A Cursory History of “CXC” at Denison

In 1897 Denison offered a common curriculum for each of the basic degrees of bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and in the separate colleges.  Speaking, writing and languages were the core of all the programs. All freshmen in the Granville College B.A. took Latin, Greek, Mathematics and Rhetoric in their first term.  Examinations over the entire college curriculum were conducted in oral and written form.  In the last term of their senior year, B.A. students took Ethics, Economics, Rhetoric--orations, and a language elective.  “Rhetoric” as a required course for almost every term in the four year sequence alternated between composition and oratory, and this alternation occurred either within a course or between semesters.  The goal of the study of “rhetoric” in the 1898-99 catalogue is described as follows:  “The student is encouraged to read much, to think for himself, and, in the most effective style, to express the results of his thinking.”

Denison’s regard for orality at the center of college learning was common at this time period.  Michael Sproule describes Harvard in the 1930s:  “At Harvard, the president himself was charged with the delivering the weekly lectures in rhetoric. . . [S]tudents typically were required to participate several times a year in the weekly public program of forensic disputations or declamations of memorized speeches. . . Examinations typically were not written; instead, students were tested by a method of recitation whereby they defended a position against questions.”  The speaker in a rhetorical education was regarded as “a deliberative proponent in a welter of competing social positions. . . . Oratory’s worldview was that of making real a plausible social knowledge for the purpose of building coalitions of belief that might lead to action.”*

The regard for “rhetoric” as both oral and written expression began to disappear by the end of the 19th century.  Under the growing influence of industrialization, communication came to be viewed more as the technical transfer of information.  In order to make room for the extraordinary increase in scientific knowledge, and in combination with the establishment of separate departments of disciplinary studies, oratory was made into an elective. 

  At Denison, the turn of the century brought changes that included the consolidation of the men’s and women’s colleges.  The elective system was expanded and majors were added.  Interestingly, the study of “rhetoric” split along gendered lines.  In the 1903-04 school year, for instance, seniors were required “to appear in public exhibitions during the Winter Term, the gentlemen with orations and the ladies with essays.” 

After the consolidation of the colleges there was still considerable intimacy and overlap between the study of written and oral expression.  English Lit students in 1900-1901 could take “Rhetoric—Argumentative and Persuasive Essays and Orations,” or “Oratory—British and American” as electives, although these subjects seem to have been undertaken as literary studies  rather than oral interpretation.  A new major was started up in 1901 called “Elocution and Oratory.”  The stated “purpose” of this department was “to cultivate in the individual all the best of his personality, and to develop poise, easy carriage, and position.”  It still retained a literary emphasis, including in its curriculum courses for “literary analysis and declamation” and “the writing and delivery of original orations.”  A student could elect to take Argumentation and Debate in the 1904 “Oratory and Elocution” program, and this course included “ex tempore speaking, principles of debate, preparation of briefs, arrangement of argument, team work and rebuttal.”  In 1904 “The Denison Oratorical Association” was formed, and it had more or less the status of a club.

In 1919 a program in journalism was begun:  “The journalism room is equipped with desks and typewriters, and receives the most important daily papers.”  In addition, courses were offered in a department called “Public Speaking.”  The department description read:  “This department offers training in expression, by finding and applying principles for developing the voice, mind, and body in reading and speaking.  The work is in no sense a mere coaching for occasion, but a personal, cultural training which aims at helping the student gain command of his own creative powers.”   

A diminished role for public speaking accompanied the movement of the overall curriculum toward specializations in the mid twentieth century.  What was once the entire curriculum (essentially the trivium and quadrivium) became at first “group requirements” (to 1947), then a “core” program (1948-9), and then a “general education”  (1949-50).  The 1950 GE labels writing and oral composition as “proficiencies”, while it places “Reflective Thinking” (i.e., logic) and “Mathematics”, under the rubric “Forms of Thinking.”  The nadir of respect for a humanist rhetoric develops after WW2, in stride with the rise of a technologized, and behaviorist study of propaganda and “mass communication.”  In the 1970 bulletin  public speaking is reduced to the “delivery” of “effective” communication, and “group discussion” is studied as a synthesis of “logical and psychological approaches to the study of group behavior.”  For purposes of comparison, recall the 1919 description of elocution as “a personal, cultural training which aims at helping the student gain command of his own creative powers”, or place these descriptions against the statement in the earliest available bulletin (1832) about the elevated place of writing and speaking:  “That the medium, and the only medium of acquiring a true knowledge of the mind and will of God, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and of communicating that mind and will to others, is human language.”

Implications

In its weaker moments, speech had moved from the practice of imitation (1903) to a science of gesture and articulation (1920), to a perceptive taxonomy of techniques (1940), to a behaviorist pseudo-science of transmission (1965).  But some things persisted in the study of public speaking at Denison until the post-WW2 era.  In almost every iteration it was regarded as a training of the whole person rather than simply a vocal skill.  The 1989 description: “The student is encouraged to read much, to think for himself, and, in the most effective style, to express the results of his thinking”; the 1901 description of the oratory major: “to cultivate in the individual all the best of his personality”; the 1919 program in public speaking as “in no sense a mere coaching for occasion, but a personal, cultural training which aims at helping the student gain command of his own creative powers”—all consciously avoid the narrow instrumentalist training that came to dominate the later mass education models.  An education in speech at Denison was the cultivation of the person both inwardly and outwardly.  In addition, there was no strict compartmentalization of thinking and speaking.  Education in speech was always simultaneously education in thought. 

Of course the stated goals of the earlier curricula were dominated by a conception of the individual that is somewhat alien to us today.  We want to think more about humans beings in relationship, and thus performance is as much about dialogue and deliberation as public address and debate.  We are more conscious of the discursive formations of organizational culture, and of the linguisticality of cultural difference.  We must also acknowledge that the history of the 20th century curriculum is a progressive marginalization of oral competency in education.  But the rise in importance of rhetoric in the last decades suggests that we have not lost the thread of Denison’s rich rhetorical tradition that locates speech at the root of a liberal education.  From this point on we want to reaffirm Denison’s historical commitment to speech as a study integral to the realization of our full humanity, and grow to understand the epistemic, social, cultural and ontological entailments of this recognition.

As we go ahead as a college with institutional assessment, it would certainly not hurt to have language in our mission documents explaining the commitment to oral competence beyond the brief statement in the General Education Program.  For reference purposes, the National Communication Association has a helpful extended <statement> on the role of communication courses in general education. 

Key Historical Documents

<Report> of the Working Group on the Oral Competency Requirement to Academic Affairs Council, April 24, 2006.

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1 This material drawn from Denison University course catalogues in the library archives.

2 This is a very old pedagogical difference:  “Whereas I consider eloquence to emerge out of true learning, you think it is attributable to a peculiar kind of talent and practice” (Cicero, De Oratore, ch. 2).

*Michael Sproule, Proganda & Society.  Cambridge UP, 1997, 27-8.