A 10:002 or 10:003 Unit ~ Christian Science, Euthanasia, and the Rhetoric of Suffering

Overview	Schedule		Assignments		Readings
			Writing	Speaking

Overview

This unit explores rhetorical analysis at a deeper level than students usually encounter with other controversies. Taking two well-known controversies which revolve around issues of suffering (euthanasia and Christian Science), this unit challenges the prevailing utilitarian attitudes which so heavily influence our culture’s responses to these issues. Students often consider the path of least pain to be the unequivocally “right” decision in many controversies; thus, they frequently dismiss the euthanasia and Christian Science debates as easily-resolved issues where the “logical” answer is to simply “do whatever is necessary to eliminate pain.” This unit seeks to complicate that attitude and restore the truly controversial quality to the issues of euthanasia and Christian Science. To accomplish this task, the initial focus is not on the controversies themselves, but on the underlying values which inform those controversies and our responses to them. Specifically, the initial focus is on the different ways we can view, interpret, and perhaps even value suffering, sickness, and pain. Since this unit asks students to practice a fairly sophisticated level of rhetorical engagement, it is ideally suited to a 10:002 or 10:003 class. This approach and particular subject matter has five major advantages over more conventional approaches to teaching controversy: it forces students to recognize how deeply their personal values bias them toward particular responses to social issues and matters of public policy it encourages students to see those underlying values as worthy and important objects of analysis, and capable of change it reincorporates the validity and potency of religious belief into discussions of personal rights and social policy—an element which students are often inclined to dismiss from consideration, thinking that the separation of church and state necessitates such a dismissal it allows students to engage in two very different (but in this case, mutually dependent) modes of rhetorical analysis: the analysis of “representations” of suffering, and the analysis of the more explicit discourse of controversy it allows (thanks to the multiple genres represented here) an opportunity to consider the way style is closely related to, or perhaps even determined by, the nature and delicacy of the subject; consequently, it also allows a broader and more vivid consideration of how students might develop a personal “style” in their writing Since this unit holds such potential for debates about religious faith versus scientific authority, the nature and limitations of individual rights, the protective role and responsibilities of the state, parental authority versus child welfare, societal perceptions about quality of life, and the morality or legality of certain medical practices, there is a vast range of possibilities for connecting this material (directly or indirectly) with other units.

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