Ep 71 Should Public Speaking Be Required in College Presentation Skills March 11 16

Should public speaking be a required course before graduating from college?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Fascinating article. Jumped out at me the other day. This was passed on to me online. This was from the Cavalier Daily, the University of Virginia newspaper, and it's posted by I don't know if it's a student or a faculty member who it is, but the name is Alyssa Imam and the title is We Need a Public Speaking Requirement in the article and I want to share with you an excerpt. However, another skill currently overlooked by the college and the requirements it imposes on students is public speaking. In order to help students develop personally and better equip them to succeed professionally, the university should consider implementing an oral communication requirement into the college's requirements. Perhaps the most obvious benefit that would arise from a public speaking requirement is that it would better prepare students to successfully enter and strive in their professional lives during summers and after graduation. The ability to effectively communicate orally is well known and often cited by employers as being one of the most important skills necessary for incoming and current employees to succeed, even across multiple fields. And that's from Elissa Imam. Truer words were never spoken. Alyssa Music to my ears. Hats off for you for mentioning this. It always strikes me as frankly bizarre. My own background. I spent an entire year studying Latin in 10th grade and in my entire high school career I had one semester of public speaking and that was an elective that 95% of my fellow students did not take. Now how often do I use Latin? Now that shouldn't be the only criteria for intellectual pursuits, but it does strike me as frankly bizarre that people are able to graduate from high school, college, business school, graduate school, and the one skill that's actually most important to their careers that often makes the biggest difference between capping out at mid level bureaucrat versus CEO of a company is your speaking skills and it's not taught anywhere. And the problem now is there are so many turf wars in academia and there are so many departments that have inertia. You're not going to get rid of the Latin department at major universities and you're not going to get rid of Latin teachers because they are entrenched. They have tenure. The public speaking teachers at most schools, even prestigious schools, I mean they're lucky if they're given a key to the bathroom, much less tenure. They are considered really the hired help. They are about an eighth of an inch above the janitorial services as far as their hierarchy, their perks Their pay in most schools, and they are brought in from the outside and often paid, frankly, minimum wage, which is why I don't teach at universities. So it's very hard for me to see a political way of Alyssa's proposal ever getting enacted simply because. Who do you bump out? Are you going to bump out the music teacher? The music department? Well, hey, I like music. I frankly wish I'd had more music instruction going through school. Is it another language? What is it you bump out? I don't know what the perfect answer is. All I do know that speaking skills are extraordinarily important. And here's the problem. Full disclosure, I'm a beneficiary of this. The fact that public speaking is not taught in the academic world is one reason why I can have a thriving private practice doing this, because there is a gap in the marketplace. I really couldn't have a similar practice teaching people algebra, or for that matter, writing English, because everyone had at their disposal, from government writing teachers, first grade, second grade, through 12th grade, through college. So I'm able to benefit because of this essential, essentially, a gap in the system. So while I can stand up and say I think everyone should be required to take public speaking, you can't expect me to devote a lot of time and energy to do this, because, truth be told, I am a beneficiary of the fact that it's not taught. People sort of have to come to me, but I don't really know why anyone else should take it. I don't know. For the life of me, I don't know why parents don't demand that their students get public speaking instruction. I can tell you my daughter is going to get public speaking instruction. She's going to get it right here at home. And she's certainly not ever going to get an allowance or a request for any toy or anything she wants, unless she's made a great presentation that is interesting and memorable. So I've got my own system, but that doesn't help society, that doesn't help the rest of us. So I would certainly love to hear from you on this. What your thoughts are.

A question for you.

And that is the question of the day. Do you think public speaking should be a required course either at the high school level or the college level? And if not a required course, do you think people should have to demonstrate the skill? So, for example, in colleges, if you grew up bilingual, you can often test out of a language requirement just by taking a test. In theory, you can have someone give a speech or presentation to show proficiency public speaking skills. Do you think this should be a requirement or should we continue the current system where a student is a lot more likely to take ballroom dancing? And I'm not knocking ballroom dancing. I took ballroom dancing in college. I can't say that I use the skill very often. But are we going to continue down a path whereby more students take ballroom class dancing than public speaking? I'd like to know from you. What do you think? Should that be the situation? Should that in fact be the status quo? Post your comments. Send them to me on Twitter. JWalker is my Twitter handle. You can post this on our Facebook page, which is TJ Walker Interactive. You could post it on the YouTube channel. The best place to post your thoughts on this. For that matter, any questions you have is on the blog@mediatrainingworldwide.com just go to the news section.

