My Prophetic Vision (for teaching)

Teaching is about being continually frustrated, about defering the resolution to a problem.
While I may be able to resolve Student X's difficulties with research, Student Y has different difficulties. For example, Student X doesn't know how to use online databases. Student Y doesn't have the ability to search those databases because she can't think critically about her overall goals, about her project as a type that can be categorized with terms. Student Z pulls up multitudes of information, but can't sort it. Student F sorts it, but can't synthesize.
By the end of the critical bibliography, I'd like them to be at Student Z's level, at least. I want them to be "wordlings" (Burke!) who see language and even objects as "entitled," belonging to categories. How critical they are of those categories doesn't really matter to me; first they need to see that there are ways of terming (ways of seeing, terministic screenings). And other than saying, with flashing lights and fireworks "Hey! Human language is categorical!" I don't know what to do.
As for argument. Oh geez. Today I said the term "rhetoric" and was met with absolute blankness. I talk about it all the time, but some students still don't know what I mean when I say argument. Case in point: One student's critical bibliography stated that the article "didn't have any arguments" because there was "nothing to fight about."
Did I miss something? Did I make some fatal assumption in some warrant somewhere? Do I have to go back again? Have they already forgotten the elements of persuasion and argumentation we did back in September?
I suppose I could point out the rhetoricality of the critical bibliography. Of course it's rhetorical in nature: it's addressed (Burke), it's strategic, it's "sly" in its formulations and organization. It is arranged to make sense of the world for a reader.
Guess I should have said that. Guess I'll have to say it soon.
They laughed at me for calling it "The Big Ethnography of Doom" at the beginning of the semester. Today they asked why I hadn't called it that on the assignmnet sheet. I guess I don't want to freak them out. Too late.
When it comes to style, I always think in terms of rhetoric as identficiation. This is one of my problems with Romantic Rhetoric and Shelley's Defence of Poetry, as you can see from my post a few days ago. But when it comes to Postmodern understandings of rhetoric and writing (is there a difference between rhetoric and writing? Should it be Rhetoric while Writing?), style is obviously one rhetorical method. I want my students to understand that.
Actually, I want to understand that, too. Just more theoretically.
Oh, Papa KB. Help.