The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-05-20
COLLEGE, ORATORY.

nluCl-aDuSneu lnOJneT-ln-ldW anu INV nv
-titious summer girl, have furnished
more opportunities for the cheap wit OF
the newspaper paragraphist than the So
called callow college student, and posi-
bly, no one of the Students weaknesses
has been more ridiculed than his ora
tory, The June commandments fur
nish abundant material for the observ-
ant funny writers, and the student, his
essay, its matter and its manner, are
scofed at numerically. AS in most
cases where the humorist and newspaper
wit find their peculiar field for fun, so
here there is just enough truth in the
pictures they draw to make the likeness
easily recognized. Too often the aver
age college senior is young man who
has spent his four years in study but has
learned about as much about the practl-
calities of life as is shown in the mock
commencement oTatiOns of the newspa-
pers, and knows just as much about the
proper delivery of his speech as his
grandiloquent cousin of the comic
weeklies. Much of the fault, of course,
may be naturally attributed to his i'm
maturity and inexperience; but is not
more of it the result of false teaching or
lack of any teaching whatever?
Very rarely, in the best of our college
does the student receive proper training
in oratory; very rarely, in most colleges,
does he receive any training worth men,
tiOning What he learns about public
speaking he learns at the meetings of his
college fraternity and literary societies;
his teachers are himself and fellow men,
bers, and too often he succeeds only in
fixing firmly upon himself faults and
mannerisms which years of work and
practice in after life will not remove.
His college orations he prepares himself;
his gestures he himself suggests; his ac-
ton, usually stiff and unnatural, he must
leave to his own experience to decide.
He rattles off to his professor speech,
either overloaded with all the dramatic
furbelOws his fancy can suggest, or bar
rem of any attempt to suit the spirit and
style to the subject. He is marked"
and permitted to depart, with hardly a
word of advice or criticism, only to re-
peat the performance next time, his er-
rors becoming habits and his only hope
of guidance being the hints his own good
sense may receive from the faults or
merits of his fellow speakers. If he re-
ceives any instruction at all. as to mat
ter or delivery, it is limited to an occa-
sional hint that this reference to Greece
be accompanied by a backward move
ment of the arm, or that sentence about
America be marked by a sweeping gest-
ture of both hands, supposed to indicate
the broad eXpanse of our National do
main. He is not told how to cultivate an
appearance of ease, nor how to be natur-
al and unaffected; he is not shown how
a slight movement of the head or hand
may lend more impressiveness than a
gesture that exercises every muscle of
his youthful body; he is not taught
wherein his Grafton lacks strength, how
the arrangement of the arguments might
be improved, where the climax suggest
ed by the thought itself might have been
introduced with good effect; where a
magnifcently meaningless mass of al
most synonymous words should have
been condensed into Short sharp and
effective sentence of five OF six monosyl-
tables.
Recently, educators have been giving
more attention to the instruction of
youth in the practice of public speak
ing, and more practical methods have
been tried. Much remains however, to
be done. 1t should be recognized first
of all that it will be found better to teach
few things well than to fail at teaching
many things. Too much has been re-
Guired of students in some colleges. The
miserable attempts at speech-making
displayed by the lower classmen at col
leges is proof of the nonsense of requir-
ingthese men to deliver original speeches
The task of writing these speeches is
alone, enough to brighten the average
freshman and sophomore, and when he
is required to commit them to memory
and delivery them, he gives up in de-
spair or does the work without much
thought or care as to how he does it..
Teachers are disposed to limit the deliv-
cry OF original composition to the older
classmen and to require from the young
or men simply declarations of the
speeches of others. But even here, with
large classes, and with scores of origi-
mai speeches delivered by as many differ
emit students, the most faithful of
teachers will find themselves unable to
do Justice to the work. Why not, then,
require the students to memorize and de-
liver the same passage. or at least why
not announce to each class three or
four familiar passages, any one of which
a student may select for defamation?
The object should be to have all make
a thorough study of this common decla-
nation, the teacher at the same time
suggesting methods of work. The con-
slant drill the students would receive in
hearing one speech delivered over and
over again by different men, in seeing
various meanings drawn out by the sew
eral speakers, and in having the criti-
cisms of the teacher on the various in
terpretations, would be practice worth
the delivery of dozen original compost
tons, and invaluable in showing the
student how he should study, word by
word and phrase by phrase, every speech
he delivers. The fact that several
speeches are announced gives to every
man the opportunity of selecting what
may suit his peculiar genius, and so the
plan has all the advantages of that by
which the students are given free
choice of orations, while at the same
time the faults of such system are
avoided and students are not permitted
to spend their time over the trivial and
childish declarations they may find in a
poor collection. Suppose, for example, "a
class of young men should take Patrick
Henry's famous speech, so dear to every
students heart, for such a study. Worn
as it is, and unlike our calm and staid
Oratory of to-day, familiar as all may be
with its sounding phrases, how much
would be learned about it, and how much
about true oTatOry, by proper study OF
it. Biographers OF the great orator have
told us how he delivered it,-with what
thrilling action he accompanied his
weighty words, how, standing weak de
jected and spiritless, with hands claspeC
hafora him 20 if hound ha oa1a1 eoJl,