EDITORIAL - Teach children the art of public speaking

The St John Toastmasters Club recently held its annual Schools’ Speech and Table Topics Contests, where Renaco Haynes of St Margaret’s Primary School was crowned champion. At the event, guest speakers highlighted the importance of developing youngsters’ public speaking skills – a key to improving their communication, social life and ability to become great leaders.

However, the benefits gained from clubs like the Toastmasters involve so much more, for instance, improving self-confidence, and extends even further to add to the quality of democracy demonstrated within a society.

Member of Parliament for St John, Mara Thompson spoke on the social benefits when she commended the club on its efforts, warning against technology like smartphones and the accompanying social media. She stressed the importance of speaking, saying: “How you speak is how you write” and noted that children are now “buried in these devices” instead of communicating the old-fashioned way. She therefore encouraged children to spend less time on their mobile devices and more time interacting.

President of the St John Toastmasters Club, Karen Sealy-Cox added to this by pointing out that public speaking can help individuals to perform functions, and help in their everyday lives as they learned the skill.

All this, of course, is accurate. There is no doubt that technology does present a threat to verbal communication since the medium tends to rely on visual and recorded auditory communication being relayed to one person at a time (the owner of the technology). Also, leaders in society and management in companies are usually outspoken people whose ability to speak in public and to small groups can motivate citizens or employees, decimate opponents, and guide the masses on a journey to development and/or success. It is clear then that youngsters who learn this skill from an early age have a better likelihood of doing well and becoming successful.

However, most children – especially those in the Caribbean and Latin America – are encouraged to be seen and not heard. Being vocal often results in adults warning to “stay out of big people business” and a stern admonishment to “sit down and keep quiet”. To combat this mentality will require an information campaign to change the perception of some parents. It would also require a programme to implement mandatory public speaking in primary schools classes for every child, or a boost in the number of these clubs across the island. With these two initiatives, there should be a visible change in the confidence level of children and a possible improvement in other areas like deportment, concentration and comprehension for instance.

These types of changes in youngsters will translate into a more confident, well-rounded and informed persons, who are eager to share their opinion and not afraid to voice differences. This type of citizen can only improve the level of democratic participation in a country and would lead to more debates, better representation and a top-class government.

In the final analysis, there are many advantages and no downsides to encouraging more children to learn public speaking. It should be advocated across the board. Furthermore, teenagers at secondary schools and workers in most companies – especially front-line staff – should all develop this skill. Barbados can only stand to benefit.