Fandom High School

"Welcome to your final exam, kids," Josh said with an easy smile as he sat behind his desk and drank his coffee. "Ten minutes each of an instructional speech to newcomers about life in Fandom."

He waved at the video camera. "These are being recorded and I'll be sending the best of them onto Principal Winchester, so...no pressure. It's been great teaching all of you. For those of you heading to college and real life next year, best of luck. Feel free to call me if you need a letter of recommendation or anything."

He pointed at the first student. "Get us started."

Today the students would find computers on each of their desks as they arrived. "Morning," Josh said, clinging to his coffee with more than his usual devotion. "Granted, public speaking is normally out in front of people, sometimes with cameras, but being a public figure extends to all aspects of communication. Today we're going to talk about a very dark, terrifying place: the comment section of a news article. I've learned--" the hard way because Josh was a little bit argumentative in all facets of his life, "not to engage with the crazy, or at least not to engage under your own name. Today you're going to learn your way around a flame war. Actual flames should not be involved, but I will be grading for grammar and punctuation because by God, someone has to."

Each screen opened up onto a news story about President Obama's work with Congress on the federal budget, and an initial comment:

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH OUR CHILDREN'S MONEY?! WHEN YOU SPREAD THE WHEALTH YOU SPRAD THE MISERY SHAME ON YOU THE US WILL NOT TOREATE A SOCIALIST STATE.

Josh rolled his eyes. "You can start how to spell 'wealth' and 'spread' and what socialism actually is...And when you're done teaching this guy a lesson, Gertrude Yorkes is our press secretary today."

Today's Danger Shop was full of the bright lights and cameras of a television news show.

"Hi there," Josh said, looking up from where a shop-generated makeup artist was putting foundation on his face. "You guys have gotten pretty good at talking in front of each other, so it's now time to up the stakes." He waved his hand around. "Welcome to television. You're going to get made up and stuffed into appropriate attire and then you'll be on Capitol Beat to talk about the issues of the day--specifically the squirrel news strike. Please try to come up with three coherent points to make and then try to to get a word in edgewise--the other moddable hosts can talk."

He glanced down at his notes. "Oh, and when we're done, our press secretary is Jace Wayland. Congratulations, kid."

"You've had two weeks to prepare a persuasvie speech," Josh said, "and being such dedicated students, I'm sure you worked on them while we were cruising around in Turkey."

No he didn't, but they were still due today. If they weren't ready, well...that's why they'd also been working on their extemporaneous skills.

"Five minutes on something you're passionate about! Try to make us care about it too." He pointed to a random student. "You start."

"And--drum roll please--our press secretary for the day is Kate Bishop."

"Good morning, class," Josh said, coming in with a box of various gadgets and then signaling for Natalie and Lex if they were there to assist him with two more boxes. "If you've ever been up past your bedtimes, and you're teenagers living relatively unsupervised in a dorm, so of course you have, you've seen various products being shilled on television, aimed at the demographic apparently too stupid to boil water without help."

He waved at the boxes. "I've procured--" made Donna buy, "--a number of these products that will be handed out to you. You'll have ten minutes to examine whatever miraculous marvel you receive and then to come up with a three minute persuasive speech to tell the others in the class how it works and why they can't possibly live without one."

He also held up a bag of buzzers. "To make this more fun, the moment you've lost the audience's attention--even if it's not been three minutes--they will buzz you to sit down. Note how I don't give these out until I'm already done talking. That's called being smart, kids. You have to give back the telemarketing crap at the end of class but the buzzers are yours to keep."

The rest of the faculty will love him for that.

"Oh and...." he ran his finger down the class sheet, "Petra West, come on down. You're our next press secretary."

"Hey there," Josh said, putting down his coffee to greet the class as they sat down. "We've covered informative speeches. Political speeches--and we'll get to your speeches on political speeches in a minute--cover a weird space between informative speeches and persuasive speeches, and if you're smarter than an eggplant, you can probably guess what our next section is. I'll write it down anyway."

He scrawled "PERSUASIVE SPEECH" on the whiteboard. "There are three ways to persuade people, using ethos: credibility, image, public reputation, perceived expertise; logos: using words and concepts to make your point; and pathos, the manipulation of emotions, feelings, and gut reactions.

