TALK

As anyone who knows me probably already knows, I disagree with the Mormon Church on a lot of issues. Most of them, actually. But there is one place where I really think the Mormon’s have it right: public speaking. I don’t know a ton about it, but I know that they get children involved with public speaking at a very young age. Which I think is really awesome. I know plenty of people who are deathly afraid of public speaking – a commonly cited statistic is people fear it more than death. I never really had this problem – sure, I get nervous before I have to give a speech, but I love the adrenaline. I absolutely love talking and debating and public speaking in general. It’s fun for me. It’s part of why I loved speech and debate so much, but I apparently am in the minority of this. Which is why I think that in this case, the Mormon’s have it right. If we get kids used to talking and debating in front of their peers (and even elders) at a very young age, they won’t think of public speaking as something to be afraid of, just something that’s fun and easy and a very very useful skill.

I have three soapboxes when it comes to education: comprehensive sex ed, government/political structure at a younger age than we get it now, and public speaking. I will cover the other too in another post later, but it is so frustrating listening to people in my college classes who have no idea what to do about giving a short presentation to a class. Or people who get sweaty palms at just the thought of giving a 5-minute speech. I don’t expect everyone to be a great speech giver or anything, but I think that if we just engrain the importance of public speaking at a younger age, this massive fear that we have when it comes to talking will be substantially lessened.

I credit my ability (both natural and trained) to speak well with some very important parts of my life. I had to go through an interview in front of five people to get my job for CORE, and while I was nervous as hell because I really wanted the job, I wasn’t worried about the actually speaking part of the interview – because I knew I could do it. I’ve never been afraid to participate in classes, which boosts grades. I don’t necessarily have the best chemistry grades, but I managed to get an awesome lab job in the chemistry department because I was able to express how passionate I am about doing research in the interview, so I got the job over people who probably had more experience and better grades than I did.

So to get back to the point, I think kids at every age need better training in speaking skills. I don’t know anything about being a parent, but I think there’s most likely a correlation between talking to kids at home and their confidence in speaking outside of home. I know we all hated giving seemingly pointless presentations in school, but while the information we present may not be worth anything, the actual presentation is what really matters. So we don’t end up with people who are 20, 30, or 40 years old and are still terrified to talk in front of people.

Ok I’m getting down off my soapbox now. But don’t you worry, I’ll be back.