The Health of the Public Forum
As you become skilled in public speaking, you become a more effective participant
in the public forum. You are able to analyze important issues of public concern, to
articulate your ideas and to relate them to others, to listen carefully and critically to
other points of view, to weigh and evaluate arguments and evidence, and to bring
your best judgment to issues that have no easy or automatic answer. As you exercise
these skills, you strengthen the ties that unite participants in the public forum into a
community or society. This is a benefit above and beyond the gains in personal selfesteem
and performance on the job that come
with competence in communication.
Traditionally, the public forum has been
associated with political questions. But the
boundary between public and private is
always
shifting, and any subject might easily
find its way into the public forum. Styles
in popular music, for example, become
more than just private or individual choices
in response to claims that the noise level is
harmful to health or that the content leads
children to violence. Personal choices of deodorants
or clothing are no longer just private
matters when they are alleged to cause
destruction of the ozone layer or exploitation
of Third-World labor markets. And speculating
in the stock market becomes a public
matter when one’s investment choices