Edward Miner Gallaudet's “remarks on the combined system”: An analysis of the “preservative” function of rhetoric of education

Despite considerable effort by scholars in rhetoric to explore the epistemological dimensions of the art, few attempts have been made to apply rhetorical epistemology to education. This essay examines Edward Miner Gallaudet's speech, “Remarks on the Combined System,” in an effort to illustrate the power of the rhetorical knowledge thesis to account for paradoxes in Gallaudet's discourse on educating the deaf student. We contend that Gallaudet offered his remarks, not so much to persuade his immediate audience, but to preserve his ideas for a later age, when those ideas could receive sympathetic treatment. Implications of the study are suggested for education, contemporary rhetorical theory, and criticism.