This paper discusses the rhetoric of American educators to show that rhetorical analyses can be used to highlight assumed concepts and values within educators' discourses, policies, and practices, and to suggest that greater awareness of their rhetoric can help educators make their communications congruent with their purposes. The paper describes and applies contemporary theories of rhetoric to one feature of educators' discourse, the commonplace. The paper's first section outlines a theory of rhetoric and provides a historical overview. The second section shows how specific commonplaces are congruent with particular conceptions of education, and analyzes one part of a set of commonplaces and contrasts it with other sets of commonplaces. The paper concludes that such analyses can be of value in deciding whether terms of argument are congruent with purposes of discourse. Forty notes are included. (SR)