Public Speaking | Page 4

INTRODUCTION
Happily, it is no longer necessary to argue that public speaking is a
worthy subject for regular study in school and college. The teaching of
this subject, in one form or another, is now fairly well established. In
each of the larger universities, including professional schools and
summer schools, the students electing the courses in speaking number
well into the hundreds. These courses are now being more generally
placed among those counted towards the academic degrees. The
demand for trained teachers in the various branches of the work in
schools and colleges is far above the present supply. Educators in
general look with more favor upon this kind of instruction, recognizing
its practical usefulness and its cultural value. The question of the
present time, then, is not whether or not the subject shall have a place.
Some sort of place it always has had and always will have. Present
discussion should rather bear upon the policy and the method of that
instruction, the qualifications to be required of teachers, and the
consideration for themselves and their work that teachers have a right
to expect.
Naturally, public speaking in the form of debating has received favor
among educators. It seems to serve the ends of practice in speaking and
it gives also good mental discipline. The high regard for debating is not
misplaced. We can hardly overestimate the good that debating has done

to the subject of speaking in the schools and colleges. The rigid
intellectual discipline involved in debating has helped to establish
public speaking in the regular curriculum, thus gaining for it, and for
teachers in it, greater respect. To bring training in speech into close
relation with training in thought, and with the study of expression in
English, is most desirable. This, however, does not mean that training
in speech, as a distinct object in itself, should be allowed to fall into
comparative neglect. It is quite possible that, along with the healthy
disapproval of false elocution and meaningless declamation, may come
an underestimation of the important place of a right kind and a due
degree of technical training in voice and general form.
In a recent book on public speaking, the statement is made that it is all
well enough, if it so happens, for a speaker to have a pleasing voice, but
it is not essential. This, though true in a sense, is misleading, and much
teaching of this sort would be unfortunate for young speakers. It would
seem quite unnecessary to say that beauty of voice is not in itself a
primary object in vocal training for public speaking. The object is to
make voices effective. In the effective use of any other instrument, we
apply the utmost skill for the perfect adjustment or coordination of all
the means of control. We do this for the attainment of power, for the
conserving of energy, for the insuring of endurance and ease of
operation. This is the end in the training of the voice. It is to avoid
friction. It is to prevent nervous strain, muscular distortion, and failing
power, and to secure easy response to the will of the speaker. The point
not wholly understood or heeded is that, as a rule, the unpleasing voice
is an indication of ill adjustment and friction. It denotes a mechanism
wearing on itself--it means a voice that will weaken or fail before its
time--a voice that needs repair.
Since speech is to express a speaker's thought, training in speech should
not be altogether dissociated from training in thinking. It ought to go
hand in hand, indeed, with the study of English, from first to last. But
training in voice and in the method of speech is a technical matter. It
ought not to be left to the haphazard treatment, the intense spurring on,
of vocally unskilled coaches for speaking contests. Discussions about
the teaching of speaking are often very curious. We are frequently told
by what means a few great orators have succeeded, but we are hardly
ever informed of the causes from which many other speakers have been

embarrassed or have failed. A book or essay is written to prove, from
the individual experience of the author, the infallibility of a method. He
was able to succeed, the argument runs, only by this or that means;
therefore all should do as he did. It seems very plausible and attractive
to read, for instance, that to succeed in speaking, it is only necessary to
plunge in and be in earnest. But another writer points out that this is
quite absurd; that many poor speakers have not lacked in intense
earnestness and sincerity; that it isn't feeling or intense spirit alone that
insures success, but it is the attainment as well of a vocal method. Yet
he goes on