"All right," Josh continued. "To use ethos, you must already be an expert in your field in the eyes of your audience. I could lecture credibly on Democratic politics, the executive branch, the legislative branch, and any number of domestic hot button issues. If I tried to convince you about anything related to nuclear physics, you'd laugh me out of the room. Basically ethos is summarized as 'I'm whoever, and I endorse this message', and trusting that who you are is enough to persuade people of how right you are. No one's gonna buy cereal on my say-so, but they might take a second look at a primary candidate I endorse."

He leaned back against his desk. "Logos is using--not shocking--logic to present your arguments. 'I believe this, here are three reasons why you should too.' It's the hardest way to persuade people, but it's also the most permanent. You're teaching people using facts, or at least your facts, since chances are the other side has facts too. Their facts just aren't as good as your facts, and if they are, what the hell are you doing arguing the other side anyway?"

He smiled. "Finally, there's pathos, or using emotions. Scare tactics go here, as do guilt trips. Most of the Republican platform for the last fifteen years has been based entirely in pathos because the Democrats have them on the ropes when it comes to, you know, facts."

He clasped his hands together. "Right then. Next week you're going to have an interactive persuasive speech exercise, and that's all I'm telling you. For now, let's here your speeches about other people's speeches. Oh, and we have two press secretaries today: Jessica Drew and--" he pointed at Maddie, "Skippy there. You're up."

"Good morning," Josh said, sipping from his nice, hot cup of coffee (thank you, Donna Natalie!) as he leaned against his desk at the front of the classroom. "Today we'll get started learning about the basic categories of speeches. I don't mean short or long, or interesting and stupefying, those though certainly are ways to remember speeches. There are four general groupings, with some overlap between categories: informative, persuasive, demonstrative, and special occasion. You can't be very persuasive if you you're not also demonstrating your grasp of information."

He began walking between the aisles as he talked. "An informative speech is basically a lecture. Every class you attend here, I hope, is intended to teach you something."

Or provide entertainment for the teacher, but Josh hadn't seen Jaye again yet.

"An informative speech is different from a how-to speech or a persuasive speech because it is only intended to provide information. You leave it up to your audience to decide for themselves what to do with the information; you're not trying to persuade them to think like you do, nor are you specifically teaching them how to do something. You're only concerned with providing information for your audience on a particular topic.

"Informative speeches are useful as an introduction to some topic that is unfamiliar to your audience, which is why audience research pays off. You wouldn't want to lecture on how a bill becomes a law to members of Congress."

Josh paused. "Well, to their staffs, at least. Some of the members of Congress are amazingly stupid and might not know. Anyway, one of the most important things to include in an informative speech is, of course, information. You will want to do research on facts and statistics, to make that your speech has something interesting to give the audience. Those facts and statistics will probably be best communicated with visual aids, such as charts, graphs, illustrations, and so forth, because providing information both aurally and visually means you have a better chance of people remembering it, but for the love of God, don't subject us all to death by Powerpoint, the Pentagon's favorite legal torture method."

Josh continued to lecture about informative speeches, showing the students how to get their audience involved through asking questions, and providing examples, and warning them about avoiding the pitfalls of seeming like a giant know-it-all by providing too much information.

"President Bartlet enjoyed trivia," he said, "and during debate prep for re-election he would get down into the weeds of specific legislative initiatives that the average voter, frankly, had never heard of. Your goal is to provide information without making your audience feel stupid for not knowing it to begin with or to be so specific their eyes glaze over. So next week, come in with one visual aid and a speech prepared about the last twenty years of history in your home dimension. Your speech should be at least ten minutes long."

"Today, though, we're going to do some audience research through extemporaneous speeches. No need to thank me," he added, walking around with a jar full of pieces of paper. "You each get a topic, then a full minute to think of what you're going to say. You only have to talk for three minutes." He held up a stop watch. "I'll be timing you."

He smiled. "And after that, our press secretary for the day is--" he ran his finger down the attendance sheet, "--Peter Wiggin. Congratulations. And Mr. Luthor, you impressed me so much that you can be my second assistant along with the lovely...." she wouldn't bring him coffee unless he remembered her name, "...Natalie."