Why we should not do speeches at school by Caleb

Have you ever been nervous about doing speeches?

Have you ever thought about wagging school when you had to do speeches? Well today I hope to persuade you (and in particular, the teachers) on why students shouldn’t be made to do speeches at school.

     

My first reason is that making and performing a speech is a waste of time. You could be learning something new in those 7 weeks instead of doing that wretched speech! Like learning another language! Learning another language creates more brain pathways or connections which makes you more intelligent! Isn’t that what we strive for at school?  I’m really hoping that Reremoana’s WALT for speeches is NOT “scaring kids out of their wits” which is the end result.  Also, someone might be repeating their speech from previous years which means they aren’t even researching a topic and they stay at the same intelligence level.

My next reason is the fear some people have of doing speeches.

Did you know that speeches can cause stress, which increases your blood pressure, raises cortisol levels and increases stomach acid which isn’t good for you?  Raised blood pressure increases the risk of strokes and heart attacks.  Increased stomach acid over time causes painful stomach ulcers.  None of these are desirable outcomes.

Some people have Glossophobia (fear of speeches) and if they are forced to present a speech to an audience it can cause drama like crying, people laughing at them and that is not nice and can be taken as teasing which causes even more drama.

Year after year students are subject to these awful side affects:-

• sweaty palms,
• being short of breath (hyperventilation),
• their stomach tied in knots,
• The dreaded mind blank where under pressure your memorised speech drifts off from your clutches
• Voice starts to shake after doing long speech

Another reason why people don’t like doing public speaking is they might speed through their speech and make it much shorter, and  our speeches have to be 2 minutes 30 seconds and 3 minutes, and we could go fast and get a bad mark because we were off time.

Students who have another main language are at a disadvantage.

Speeches are basically a test of how well you can talk in front of a group of people, as opposed to what you actually know about the topic at hand- which makes them a poor assessor of the actual course material.

For one last thing to take into consideration, take the lion king performance we are doing at our school.

The people who did not want to perform  just DIDN’T sign up for it! There was a choice.

For Speeches you have no choice.

You just have to do it.

Please DO NOT COPY THIS SPEECH OR YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY 1,000,000 DOLLARS.