Speak the speech, I beg you
Long before commentators and newscasters rampaged over the airwaves with multiple superfluous insertions into each sentence, or beginning a comment with “So,” educators promoted Shakespeare’s plea to “speak the speech mind-bogglingly in the language” through elocution classes. They heralded the ability to communicate in grammatically correct sentences without hesitation with proper inflection, pronunciation, and subject knowledge as paramount to one’s success in life.
I was in third grade at Concord School in Pittsburgh when my mother took me to King School of Oratory to cure my shyness and fear of speaking to adults. By the time he learned of the miracles its founder, Byron W. King, had accomplished, including curing himself of a speech impediment, the country’s most celebrated broadcaster and actress had been dead for many years, but his wife Inez, a renamed from Chautauqua. After public interest soared in child stars like Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, actors, businessmen, lawyers, clergymen and even children were still being trained.
Despite diligent memorization of the dramatic readings Mrs. King assigned me, I was left painfully self-conscious. Also, I couldn’t cultivate the deep, theatrical voice that she preferred. The first step toward that goal, she suggested, was to practice yelling often every day. The first time I tried it at home, Mom came running, thinking she was hurt.
My progress in public speaking was minimal when we moved to Philadelphia and I entered seventh grade at Swarthmore High School, where Nathan Bell taught social studies. Every day he would walk into his classroom fearing that he would call me to participate as a news reporter. Several times a week, Mr. Bell distributed a newspaper published by an educational organization dedicated to informing teenagers about current national and international events. The format was that of a typical newspaper with columns covering a variety of topics, from serious military and political stories to humorous reports on intelligent animals or achievements of popular stage, film and radio stars. Mr. Bell called the serious items “heavy” and the lighter ones “fluff.” He warned us to avoid fluff and focus on the heavy stories because we would be graded on our understanding of the latter.
Once we had perused the newspaper and selected an article, he instructed us to keep it inside our desk to discourage peeking. He would then call a random student to explain the history of her choice and why we should be interested in him. His criteria for excellent reporting called for extemporaneous delivery with expression, appropriate vocabulary, and a clear understanding of the subject. To facilitate sharing, he instructed us to move our desks in a circle. He was always asking for feedback on the presentation he had just given and how it could have been improved. He would then move on to another student, emphasizing that the item chosen must be different from those already covered. No repeats allowed.
Terrified, my focus each day was to remember the key points about the item I had selected and pray fervently that it would call someone but me before the bell rang. Sometimes my mind went blank and I couldn’t remember a fact. Not only did we have to report the story in our own words, but we had to stand tall and address Mr. Bell and the others in the circle as if we really knew what we were talking about. Unable to do this to his satisfaction without stuttering, I received poor marks for “participation.” Still, I persevered.
The goal of our English teachers was to produce students who were masters of the spoken and written word, even if they didn’t hear ideal grammar at home. After instilling ground rules in our heads, Elizabeth McKee rewarded us the last few minutes of class by reading her moving novel about her grandmother’s waiting for the return of her loved one from the Civil War. Before leaving their classroom, every student who had made a mistake on a paper or during a discussion that day could expect to be stopped and asked to remember the correct usage and to use it correctly in a sentence.
Hannah Kirk Mathews, who studied at Cambridge and became one of the world’s foremost scholars of the Chaucerian dialect, taught only freshmen and seniors. Under her tutelage, we were travelers through wondrous seas of words. We enjoy every poem, story, play, and novel she recommended and perform at least two of Shakespeare’s plays a year, always longing to become adults who could transfer that knowledge to our own children or students.
A Quaker, Ms. Mathews began her teaching career at The George School in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where one of her students was a young man so nurtured by her wisdom and guidance that he dedicated his life to celebrating humanity and our fragile earth. through his novels. As she closely followed the lives and careers of all of her students, she never lost touch with the young man destined to put “Hawaii,” “Chesapeake,” “Alaska” and “South Pacific” on the shelves.
Long after she had been teaching for many years, Ms. Mathews wrote: “My fondest memory is my retirement party where the community came to thank me and James Michener came to see me instead of attending a White House dinner. “.
The strict elocution rules that my classmates and I eventually mastered with these vigilant teachers are broken daily on the television news by reporters inserting “you know,” “like,” or “I mean” multiple times in each sentence. And let’s not ignore those who gleefully invert subject and object while babbling about what “she and I” or “he and I” did.
Is proper speech destined for extinction?