‘A person has two reasons for doing something: the reason he gives, and the real reason.’ A quote that has been ascribed, in recent history, to various people from different countries.

Perhaps this applies to our students.

For some students, the reasons for undertaking a public speaking course go far beyond learning skills and techniques. Important as they are, these skills are not the driving force, the motivator, the deep-down reason for taking the course. Some students come with their reasons and they know them – a competition, a good mark in exams, better performance in schools. But others may not even be conscious of their own ‘real reason’ when they start the course: that reason emerges as they learn to speak up.

The final speeches in the course are on topics chosen by the students themselves. Most topics have a combination of personal and broader interest: the challenges of online learning, the importance of science, (more examples….)

But for a few young people…their topics come from a place deep within, and these youth give the speech they have been waiting all their lives to give. A speech they want others to hear. Close friends and family. The wider community and the whole world. In those few minutes, their screams are raw but structured, their passions demand and are given voice, their pain surfaces in detached anger, and their appeals become well-shaped, clearly- structured clarion calls to all.

If you listen not just to the structure and delivery – skills they learn in the course – but also to the content, you see a beautiful, powerful person calling for change, calling for help, calling for a better world. Whether they are talking about care and respect for self and others, or making pleas to stop the damage being done to the planet, these young people are desperate to the heard. With courage they step up and speak up: they want others to sit up and listen up…and to re-think, re-feel, re-do.

Yes, for these students, learning the techniques and strategies matters. But the skills are not an end in themselves. They are the beginning.

LGBTQ, body shaming, the pressures of generation gaps and gender roles on a young woman in Viet Nam….

The courses do one more thing: they provide and create a safe space for these life-changing, life-beginning speeches. If the students did not participate, if they did not join the classes week after week, if they did not become a part of a community of public speaking learners, they would not have a forum in which to present and test their views, passions,
needs, appeals… The public speaking courses provide a platform, a safe space, an audience that might NEVER exist if they do not take the course. The pain and joy of giving voice to those inner feelings and thoughts may never happen…..

And so…

For some, it seems like it is the speech they have been waiting all their lives to make.

For some, their final speeches are cathartic. They are powerful and moving.

For some, the final speech is a moment of change – a moment when the students stepped up and spoke up as a part of the next phase of their learning and growth

Phil Smith
December 2021