COLUMN: Speaking in Tongues

From Kenneth Baer's "Wired for Cable," Fall '93 Instead of giving up, he started to sharpen his skills by speaking with pebbles in his mouth. Able to talk even with rocks between his cheeks, speaking regularly was no problem. In fact, Demosthenes excelled to such a degree that he became the premier orator of Ancient Greece and his form is studied even today. With the prevalence of e-mail and voice-mail it may seem that public speaking is a skill no longer as important as it was in Demosthenes' time. However, from senators to students, inadequacies with the spoken word have meant the loss of cogent, comprehensible ideas. Against a sea of debilitating qualifications, scores of "you know's" and "like's," and a general chronic longwindedness, oratory skills have disappeared. Recently, Senator Joe Biden has been ridiculed for his signature 20 minute questions that end up asking nothing. Compare the occasional Senate floor debate to the weekly Prime Minister's questions in England's House of Commons, and it's clear how pitiful our representatives' oratorical skills are. With such exemplary leadership, it comes as no surprise that most Americans can't complete a sentence, written or spoken. Yet the pathology lies deeper. Listen in on any class at the University to hear just how oral communication has broken down. Warning: it may be unbearable. First, there's the never-ending question. Hardly a question, it entails the long rehashing of an unthought-out thesis of dubious importance by someone who thinks that class participation is graded on quantity, not quality. When the inquisitor realizes that he has thoroughly lost the class and professor, he wraps up his soliloquy with a question along the lines of: "So what do you, like, have to say to that?" Equally hard on the ears is the student who is deathly afraid to ask questions or participate in discussion. When he finally ventures into the intellectual fire, he ends up dancing around the issue in order not to get burned. What results is a series of questions that encompass one statement: "Johnson escalated? the country's? involvement? in Vietnam?" Looking for reassurance, he is instead met by people doing the crossword puzzle. In many classes, the occasional question is the only opportunity one has to speak up. As with any skill, when it goes unused, it is forgotten – or never learned. So when the average Penn student finally enrolls in a class that actually requires a long, oral presentation of material, the results are part farce and part disaster. The worst, and all too common presenter, is the public reader. With her roots in the town crier of old, this presenter feels the need to read word for word everything he or she says. The public reader can take many forms. At one extreme is the Stoic. While reading in monotone, he or she plays with her hair, rubs his face, and picks the stuff out of his eyes. At times, even the mere reading of the prepared speech is too much to handle and the Stoic breaks out into spontaneous, maniacal laughter. Ironically, these outbursts actually add to the presentation as the audience is resoundingly awakened and stays alert placing wagers on the exact time of the Stoic's oncoming nervous breakdown. The other species of public reader is the Master Thespian. Equally prepared as the Stoic, the Master Thespian is confident that he can present any material no matter how boring it may be. Interestingly, Master Thespians usually end up in the White House writing speeches on debt financing and xanthum gum exports. At Penn, the Master Thespian reads his speech to class just like the Stoic, but with panache. Using tips he learned in a high school communications class, he gesticulates with his hand at key points, paces the room to show purpose, and reads with a smile and sense of drama that exists only in his own mind. And like all public readers, the Master Thespian strains to use terms that highlight the conversational style of the talk. Words such as "socio-economic," "augment," and "thusly" abound. When its all unsaid and done, instead of enlivening a presentation, the Master Thespian ends up acting and relaying the information about as well as a large furry character at King's Dominion. T he final form of presenter is the Whartonite. Surprisingly schooled in the art of the oral presentation, the Whartonite – to the credit of the school – finds himself giving these quite often, yet with limited excitement and success. The key problem in the Whartonite's presentation is the overhead. Someone somewhere made a rule that "business" presentations must involve overhead projections presumably to clearly illustrate a point. What actually happens is that once the lights go out and the whir of the projector fan starts up, a deep sleep ensues. Even with the canned jokes of the veteran Whartonite presenter (aka "on-campus recruiter"), the material can never be interesting enough to arouse anything resembling human emotion. Although oratory may be forever lost in our political and social sphere, the University can take a small step to revive this lost art. As it did when it became apparent that Penn students could not write themselves out of a paper bag, the University can establish a mandatory speaking requirement. This course would not be a college version of the joke elective we all took in high school, but would be a recitation attached to a liberal arts class. A la WATU, these recitations would require speeches, presentations, and debates as opposed to papers and exams. Talk of these classes has surfaced recently, but unfortunately, it is only talk. If the University is committed to its students' intellectual development and preparation for the real world, then it must institute such a program. As Demosthenes did hundreds of years ago, we must put the figurative pebbles in our mouth, and learn how to speak. Kenneth Baer is a senior History major from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and the Daily Pennsylvanian's Editorial Page Editor. Wired for Cable appears alternate Wednesdays.