September 3, 1998

An Introduction to the Basics

As many of you know, I attend a liberal arts university, which means I am plagued by required courses. Among those, there is Speech, or an introduction to public speaking, a basic, absolutely necessary skill. My attempt at testing out of Speech today (which I'm still uncertain about the results) consisted of 100 multiple-choice questions. While quite a few of the questions asked for criticisms and analyses of given speeches, a significant amount asked for the jargon of the speech communication specialists. Now, is that a basic skill? Must you know whether you are using an ethos argument or a pathos argument to deliver a good speech?

No. If you are going to give an introductory class with the central purpose of teaching an art, a skill, the advanced jargon is unnecessary. The majority of people will go no further than that introductory level. The time spent on this is time wasted.

It's like in mathematics. Usually chemistry, pharmacy, and biology majors are required to take an introductory course in calculus. One of the key points in calculus is the concept of limit; all of calculus centers on this point. However, limit is a very difficult idea to handle, so we just introduce it and give the general gist and power of it. We don't go into rigorous definition of it until later. Now, I could give you the hard definition of limit, but it would take even me, a (if I might say) qualified math major, several minutes to write it all down. It's a very difficult concept. People who are looking to use calculus as a tool do not need the life story of mathematics. The same (though an analogy is a weak form of argument) goes for public speaking.

So, I just have to wonder: If this world we're living in is really in such a crisis, then wouldn't our time be better spent teaching people the skills and saving the rest for later? I don't know.

I just wonder.