Comments on: Education as Pretense: Schooly “Speeches” versus Real “Talks”

By: Dangerously Irrelevant: Not so irrelevant 008

Dangerously Irrelevant: Not so irrelevant 008 — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:02:40 +0000

[...] Education as pretense: Schooly “speeches” versus real “talks” [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:41:46 +0000

@ Jeff

I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of writing in high school has gone way downhill because of standardized testing, in more ways than one. First, you get bland, uncreative writing which even the students can’t stand. Second, so many schools stop teaching basic mechanics at an early age so they can focus on getting kids prepared to write for the standardized tests. So not only does their writing suck, you can’t understand it because of the bad grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Toms last blog post..It’s Teacher Depreciation Week!

By: Jeff Wasserman

Jeff Wasserman — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:36:40 +0000

To me, this is all part of the larger issue of authentic writing vs crappy school writing. If students are conditioned to produce bad thesis-driven writing about things they don’t care about, it’s going to carry forward into their crappy speechifying.

Jeff Wassermans last blog post..Daily link post 05/02/2008

By: Group educators's best bookmarks

Group educators's best bookmarks — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:30:57 +0000

[...] Expand Education as Pretense: Schooly “Speeches” versus Real “Talks”… [...]

By: Nate Stearns

Nate Stearns — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:49:13 +0000

You know it’s funny. Unless your classroom is a whole lot different than my room, then don’t you have, like, a bazillion discussions in your room? I know it’s normal for teachers to think that whatever they do is pretty much universal and if it isn’t it’s because they’re doing it wrong! Still, I thought the English teacher bread and butter was the provocative quote, short write, pair compare, larger discussion, reflective write. My kids get all kinds of time to talk about all kinds of stuff. Usually, whatever I’m interested in. And very little of it is graded. Again, that’s lazy teaching when I don’t have a better idea and I still haven’t graded the last paper.

Also, isn’t the very next favorite lazyteacher idea to have the students teach the class with the all purpose lead the discussion section. When my first child was born, I pretty much outsourced an entire quarter of Honors 10.

Our school has one section of 5-7 minutes speeches in our HS curric. One is persuasive and the other expository. They choose from the Opposing Viewpoints database and then research away.

Also, I should mention that real people actually do spend more than little time just talking to groups of people without sharing or negotiating or doing anything but delivering data. It’s not going to die out without a fight.

Nate Stearnss last blog post..At least five forms of pseudoscience…

By: David Williamson

David Williamson — Thu, 01 May 2008 06:17:16 +0000

To respond to your question about alternative competitions to debate, when I was on speech team in high school I participated in the discussion event for a few years. The basic premise was that the group (usually about 5 or 6 of us) was given a problem that needed to be solved and we had an hour to do it using resources we brought with us. Sometimes we had lots of trouble coming to a consensus, other times we’d pull something together very quickly but the important part of the event wasn’t the solution it was the process of getting there and how we interacted with each other.

There is more information, including links to outlines and critique forms at: http://mshsl.org/mshsl/activitypage.asp?actnum=415

By: Clay Burell

Clay Burell — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:21:21 +0000

@Dave,

That too. I’m thinking of a project along those lines.

By: Diigo Jury Needed to Decide Comment Thread Debate | Beyond School

Diigo Jury Needed to Decide Comment Thread Debate | Beyond School — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:44:45 +0000

[...] connects, by the way, to a conversation with “Uninspired Teacher” Tom and Charlie A. Roy on the “Schooly Speeches versus [...]

By: David Truss

David Truss — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:56:02 +0000

I sat through our Grade 8 District Public Speaking Finals and must agree with you whole-heartedly. One student entertained us thoroughly with his passionate speech on why Heavy Metal will live forever. He wore a Led Zeppelin T-Shirt and spoke eloquently on his topic weaving humour into his will versed description of how other genres encroached and even consequently strengthened Heavy Metal’s hold. I listened, laughed and was left wanting more.
The dozen other speeches varied in quality, but none were worthy of a description greater than what you suggested, “artificial speeches about canned subjects”.
From my own school the topic was ‘We need Capital Punishment’ and the speech was riddled with empty rhetoric.
I was left wondering why students could not use audio-visuals to enhance their ‘presentation’? When will we get past the idea that faked emphasis and intonation actually convinces anyone of anything? Contrived is not convincing.
Although I like your idea of debates shifting to ‘cooperative negotiation and conflict resolution’, I also like the idea of shifting public speaking to ‘presentations’. Shift away from orator and move to marketer. Sell an idea. Use any format you wish. Confidently convince me.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:21:28 +0000

I never thought of using a jury. Excellent idea. All of our competitions were decided by a judge (in “regular season” they were lawyers and law students, in the “playoffs,” they were actual judges). But the jury element takes it that one step further. Excellent.

Toms last blog post..Well that escalated quickly