village.  Welcomed and nursed to health, Mortenson discovers that the Korphe “school” is not only outdoors in one of the harshest climates in the world, but also lacks both a daily teacher and books.  Mortenson promises to return with the money to build a school, beginning an incredible journey. 

From the first school at Korphe, Mortenson’s mission has grown to over 170 schools throughout the many isolated villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  “Dr. Greg” as he came to be called discovered that the only real education the children of these remote communities had was to attend a madrassa, built and run by the Taliban.  Parents desperate to educate their children were sending them to these schools. 

The doctor’s prescription?

 Build schools, educate these children, and they will learn to read from someone besides the Taliban.  Additionally, Mortenson’s schools provide education for girls, and by giving successful students scholarships to attend city universities, they are in effect benefiting the whole village.  The educated girls return home, bringing their knowledge with them, and improve the quality of life for everyone.

The story itself is powerful, and the books skillfully utilize rhetoric to drive the message home.  Fighting is not the answer- teaching is.  Greg’s incredible ethos supports the novels.  He has witnessed firsthand the state of the education system, and the burning desire that villagers have for schools.  The books make clear that Mortenson is not forcing something on these people- they are begging him for it.  Mortenson has suffered through time held in captivity by the Taliban, fearful for his life.  Despite the danger, he has dedicated himself to founding a rural education system, spending months of his time in central Asia instead of at home with his supportive wife and children.  He is believable and undeniably driven, so readers trust and support. 

Pathos is obviously a key component.  The trials Mortenson has endured evoke sympathy, but the detailed depictions of the villagers themselves evoke understanding.  These are not bad people.  They have needs and desires just like anybody else, but their lives are a world away from ours.  Instead of wanting the latest in technology, they want books and they want to learn how to read them. 

Logically, if something so simple can be so meaningful, if schools can rid the world of terrorism, why not throw everything you have into building for a purpose, instead of destroying everything in sight?  Practically, Mortenson is setting up these villages to educate themselves by hiring native teachers, and passing responsibility on to Pakistani and Afghan people.  The schools Mortenson helps found can be maintained long after he moves on.  The villagers can find their own success and can embrace a future where they no longer need to turn to foreigners for help.  Mortenson is successfully setting up a viable, self-sustaining system.

These books deserve to be read by everyone.  They have already become required reading for all officers and Special Forces that enter Afghanistan.  Clearly, if even the government is listening, this message has merit.  

For more information visit: http://www.threecupsoftea.com/ and http://www.penniesforpeace.org/

A Moving Movie

Rabbit Proof Fence tells the heart-wrenching story of Australia’s Aborigines.  The tale powerfully utilizes the ethos of two living victims when the movie begins with one of them, now a grandmother, narrating in her native Aboriginal tongue.  It ends with an image of the two women as they are today, reinforcing their credibility: they are living witness to the events of the movie. 

The girls are from the Stolen Generations- a period from 1930-1970 when half-caste Aboriginal children- children with white fathers, often men who were workers on the Rabbit Proof Fence- were taken from their Aboriginal mothers to be raised in a compound.  The goal was the eventual elimination of Aboriginal features from the population- by breeding already half-whites with whites, and so on, eventually there would be no sign that Aborigines ever existed. Aboriginal blood would be “bred out.”

The movie tells of three such half-caste girls who, under the guidance of the eldest, decide to escape the compound and travel 1,500 miles back home, using the rabbit proof fence, which divides Australia from coast to coast, as their guide.  The punishment if they are captured is severe.  Not to mention that most of the journey is through the harsh Australian outback. 

The rhetorical purpose is clear, and applicable to the many lands where natives were brutally treated by a “superior” population.  This movie, produced by Australians and based on a book by the main character’s daughter, is a message, informing the world of their country’s mistakes and asking that we learn from the past.  It is a tribute to the Aborigine.  

The persuasiveness of the girls’ story is inherent in its use of pathos- the heartstrings it pulls, the tears it instigates, the admiration for remarkable courage it insights. 

Rabbit Proof Fence is a powerful movie, one which will have a lasting influence on you.  I encourage you to watch and learn. 

Curing the Bad Day Blues

Is the sign really necessary?
from chain e-mail

Have you ever been stressed?  Had an awful day?  I know I have.  If you haven’t then I want your secret, because I certainly don’t have a good solution.  I do however have a pretty reliable remedy: hilarious pictures.  Animals are most effective, but any funny picture will do.  Guys can appreciate this too- I’m not talking about the cutsie picture of a kitten curled up on a dog’s back- I’m talking about the kind of picture that you can’t help but grin at. 

From chain e-mail

When I received a chain e-mail full of pictures from my mom the other day as I was stressing about a test, I realized that this is a wonderful example of rhetoric.  The purpose behind these pictures is making people laugh, a perfect cure for the melancholy caused by a bad day.  The bad day is the exigence- a state that friends and family members want to change.  In the above example, my mom acted the part of the rhetor by using photographic discourse targeted at pathos- emotions- to lighten my mood. 

mandyseyfang at flickr.com

Another example that confirmed this view is The Blue Day Book by Bradley Trevor Greive.  It is literally a book full of amusing animal pictures with captions to add even more hilarity.  The effect is to lighten a blue day- obviously judging by its title that is exactly the rhetorical purpose for which the book was created.

Just a suggestion, but next time you are in a funk, get on-line and start typing “funny” into the Google image search browser.  It will give you all sorts of suggestions- funny cats, funny dogs, funny pictures, funny signs.  Pick your favorite.  It’s amazing what a few minutes of grinning can do to turn a frown-filled day around.  

Rhetorical Professors

 I realized on Saturday afternoon, listening to a professor in the Frontiers of Science public lecture series that professors are quite skilled rhetors.  

The topic was "The Future of Infectious Diseases in a Pharmaceutical Age."In other words, how drugs that have been developed to kill nasty bugs like malaria may actually backfire when the bugs evolve to an even stronger form.  Hearing horror stories about antibiotic resistant bacteria and what the pharmaceutical industry is doing right or wrong with respect to them, I came to the conclusion that the problem, the exigence that all professors are called to change, is ignorance. 

Lack of knowledge is an opening for any academic in any situation to latch onto and remedy.  The audience is composed of students, college students, adult learners, other professors.  The lecturer’s purpose is to fill a knowledge void with information in the hopes that maybe the students will be influenced to spread the information to others, or even act on their new-found expertise. 

For example, a professor lecturing about global warming hopes that her students will be moved to tell others all the scientific facts they learned to support the existence of global warming.  Maybe they will even take it to the government by joining an environmental group or writing a letter. 

Or she may be talking about solving quadratic equations, which her pupils can later use to design a rocket for NASA or develop a more efficient means of energy.  The professor is a rhetor who has then influenced her audience.  


In the case of the pharmaceutics lecture, the professor's goal was simply to educate.  To make the audience aware that life-saving drugs are not all-powerful, and may in some cases be harmful.  He emphasized that in some cases taking the full course of drugs the doctor orders, even if you feel better before you finish the prescription, may actually be promoting antibiotic resistance.  And vaccinations may be counterproductive, saving one life but causing a death somewhere else because the virus is given a chance to spread.  We just don't know enough.  But I was influenced to spread the message here, and will certainly be thinking about it the next time I get antibiotics.

So next time you sit in lecture, think about this: what influence will your professor have on you?