The state of the spoken word at Grinnell College

David Archer ‘05

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On a warm spring day in May, over 300 students will strut across the stage on central campus, receive a diploma and enter the world scarcely any better at public speaking than when they arrived four years before, contrary to the claims of the college’s mission statement.

It is no secret among students or professors that few at this school can speak well—effectively and even beautifully—in front of an audience, and visiting speakers are often as bad or worse. Student presentations are, with rare exception, unpleasant for all parties involved, and I know of only a handful of professors who can sustain a lecture for an entire class period. Indeed, sometimes I wonder if poor speaking skills may explain why so many professors depend on discussions to get through the hour even when a lecture would teach the material more succinctly and clearly.

And the sorry state of the spoken word at the college continues despite the college’s aim to “graduate women and men who can think clearly, who can speak and write persuasively and even eloquently,” as the mission statement says. By this point in the college’s history, Professor Jack P. Ryan must have bored a hole through his coffin walls having spun so many times.

Ryan was a colorful and popular speech professor at the college from 1903 to 1947. He taught basic communications to first years and advanced communications to juniors. He required each student to deliver six speeches over the course of the semester. Ryan’s teaching tenets were: no rules but principles, learn by doing, speaking is a means to an end, the outline is important, the speech must be beautiful and effective, it is important that beginning students be well-taught.

A 1916 syllabus of his focuses on the face, eyes, head, hands, arms, feet, trunk, the whole body, inflection, enunciation, and pronunciation. Ryan saw that speaking involved every part of the body and mind, which may explain why he believed his subject was the most important taught on campus—”the art of arts,” he called it.

Ryan believed in the short speech. “At Newton, Iowa they make one-minute washing machines. At Grinnell we make one-minute speeches,” he would say. To Ryan, a longer speech lasted four to five minutes. And to encourage quick thinking, he would assign three minute speeches then limit the student to two upon arrival.

After Ryan died, the college let the speech department die because it was perceived as less intellectually rigorous than other departments, according to Professor Brad Bateman, Economics, who teaches a class on the college’s history.

Although once a part of the trivium of medieval liberal arts colleges, speech and rhetoric departments declined around the country in the sixties and seventies as curricula opened and requirements diminished. But I think we can still revive some of Ryan’s contributions to the curriculum even if we do not revive the department.

We live in an increasingly image-laden age of communication, but maybe professors could teach students not to lose sight of the spoken language’s essence to communication by discouraging the use of Powerpoint presentations, for instance. Powerpoint can certainly enhance some talks, but just as often it seems to shift the audience’s attention from the spoken word to pointless images and colorful design schemes that tend to distract more than they complement.

Moreover, professors could follow Ryan and assign short speeches and demand more from the delivery of in-class presentations. The college could also hire someone to tutor speech and work in collaboration with the writing center. Indeed, the college could even expand the writing center based on the model of the speaking, arguing, and writing program founded by Mount Holyoke College in the 90s.

To be sure, one current constraint on the faculty is time. For example, Bateman says he must cover his course’s content, and assign and grade papers, and “There just isn’t time for me to also become speech coach.” In addition, many professors are engaged in time-consuming research, leaving them less time to learn new skills, such as teaching speech.

But even if the particular solutions now elude us, we need only the will and creativity to begin integrating speech into the curriculum more thoroughly. And 2004 should have made clear that speech is wanting in America when Kerry was occasionally eloquent but rarely clear, and Bush was occasionally clear but rarely eloquent.

So, if Grinnell could, in fact, graduate better speakers, the question for future years becomes: how can we best learn from examples like Ryan, adhere to the college’s stated aims and illuminate the link between clear thinking and persuasive and eloquent speech?