‘So… like… that’s pretty cool…'

Several variations of the saying above were spoken in twentieth century as people described various items about their family tree. The lack of public speaking skills in a honors class at the high school level is surprisingly high. Multiple individuals’ hands shook violently as they read from their note cards. A good number of the speakers did not engage their audience resulting with myself along with a quantity of my classmates falling asleep.

Public speaking is the number one fear in America. I’d like to ask; why? What is it about talking in front of a group of people that makes it different from talking with your friends or family?

An experience like that combined with doing a load of research on speech and debate for a news article, I’ve come to the conclusion that speech and debate needs to become a required credit to graduate. Speech and debate not only helps people become familiar with talking in public, but also helps you become more aquatinted with yourself as a speaker.

Thanks for reading,

Joel Samson Berntsen (Kings of Leon-Revelry)