'The Speaker', BBC2's reality show, aimed at finding Britain's best school student speaker 'The best young speaker in Britain', hits the airwaves in April 2009. With Jo Brand heading its judging panel, and involving other celebrities such as Alastair Campbell and Earl Spencer, this series will undoubtedly raise the profile of public speaking nationwide - amongst young people and more generally. This opportunity, of several public speaking opportunities, is the most visible for youngsters. Rotary's 'Youth Speaks' has run its annual contests for many years, as have groups such as Young Farmers, the English Speaking Union, and various local organisations. Teams from English, Scottish and Welsh schools have long participated in the World School Students Debating Championships - about 40 countries take part annually. [It is a well-kept secret that England won in 2008 and Scotland in 2007 - Wales hosted the contest in 2006.] In the national capital, some 20,000 secondary students participated in last year's Speak Out Challenge contests, sponsored by the Jack Petchey fund and organised by SpeakersBank, and that latter organisation is now intending to roll out its activities from London to schools all over the country. Similarly, the Citizenship Foundation is putting together plans for a major national campaign for Public Speaking, which would also link in with schools activity. SpeakersBank is also pursuing the idea of the school speakers club - which might involve providing ideas and training materials to teachers - and the Speakers Trust charity (which is the parent body of SpeakersBank, and now has its President ex-Government Minister Lord Digby Jones) is considering creating a 'Junior Member' category for school and university students. Taken together, these are massive and under-reported developments. Gradually and belatedly, the focus is broadening from contests involving the best and keenest orators towards training for a wider range of secondary students. Nevertheless, the typical pattern remains competitions for those interested in public speaking, alongside specialist attention - when available - for students with diagnosed speech problems. Thus the review of young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), led by John Bercow MP and published late last year, was widely perceived by the media as dealing mainly with those who need speech therapists. In fact it called for upgrading standards of spoken communication across all children. The Bercow Report underlined that oral communication is an essential skill and fundamental human right, crucial to every child's ability to access and get the most out of education and life. Accepting its key recommendations, the Government intends to form a Communication Council and to appoint a Communication Champion and for 2011-12 to be the National Year of Speech, Language and Communication. Some time ago the speakers' clubs representatives canvassed Schools and Children's Minister Ed Balls calling for there to be an 'Every Child Shall Speak' initiative alongside its ongoing and worthy 'Every Child a Reader' and 'Every Child Counts' programmes. In a well-reasoned and thoughtful response, the Minister reviewed existing activities in our schools and concluded that this additional endeavour was unnecessary. In the light of Bercow, it may be opportune for this particular possibility - or at least the thinking behind it - to be re-visited. Much attention has been given to reports of school-leavers' literacy and numeracy deficiencies. But a far larger proportion, including many who can handle numbers and write reasonably adequately, are unable to stand up and express themselves orally. Many young people in the workforce report to Speakers Clubs seeking guidance in making presentations, interview techniques, discussion group leadership and participation. In the majority of workplaces, most communication is oral. Instructions are issued, ideas are thrown around and verbal feedback is forthcoming. Even when the product is in written form - such as this newspaper - the content has emerged from discussions, meetings and questioning. From the hospitality industry through to the security services, and from retailing through to medicine and law, and from government service through to the charity sector, the capacity to express oneself orally, to listen intelligently, and to ask and answer questions is a crucial proficiency. Much of what occurs in classrooms, however, is based upon and results in words on pages. The most vital occupational and social skill is not encompassed by the 3Rs (perhaps 'oracy' should become the fourth). While schools have responded to the vital computer skills requirement, that too engenders hard copy rather than speech. Most homework assignments involve writing or preparation for a written test the following day. Examinations - even those with practical components - are based almost exclusively on the expression of ideas on paper: 'orals' tend to be confined to foreign language assessments. While some of this is inevitable, in that what is spoken is transitory and untransmittable in comparison with that which is written, opportunities for helping all students build up the spoken communications skills abound. Schools in Australia and New Zealand encourage students to debate historical questions from various perspectives and to make presentations regarding, for example, ecological or health behaviour issues. Every class member is involved, reading speeches is not permitted, and teachers comment and assess each student's performance taking account of style and persuasiveness as well as content. My work (for the European Commission, UNESCO and other development partners) has taken me into classrooms in countries as diverse as Vietnam, St Kitts and Christopher, Malaysia, Kiribati and the Republic of South Africa. In some instances, and far more than in those UK schools best known to me, adolescent youngsters are able effectively to argue aloud on this work of literature or that aspect of human geography. In many settings I have heard secondary students describing to one another the purpose, outcomes and significance of the chemistry experiment that they have just performed or contest the meaning and merit of the text that they have studied. Here and there across the world students are speaking across the curriculum. Educationalists see it, quite properly, as vital to democratic participation as well as a key element of world of work preparation. Students involved have also justified it to me in terms of their being able to join in talk-back radio programmes, to stand up for their rights on school councils, to become participating trade unionists, and to be prepared for the seminar approach at universities. But back here our pedagogy is still attached to the pen - and, to an increasing extent, the keyboard - rather than to the learners' organs of speech. Perhaps the National Curriculum is perceived as too crowded to be dealt with in any radical manner. Inevitably, teachers tend to teach as they themselves were taught, mediated by how they were taught to teach. It is the case, however, that coming generations will spend far more time expressing ideas out loud and listening critically than they will to solving quadratic equations on paper or compiling paragraphs on the significance of this scene in a play or the origins of the Hundred Years War. We cannot afford another generation to whom 'making a speech' is as attractive as undergoing root canal surgery. Still less can the individuals involved, whose world of work will be increasingly competitive and whose leisure time opportunities progressively more participative. Certainly no youngster should leave school unable to enjoy handling mathematical ideas or with a lack of any love of reading or with an antipathy towards computers. But equally - yes, equally - none should emerge unable to contribute to a discussion, ask questions of political and local government representatives, engage in advocacy, make presentations, give clear verbal instructions and advice, and listen thoughtfully and critically to speeches and statements made by others. While it might be too extreme to emulate the Ancient Romans in defining the purpose of schooling as, to quote Quintilian, 'The Education of an Orator', ensuring that all school-leavers are able confidently to express themselves through the spoken word is a reasonable and achievable objective. Its full achievement entails a fresh assessment of how everything dealt with at schools is prepared, presented, responded to, recorded and assessed. A good start would be the realisation that fostering effective oral communication skills is a priority for all our students rather than just for this minority who are keen to enter contests and that minority who have discernable speech defects. Copyright (c) 2009 The College Of Public Speaking
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