The Practical Importance of Inherency Analysis for Public Advocates: Rhetorical Leadership in Framing a Supportive Social Climate for Education Reforms

Abstract

This essay argues that teaching rhetorical leadership, particularly the skill of inherency analysis, is crucial to preparing effective citizen leaders. Using the example of education reforms for children with disabilities, it illustrates the practical value for those interested in public concerns of understanding and using analysis of the structural, attitudinal, and philosophical inherent barriers to change. The argument focuses on the implications of and refutation options to the inherent barriers to reform of viewing education as primarily an individual rather than a social good and on Americans’ public apathy toward social goods. It concludes that reforms might be more readily conceived and more effectively made salient by citizen advocates who develop their inherency analysis skills and discusses the concomitant responsibilities for communication scholars.

Keywords:

• Rhetorical Leadership
• Inherency
• Education Reform
• Public Advocacy
• Applied Scholarship

A version of this paper was presented at the Oxford Round Table, Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, UK, March 28, 2006.

A version of this paper was presented at the Oxford Round Table, Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, UK, March 28, 2006.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the editor, the anonymous reviewers, and Brian Wismar for their help in refining this essay.

Notes

A version of this paper was presented at the Oxford Round Table, Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, UK, March 28, 2006.

1. The notion of the five stock issues as constituting a prima facie case that meets an affirmative burden of proof for policy change—that is, a case complete and strong enough on its face to require opponents to respond, although not necessarily to prevail in the end—rests in long-standing norms for managing risk and responsibilities in real-world advocacy. Change of any sort always carries risk. Thus, however sound or flawed, the existing system has presumption, and the advocate of any proposed change has the burden of proof in an argument. That is, the present system preoccupies the ground and, even if only by inertia, probably will continue in place until successfully challenged by an advocate of change; unless a proponent for policy change can mount sufficient arguments on the stock issues to challenge the present system with a viable alternative, those who favor the existing system need not actively defend it.

Having presumption, then, does not imply any judgment about a position's relative desirability or truth. As nineteenth-century scholar and churchman Richard Whately (1828/1963) so elegantly explained:

Thus, it is a well-known principle of the Law, that every man (including a prisoner brought up for trial) is to be presumed innocent till his guilt is established. This does not, of course, mean that we are to take for granted he is innocent; for if that were the case, he would be entitled to immediate liberation: nor does it mean that it is antecedently more likely than not that he is innocent; or, that the majority of these brought to trial are so. It evidently means only that the “burden of proof” lies with the accusers;—that he is not to be called on to prove his innocence, or to be dealt with as a criminal till he has done so; but that they are to bring their charges against him, which if he can repel, he stands acquitted. (pp. 112–113)

So it is with policy cases where the fact that the existing system has presumption provides neither a quality evaluation nor a prediction of the debate's outcome once an advocate for change presents a prima facie case. Establishing “sunset clauses” when initiating laws or institutions is an attempt to thwart the inertia created by presumption or preoccupation of the ground, by requiring that proponents of that law or institution assume an affirmative burden of proof at a future point to justify its continued existence.

2. Fuller explanations of these stock issues and their relationships are available in most argumentation texts. For example, good discussions can be found in Ziegelmueller and Kay (1997, pp. 172–178) and Patterson and Zarefsky (1983, pp. 126–140).

3. For a strong refutation of the “floodgates” argument (i.e., that bowing to public pressure on this issue would open the “floodgates” to a stream of other requests and “misuses” of the child welfare system), see Marin (2005, pp. 29–33, 40–41).

4. When Ontario's provincial government steadfastly refused to follow the law and offer other parents the same terms that it finally gave Larcade (i.e., not requiring her to give up permanent custody in order to receive help for her son), the families, led by Larcade, mounted a $500-million class-action lawsuit. It became the first time a Canadian court certified a class action over the government's improper cancellation of a benefits program, claimed Larcade's lawyer Doug Elliot (“Parents,” 2005). Still, the Attorney General appealed on the grounds that parents have no right to sue the province for negligence (“Canada: Government's Decision,” 2005).

5. Inherency is such an elusive and complex issue that it is often misunderstood even by experts. For example, Kruger (1965) took to task a colleague (Newman, 1965) for consistently misusing the notion. Two of the more important missteps that Kruger found in Newman's essay were the assumptions that the immediacy of a significant ill was part of inherency and that existing or potential ills’ apparentness to the policy-making audience was part of inherency (Kruger, pp. 109–110; Newman, p. 66). Zarefsky (1969) advanced the discussion with arguments that the need to prove inherency does not depend, as some infer, on whether the significant ill is current or impending or on whether the defect is an evil to be eliminated or a potential benefit not yet realized (pp. 13, 18). He further showed that inherency analysis occurs because something other than a mere quantitative change in the current way of doing things (e.g., more staff or money for existing programs) is needed to solve the problem (pp. 13–14). Given this stock issue's complexity, Patterson and Zarefsky (1983) enumerated other questions that inherency does not pose for policy advocates, questions such as “What brought the problem into existence in the first place?” or “Why has the proposed change not yet been adopted?” adding: “Rather, the issue focuses on why we must affirm the resolution [i.e., proposed policy change] in order to be able to solve the problem” (p. 131)

6. Cherwitz and Hikins (1977) proposed a detailed plan for a thorough policy analysis of inherency that parallels Aristotle's four causes of natural phenomena (i.e., formal, final, material, and efficient) as laid out in the Physics and Metaphysics (p. 83). For policy matters, they equated the “formal” cause to the institutions, laws, mores, and traditions that preclude solution of the problem, the “final” cause to the attitudes or motives that entrench and ensure the perpetuation of the formal cause and so preclude the current system's self-repair, the “efficient” cause to the general or on-balance existing implementation—counter-examples or counter-attitudes being shown to be insignificant or infrequent exceptions—of the “formal” and “final” causes, and the “material” cause to the inability of alternative aspects of or competing avenues in the existing system (i.e., those not operating within the province of the institutions examined by the inherency claim) to solve the problem without the proposed change (pp. 85–89). “What makes a problem truly inherent,” they concluded, “is the point at which attitude, structure, implementation, and means merge. In short, it is only the bringing together of final, formal, efficient, and material cause that attests to the status quo's inherent incapacity to rectify a problem” (p. 89)

7. Newman (1965), unhelpfully to real-world policy advocates, I believe, argued that, as long as the proviso “in theory” is added, any system's structure could be changed (pp. 67–68). Such a position overlooks the power of attitudinal and philosophical inherency detailed here—concepts, in fairness, articulated subsequent to Newman publishing his essay.

8. One of the grounds on which Henry A. Giroux (1995) recommends Purpel and Shapiro's (1995) work is their concern for linking these values, rather than setting them in competition with each other, and for providing “concrete strategies” for education reforms that take the complex underlying relationships into account (p. xi).

9. The cabinet-level U.S. Department of Education was established in 1980, ending the education role of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; upon taking office in 1981, President Ronald Reagan vowed to eliminate the department (Mantel, 2005, pp. 479, 481).

10. For instance, the G.I. Bill of Rights, one of the most far-reaching innovations in U.S. higher education, was driven by a desire to absorb the huge numbers of soldiers being discharged after World War II so as not to drive up unemployment and hurt the economy (and other individuals’ economic welfare), rather than by some loftier motive (Halperin & Clark, 1990, pp. 19–20; Keppel, 1990, p. 9). A noble result indeed can emerge from a policy decision otherwise motivated, and skilled advocates can help that happen.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathryn M. Olson

Kathryn M. Olson is Professor of Communication and Director of the Rhetorical Leadership Graduate Certificate/Concentration Program at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee