Our Philosophy

The Rhetoric Phase: Wisdom in Bloom

The Rhetoric phase, also known as the “Poetic Stage” of development, equips students with a level of intellectual freedom to explore self-expression, creativity, and scholarly application through original compositions and oral presentations that engage with a challenging Great Books college preparatory curriculum. This phase of education engages students when they are naturally concerned with presentation and polish and seeing things “as a whole.” It challenges them to combine the knowledge learned in the Grammar phase and the analytical and logical skills learned in the Dialectic phase with skills of presentation and persuasion learned through the discipline of formal rhetoric and Socratic style seminars. In this phase, these budding orators begin to express their ideas on subjects in clear, forceful, persuasive, and elegant language. They engage in the “great conversation” of thinkers and authors in the tradition of western authors, artists, philosophers, and scientists seeking wisdom and eloquence. The result is informed, engaged, articulate students prepared for cultural leadership and representative of the classical Christian education provided them at Annapolis.