When I was young, back in the previous millennium, the California school system was the best
in the world. And one of the things they did, which few schools seem to do anymore, was teach
their students to speak.
We memorized poems. We recited them. We read aloud. And the teachers actually critiqued us
on whether we could be understood.
Such a simple thing -- memorization, reading, and intelligibility of speech. But our society has
evolved to despise such things.
Raw memorization -- one of the few markers of intelligence which can be improved with
practice -- is now treated as cruelty to children instead of mind-stretching exercise.
When it comes to reading aloud or reciting, it would be shockingly wrong for a modern teacher
to criticize the way a student talks. That might lead to low self-esteem.
It's one of the oddities of our present age that we seem to think we preserve or build children's
self-esteem by praising them always and criticizing them never. But if a child is never told that
his speech is unintelligible, and is never shown examples of clear speech, how can he possibly
improve?
Let's take the sacrament prayer. It is usually recited by 16- and 17-year-old boys who are on the
cusp of going forth into the world (or the university). They have received most of their high
school education -- and few of them are able to recite the sacrament prayer clearly.
Listen this Sunday and, with rare exceptions, you'll hear what I mean. A lot of clauses begin
with "that." Many, most, or all of the "thats" will not be said at all, especially if they are
followed by the word "they." Instead, the last "t" of "that" gets attached to the front of "they."
Say this sentence: "Do it though." Say it quickly. Hear how "it" almost disappears; we only
know it's there because of the way it forces a tiny hesitation at the beginning of "though" that
gives it a bit more force. That's all that's left of many of the "thats" in our sacrament prayers.
But let's not just pick on the priests. Listen to everyone giving a talk or bearing testimony that
ends with "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen." Hear how many of them rush the phrase, so that
what you actually hear is "innemma jeezkrice tay men."
Most of us have lost all concept of the first responsibility of a speaker: to be understood, which
means to be loud enough to be heard, to make all the sounds clear enough for all the individual
words to be discerned, and to speak slowly enough for people to have time to process what they
say.
Speaking clearly sounds pretentious to teenagers precisely because nobody has ever commanded
them to do so. If teachers required clarity of speech, then everybody would have to do it, and no
one would be teased. But absent that command, the only people who dare to speak clearly are
the ones who have already marked themselves for social death by being either intellectual or
theatrical.
Years ago, I was invited by the Young Men's president to give the priests and teachers a lesson
in how to recite the sacrament prayers correctly. It was a simple process. I laid out some
general principles:
1. It's a large room with bad acoustics and a mediocre sound system. Between reverberation,
noisy children, and the fuzz of the amps and speakers, your words are going to be turned to mud
-- especially for older people whose ears don't distinguish sound all that well (which includes
most people over forty).
2. Fortunately, it's not a race. The words you are saying are the reason they came to church.
You can slow down and take all the time in the world, and the congregation will not get
impatient -- they will actually listen more eagerly when they can hear what you're saying.
3. If you're going slowly, you won't make any reading mistakes, which will save you the
embarrassment of do-overs.
Then I had them each read the prayer aloud, from the scriptures, without a mike. Each time they
slurred a word I stopped them. "Slow down, try it again." With problem phrases, I had them
read word by word.
When they got it right, however -- slow, clear, loud -- they could all hear the difference. They
realized that even though they felt like they were reading excruciatingly slowly, it didn't sound
slow when they listened to the other priests. It merely sounded clear -- and more like a prayer.
Then I had them read again, one at a time, from the sacrament table, using the chapel sound
system. They could all hear how important it was to slow down even more -- because of how
the sound system interfered with the clarity of speech.
The bishop and YM president kept reminding them to use what they had learned, so they didn't
forget or fall back into bad habits. In fact, we created a whole new culture of clarity among the
Young Men.
As new priests join the quorum, they automatically adopt the clear speech of the old-timers. All
the priests I actually taught in that first session are long gone; none of the current batch were
even deacons then. But the prayers are still absolutely clear.
It gets better: When they give talks from the pulpit, they speak slowly and clearly. They don't
race through their talks to get them over with. They're not ashamed to speak well. And the girls
in the ward have learned to speak clearly, too.
Part of that is because most of our Young Men and Young Women have received speech training
as they took part in our plays. We don't use mikes, yet every word of our actors is heard and
understood by the audience in every corner of the cultural hall. Those skills transfer to the
pulpit.
So in our ward, at least, it's the adults who need to learn from the youth -- to slow down,
articulate all the sounds and syllables in every word, and make sure that when they speak, their
hearers actually know what they said.
Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender's Game, Ender's
Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and
younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools.
Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary
fantasy (Magic Street,Enchantment,Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables,Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker
(beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and
scripts.
Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and
Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s.
Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs
plays. He also teaches writing and literature at Southern Virginia University.
Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife,
Kristine Allen Card, and their youngest child, Zina Margaret.