Sometimes the students are right

COMM 203 really is a joke. Students who complain that it is a useless class and doesn't teach them anything aren't whining - they are right. And we, as the grad assistant instructors, know it.

For one, there is no real effort put into teaching public speaking. You learn more at Toastmasters. This is a class in how anal-retentive some people can be about following directions. Did you say this exact sentence at this exact point in your presentation? Did you use transitions that are so obvious you can separate them out and label them? Can you give your speech w/ exactly one page of two word notes in the form of an outline?

Let's examine each of those requirements before we get on to the high brow griping. A TRULY good public speaker will never have such an exact speech that there is one time to say one thing and that's it. Because a really good speaker is flexible. A good speaker knows how to gauge an audience for things like timing and emphasis. There is no hard and fast rule about when you say "what's important" - you say it at the right time. But we don't bother teaching about figuring out what "the right time" is. We just give them a pre-formed outline and tell them they will fail if they don't fill in the blanks just as they are. That's not just stupid - it's a dis-service to our students.

The point of a transition is that it smoothly moves you from one idea to another. If they are painfully obvious then they aren't useful - they are distracting. Saying "Now that I have covered point one I'd like to discuss point two" is not transitioning - it is pointing out that you have no idea how to connect your ideas other than point out that they are different. The whole idea is to move your audience smoothly through your ideas - not bludgeon them about the head and neck with the announcement that you are moving on.

Who the crap cares about your notes? As long as you are not reading your speech and acknowledge that you have an audience, why should somebody have to go and check your notes to make sure you don't have too many words? That's not teaching - that's looking for an excuse to fail a kid. Which is, in my mind, terrible pedagogy.

We do not teach kids how to speak. We simply don't. At least, not well. We teach them how to fill in blanks in a mediocre fashion. The kids who do well in my class will never impress somebody - never persuade anyone. But speech is taught like a standardized test - it is geared toward the middle. Kids who are really good speakers will not do well in a speech class because there is no place for creativity or technique. We want everybody to sound like everybody else. How is this learning? Teaching mediocrity doesn't help. They are not learning to be impressive representatives - they are learning to sound completely un-noticeable. This is not a helpful skill set! If I were one of my students who graduated and had to go out and make a real presentation I would come back and cuss me out up one side and down the other.

We don't teach the kind of speaking that we should. Most of my students will never stand in front of a group of people and try to convince them to pass a law. That's simply not in the cards for most people. But many of them will have to give a toast or say a prayer or give a testimonial. But God forbid we teach them something they might use. We don't bother with epideictic speech. Which is flatly stupid. It's the one kind of speech that some of my students ever need to know anything about.

When I grade my kids' speeches I grade for stupid stuff. Pure and simple. I gave C's to people the other day who were clearly superior speakers, but they had the audacity to adapt the organization of their speech to suit their own purposes.

I hate myself when I am teaching speech. I am a teacher for God's sake - how am I supposed to live with myself knowing that the class I am teaching is not just stupid, but most likely detrimental? And I've constantly got admin folks breathing down my neck to make sure I am checking note cards and complete sentences on the outline they don't actually use and making sure I have a bell curve that is as close to perfect as possible. It's a joke. The teachers know it. The students do, too.

I don't blame them for hating me at all.