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This is a hot take, but please hear me out: Public speaking class is a public good, and the College of Arts and Sciences should continue to require it for all students.
I’ve taken and taught public speaking at IU. I’ve seen how the course broadens horizons as we consider controversies from multiple perspectives, how it forces us to push through anxiety and how it trains us in thinking critically about our assumptions. In short, it gives us practice in being humans of good character.
Unfortunately, though, future generations of IU students won't need to practice these habits in the course. The undergraduate bulletin doesn’t list COLL-P155 “Public Oral Communication,” as one of the requirements for students who enrolled starting in fall 2025, though it continues to be mandatory for students who started before then.
Helping students to “question critically, think logically, communicate clearly, act creatively, and live ethically” is part of the College’s mission, and public speaking class goes a long way toward forming these virtues. I say this as someone who’s been on both sides of COLL-P 155.
As an undergraduate, I took the course during my first semester to get it out of the way. Public speaking didn’t faze me, but I wouldn’t have chosen to take the course; I was there because it was a requirement for graduation.
Still, it was good for me. For my first real speech, I spoke about vaccine requirements and had to talk about the controversy from both sides. That was uncomfortable — I felt quite strongly in favor of vaccines, and it was hard to respectfully and fairly represent skeptics’ positions — but the experience gave me a greater understanding of people who would disagree with me.
Now, I’m one of the graduate student associate instructors for P155, and I’m more convinced than ever that public speaking class is necessary. Aside from the opportunity to learn to communicate more effectively, which many of my students mention as their goal for the course, P155 is laid out in such a way that it’s a semester-long exploration of what we think and why we think it. This matters because it allows us to either discard our assumptions after finding they’re not accurate or helpful, or to hold on to our original view in a more thoughtful manner.
I’ll use abortion as an example. In the second speech of the semester, you’d have to seek out examples of public discourse that showcase the array of beliefs on the issue and analyze why people take the positions they do. What do they value? What is the debate really about? Is it about bodily autonomy, or is it about when someone is considered a human? Working through this process not only fosters empathy and understanding of perspectives other than your own but also encourages critical thinking because you must get to the heart of the issue.
For the third speech, you think through what values you share with a skeptical audience and how you can appeal to those values so skeptics at least consider your position. You build your argument on common ground from the get-go, once again practicing consideration of others.
In the final speech, you analyze the way our culture talks about a controversial issue. You show how the sayings and symbols that surround the debate are unhelpful and propose a better way of thinking about the issue, which in turn will lead to action. This is an excellent example of the kind of analytical thinking that will help in the workplace and the wider world.
Throughout Public Oral Communication, we practice empathy and critical thinking, and this develops our character so we can question critically, think logically, communicate clearly, act creatively and live ethically. We need more experience with this, so we still need public speaking class.
Sydney Weber (she/her) is a second-year master’s student in Second Language Studies. She also teaches COLL-P 155 “Public Oral Communication.”
