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EDITORIAL.
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
A SEMI-MONTHLY PUBLICATION DEVOTED TO THE BEST INTERESTS OF
THE STUDENTS
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS.
EDITORS
PERLEE R. BENNETT, '86. . . . .
BUSINESS MANAGERS.
C. D. DEAN,'84. W. H. JOHNSON,'85.
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WANTED-BETTER ELOCUTION.
The Courier company, encouraged by the results of last year, has renewed its offer of four prizes for the best chapel rhetoricals. Two of these prizes will go to the Freshman and two to the Sophomore class. Ordinarily we are opposed to prizes, as being the most fruitful source of contention. But anything that will increase the interest in elocution is certainly a boon to the University.
Good speaking is a rare, though highly appreciated art. Even in our legislative halls, it is a possession of a select few. The good speaker has a passport to favor wherever he goes. Considering these facts, the elocutionary department should be the best supported in the University. Instead, however, of elocutionary work being supplied with the best facilities, we find it crippled to an extraordinary degree.
The instructor in elocation is now merely
an assistant in the department of English. He is required to train two hundred and fifty students for chapel, twice each year. He conducts two regular elocutionary classes, containing fifty pupils each. He prepares performers for the society contest in December, for three society entertainments in June, for the various prize contests, and for the class day and commencement day exhibitions. Work of this nature is most trying on the physical and mental energies of the instructor. And yet, in addition to all'this, he is called upon to teach other classes. Thorough work under such circumstances is an impossibility. Hercules might have found a thirteenth labor in conducting the elocutionary department in the University of Kansas.
What we need is an independent "Department of Elocution." Elocutionary drill should be inserted in the curriculum for every year, and should be made compulsory. The members of the higher classes should have partial charge of training beginners, thus relieving the professor and disciplining themselves. Off-hand debating should be made a regular exercise for advanced scholars. A department thus organized and conducted would double the value of work in every other department. The presenting of facts and arguments is of scarcely less importance than their acquirement. We do not want to make tragedians or dramatic readers, but we should make our students ready, accurate, and even eloquent, off-hand speakers.
Prof. Brownell is an instructor able to carry out these ideas. He is an excellent teacher of common sense or practical elocation—the kind needed in our institution. All the students who have received training at his hands are enthusiastic in his praise. Hampered as the department is, however neither he nor any one else can approach the thoroughness the work demands. Till