ERIC Number: ED186950
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1980-Apr
Pages: 7
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
In Defense of Performance.
Sillars, Malcolm O.
The primary goal of speech communication teachers should be to help students learn to analyze and communicate information in interpersonal, group, and public situations--a goal that can be reached only through a mixture of lecture, lecture/discussion, and performance approaches. Although administrators are currently proposing higher student/teacher ratios in response to educational budgetary problems, the exclusive use of the lecture method of teaching fails to help students develop the skills of finding, analyzing, and communicating information. The continuously changing nature of knowledge, the current knowledge explosion in many fields, and the enormous ongoing changes in mass media communications all suggest that the educated person should not merely store knowledge but should learn how to find and use knowledge. Performance-based approaches to speech communication education provide an understanding of the real problems of analyzing and communicating aesthetic knowledge and are thus valuable and necessary. To combat the academic forces that call for higher student/teacher ratios, speech communication teachers must define their programs in terms of benefits to students and must stand their ground in defense of performance. (GT)
Descriptors: Change, Communication Skills, Educational Objectives, Financial Problems, Higher Education, Information Seeking, Lecture Method, Oral Interpretation, Retrenchment, Secondary Education, Speech Communication, Speech Curriculum, Student Participation, Student Teacher Ratio, Teaching Methods, Theater Arts
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers; Opinion Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Speech Communication Association (Birmingham, AL, April 8-11, 1980).