DECLAMATION

At the Bigelow School which I attended in the 1940’s we were required to address the class once a week in a period called declamation. People have reported they fear public speaking more than death itself. So you can imagine the fear as a pre teenager I had in getting up in front of my classmates and speaking. The only saving grace is that we could pick our own subject matter. Now as a young child my experience level was nonexistent so it was a struggle to think of subjects. Since my main escape from my humdrum life was the movies and Danny Kay was my Cinema idol I often used his movies as a subject for my declamation.

One movie I particularly enjoyed and so I decided to talk about it. It was the original Danny Kay movie “Secret Life of Walter Mitty”. It was recently remade with Ben Stiller. The plot was of a daydreamer whose life was also humdrum but he would have fantasies of being a hero. So why not use the same story line.

As I stood before the class my knees rattled and my voice faltered to the point my teacher would have to ask me “to speak up”. I rambled on about my fantasies as a fighter pilot and other comic heroes like Superman and Batman and cowboys shooting the bad guys, all nonsense of course. The important thing was not the content of our declamation but overcoming the fear of public speaking.

Now that I look back it may have been the most important of all the classes I took. Years later in my professional career I had to make many speeches in front of audiences that numbered in the hundreds. The lessons learned way back in my elementary classes at the Bigelow School gave me that confidence.