ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies two themes that are pervasive in Gerald Grace’s work. First, the gap between the visionary rhetoric about Catholic education and the more mundane reality that pertains in its practice and the need to back this up by asking what is the evidence? Second, Grace’s emphasis on inclusivity (a preferential option for the poor). As a partial response to these two themes, this chapter develops rhetoric in a different direction from Grace’s use, which adopts the common interpretation of rhetoric as unreliable, untrustworthy ‘spin’. Instead, the argument will focus on an earlier understanding of rhetoric as the art of moral persuasion, with its (Aristotelian) constitutive elements of logos, ethos and pathos. Thus, rhetoric understood in this sense continues to play a vital and positive role in Catholic education, as it does in any type of education. The second part of the chapter will develop a dimension of rhetoric that has been neglected, even by scholars of rhetoric; that is, listening. It is demonstrated that listening contributes to Grace’s theme of inclusivity, arguing that educational inclusivity must include listening by teachers who hear their pupils.
