Public speaking lessons at school

When I was at school I studied a brief course entitled “Communication and Media Studies”. It was a short course, maybe four lessons, taught as part of the Key Skills program. There was very little coherency between the lessons. We watched and discussed adverts then filmed our own. We competed to build the highest tower out of newspaper. We practiced university admission interviews.

The lesson I remember the most was about public speaking.

In this lesson we watched a speech and discussed the delivery, i.e. everything apart from what is said. The speech was Adolf Hitler’s first speech of Chancellor of Germany in 1933 (the lesson was being run by a history teacher). We watched it in German without subtitles.

If you want to see an epic example of stage presence this is it.

Two minutes into the video Hitler is introduced to a hysteric crowd. He stands, poised on stage for almost a full minute waiting for absolute silence before he begins to speak. When he does start to speak his voice is soft, his body passive and he indulges in several further long pauses. As the speech progresses he becomes more animated and louder. His trade-mark “shaking arm” is fist seen at 4:26. Soon he his shouting and gesticulating wildly.

His delivery feeds and is driven by the emotion of the crowd.

It would have been nice to delve further into techniques of public speaking rhetoric. In my experience most UK schools put all the emphasis on PowerPoint and never delve into how to engage an audience. It would be nice to see more lessons that deal with public speaking as an art form. If there were more of this kind of lesson the UK would have much better communicators.

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