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Big question I'm hearing all the time now, clients, friends asking me this, but also bandied about in the news media. Here it is. Is money no longer relevant in politics, specifically political communication? Historically, the old catchphrase money is the mother's milk of politics. Credited to Jesse Unruh, the former speaker of the California Legislature, money was considered to be the biggest determinant, the best friend a politician ever had, according to Phil Graham, the former senator from Texas. But you look at what happened this year and by the way, those of you watching this or listening to this podcast, 2017, 18 or beyond, I am producing this show on February 25, 2016. So it's in a particular political context. Jeb Bush, in just the last few days, has dropped out of the presidential race for the GOP nomination after having raised more than $100 million in just an unprecedented amount of money for a candidate who got virtually no votes. So you have that on the one extreme, and he spent north. I've seen reports north of $80 million just on television ads, seemingly to absolutely no effect whatsoever. Meanwhile, the candidate, the top tier candidate, who I'm not talking about James Gilmore, someone who never even got on the debate floor. But of the top tier candidates, the candidate who spent the least amount of money, certainly the least amount of money on political advertising, is Donald Trump. And as of today, he is number one of the polls and has won three of the first four primary caucus battles. So how do you account for this? I do think some people are too quick to say well, money is no longer important. Money doesn't matter. Here's the problem with that. Most campaigns in the world are not for the US Presidency. People are intensely interested in who's going to be the next President of the United States. If you're running for agriculture commissioner for the state of Florida. Not as many people are concerned about that. So in many, many races all over the country, especially in big states where there are statewide races, voters don't care that much. And quite often the candidate with the most money, who spends the most on television ads, wins. That isn't going to change absent extreme situations. Now, the 2016 presidential race, the extreme situation is Donald Trump is just much better at communicating interesting messages through social media, Twitter in particular. And he's dominating all the traditional media coverage because of I'm not getting political here folks, but because of the way he communicates and the ideas that he communicates are simply more interesting than other ideas that are coming out in political ads. So here's what I think the situation is. Money in advertising in general, for politics and other things is less important than it used to be. Because if you have an interesting product, whether it's a candidate or a new app, or a particular sort of cell phone, if you have a great product that has something unique, different, interesting to it, it's going to be easier than ever to get media coverage through social media, through your own YouTube channel, through Twitter, through by getting your followers and fans to talk about you. Therefore, you don't need big money for traditional advertising. That I think is true for politics and non political products and services. However, before we shut down the TV stations and start sending back checks and contributions and forget about raising money, there's a big however for many, many products and services and candidates in the world, there isn't intense interest from the public. And absent intent interest, advertising is still the only way you can force your message on someone. If someone invents a new toilet paper, there's a good chance that I'm not going to go to blogs or follow Twitter feeds of people who review toilet paper. But from time to time, if I'm watching a political debate or if I'm watching a Super Bowl, I am going to be captive to those 30 second ads. And if there's some new toilet paper out there that is just so revolutionary, so much better for the environment, softer, cheaper, better, there's a chance someone could get my attention that way in a way they couldn't any other way. So I wouldn't write off traditional advertising. By the way, I always find it comical. The people who are most mocking of traditional ads and advertising always like to hold up Apple as the perfect new product in the new technology world and focus on creating something beautiful that people love that's better than the competition and that's how you'll succeed. And they always conveniently neglect the fact that Apple is one of the largest advertisers in the world of traditional billboards TV ads. So obviously there is still a role for traditional advertising, but it is changing. And anyone who says I'm just going to focus my attention on advertising is missing out a lot. Don't ask me. Ask erstwhile presidential candidate Jeb Bush. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for spending some time with me today. As always, if you have any questions about speaking, please send them to me and you can see how to do that in the notes section of the show. And as always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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