In Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, he discusses the issue of education diminishing the importance of creativity. This issue acts as the exigence which is one of the essential parts when using rhetoric. This is exactly what Robinson is trying to do. As he talks to the audience about his opinion on this issue, he appeals to them through pathos by incorporating his sense of humor and making the speech interesting to them. He also includes various evidence and research that has been done on this topic which can be seen as ethos in the rhetoric sense. Since he is using rhetoric through his speech, he is not only informing people of this issue but trying to motivate the audience as they are the ones, “…who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change”(Bitzer 8). An audience is a required aspect to have when using rhetoric as they are the only ones who can provide the actual mode to alter reality.
Robinson’s specific position on this issue is that our education system is too focused on the subjects of math, english, etc rather than the arts. He believes that our society has been changed to look down upon creativity and doing something out of the norm or that may be different. His argument claims that classes such as dance, music, and others should be equally as important as those of math or science. By doing so, the education system can start encouraging creativity and allowing the children to feel confident in trying new things or doing something that best fits for them and how they learn.
I personally believe that his medium is more effective as TED talk because he is able to grab the audience’s attention very well and appeal to them through his talking and humor that would be much more difficult to do so in a paper. In Bitzer’s terms of changing reality, Robinson has done so through discussing context of a situation and influencing the audience to be engaged and constrained in decision and action.