The following is a summary of an interview with Mr. Snider that you can find on the most recent episode of The Dominion Dispatch, our podcast all about life in the Dominion community. If you haven't listened yet, find the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

What exactly happens during the year-long process where students write and then defend their thesis?

Students work on one topic and develop that topic from the start of the year.  First, they write a narratio, or statement of circumstances, with a lot of background information and research. Essentially, they share the facts of the story leading up to the point of disagreement. Next, after the background information, they write their antithesis, which is the counterargument or the “side across the aisle.” That part of the paper presents the reasons why you shouldn't believe their thesis at all. Finally, they write a larger piece that has all their proofs and research, which is their thesis or argument.

At the end of the year, they take all of that work and present it in speech form for the school community as well as a panel of judges, some of whom are experts or have knowledge in their particular field relating to the topic at hand. 

What do you think is valuable about this process for students?

There is so much that is valuable for the students! For example, when they write the statement of circumstance, they become better at researching, and better stewards of truth, reality, and history. They must think through how to write about the background information of an issue accurately. That process really emphasizes the importance of facts, truth, knowledge, and communicating in an objective way. 

The antithesis is an extremely valuable exercise in intellectual empathy. Intellectual empathy is jumping into another person's mindset and asking yourself, “Why do they think the way that they think? What are the reasons that they have for believing this?” That sort of empathy is both helpful for loving your neighbor as yourself and helpful as a matter of humility because sometimes we're wrong.

By writing for the other side, sometimes students have to say, “I see clearly that I was deceived, or that I was biased in this way, or that I was blind to this truth.”

The Christian historian Herbert Butterfield wrote about how it's important, when approaching difficult or nuanced subjects, to not have a rigid framework that you're trying to put down upon the data set but to have more elasticity so that your mind can actually be formed by the shape of the truths that you're looking at. I think the practice of the antithesis is a practice in that elasticity. We don't want to just push ahead dogmatically without giving a potential truth its time in court.

The thesis is valuable because it's a practice in clarity. That's where the word ‘argument’ originally comes from—argumentum in Latin, which is a word for clearness or clarity.

An argument isn't supposed to be squabbling and then one of us winning. It's supposed to be a process where we talk it out, and at the end of the day, we're more clear on something. 

So, presenting the thesis is a matter of good, clear mental hygiene. Even if you have a correct opinion, are you able to show the reader the connections that lead to this correct opinion? For instance, I might be right when I look outside and say that it is raining. But can I prove it? Look, here's the data in the atmosphere. Here's what rain looks like. Here's why someone else would argue it's not raining. 

Are there benefits to writing a thesis beyond the obvious preparation for college-level writing?

Writing to get ready for college isn’t the most obvious benefit of the thesis. Writing a thesis is about discovering truth through research and argumentation. You bring clarity to an issue, and you express love through words. 

Think about Greek history. If my community is trying to decide whether or not to go to war with some people, the reasons that I'm going to have about what we should do are really about love. It's because I want us to make the right decision. I want us to be preserved. I want you to still have your life. I want our lives to flourish, much like a doctor wants his patients to be formed or changed by medication.

Any person that gives a thesis of any kind aims to assert something about reality, inform his audience in some way, and hopefully, if he is a good rhetorician, give his audience a prescription for them to get better.

At the end of the day, rhetoric is about harmonizing a community. In classical education, you've got grammar, you've got dialectic or logic, then you've got rhetoric. Grammar is bringing harmony to a singular thought or a word; you choose the right ending and you give it the right harmony. Dialectic or logic is about bringing harmony between different thoughts and different sentences. How does this sentence harmonize with this sentence? Or do they contradict each other? The object of rhetoric is the other people and harmonizing a community. It's not just about nice-sounding words, because the object of rhetoric is not the words–it's the people. And to that end, writing a thesis is an expression of love for others.

To learn more about the idea of loving rightly, you may want to read our mission, vision, and values.