Just a thought October 2009

So, I'm not placed this fall for student teaching and because of the needless worry and excessive self medication and more than enough self pity, I suppose, the asthma and the bronchitis and the long nights of healing cleanse in the way of coughing up maybe a liter or two of snot have taught me one essential truth I am going to hereby stand by, no matter what. For all those out there who feel as though I am not capable of student teaching, I have three well used and thoughtfully chosen words: Kiss My Ass ("_^

And as far the elective nature of speech in many of today's high schools who are so very concerned with making students competitive in today's market place, I argue that the current approach is not only ridiculous, it is grossly inefficient: All you guys out there who subscribe to this approach to general pedagogy and the humanities are wasting the time and money of the communities you have taken an oath to serve to the best of your ability.

Why?

Because for one thing , in general the humanities are indispensable, to the overall development of any learner because of the inherent duplicity of human nature and the ongoing need for the kind of ethical and moral perspectives essential for sustaining individual and group effective long term competitiveness in a constructive sense : a collaborative sense other than greed or self aggrandizement or a desire to dominate. For all of our good intentions, we cannot forget that in our collective human history, when ever we have endeavored to make ourselves competitive we have used dogmas such as Manifest Destiny and Me First as if they were perspectives removed from personal responsibility

Speech Communication specifically, could and should teach a basic form of logical analysis:a little history about Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, a little bit about premise, premise conclusion and a little bit about premise, missing premise and conclusion. In addition, along these lines, Speech Communication could and should work closely with other classes such as Physics, and Math in matters of word problems.

Student Journals that keep record of student's thoughts and experiences learning basic logic in speech, applying those ideas in their other classes: both Science and Math related and not, would go a long way in establishing for the student a working context for understanding how all knowledge is interdependent and useful in adapting to problems that may require going beyond many of the existing barriers facing professionals in many of the Arts and Sciences today.

Consider for a moment ladies and gentlemen, the education of Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Mrs. and Mr. Pierre Curie, Michael Faraday, Henri Poincare, James Maxwell, Albert Einstein or Max Planck. Ultimately, all of these men and women were indeed competitive yet I think the record clearly demonstrates that in almost every case, their education consisted of a well rounded appreciation for knowledge as a whole.

In nearly every case of a competitive and successful scientist, politician, engineer, lawyer or doctor we can trace their success to not just their understanding of their discipline, but also to how their discipline played a part in the orchestra of disciplines. Speech Communication is one of the oldest and strongest examples of how this Unified Field response to knowledge has shaped the historical nature of intelligence. And it has and will continue to work the way it does because logic is the language of knowledge: its lingua franca.

Far from being a mere elective, Speech Communication and her sister discipline Performance Studies, always have been the spark that makes overall learning competitive. And if we educators are seriously looking for more efficient and successful ways to teach our students, then we need to remember our common history as individuals who must at some point actually stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

Just A Thought
Tom
('_^