Is humour appropriate to convey a serious message when writing a speech? Not always but sometimes, it’s the perfect choice.
When Sir Ken Robinson, in a TED talk, asked the audience to imagine Shakespeare as a seven-year-old child, they laughed and more importantly, they listened. He effectively used humour to convey a serious message, that schools ‘kill’ creativity.
A highly contentious suggestion that when I last checked, attracted more than 70 million views.
“I never thought of it,” he said. “I mean, he [Shakespeare] was seven at some point. He was in somebody’s English class, wasn’t he? How annoying would that be? Must try harder.”
Then, he imagined Shakespeare being sent to bed, his father admonishing him, “Put the pencil down. And stop speaking like that. It’s confusing everybody.”
His topic became increasingly serious but almost felt light-hearted as the audience was swept along using humour.
He criticised a global education system that placed subjects, deemed most useful for work, at the top of the pyramid and creative subjects, such as music and dance, lower down the scale.
And yet, degrees “aren’t worth anything,” he said, meaning they no longer guarantee the graduate a job. The next employer might, for example, want an MA or a PhD candidate for the role advertised.
“The whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance,” he said. “And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatised. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way.”
Why did the audience keep listening? I believe laughter carried them along like when he told the story of three boys playing the role of the wise men in a Nativity play.
“The first boy said, ‘I bring you gold’. The second boy said ‘I bring you myrrh’ and the third boy said ‘Frank sent this.’”
The tale was told to demonstrate that children have a go and are prepared to be wrong despite what, he called, an academic aversion to mistakes that was contributing to educating “people out of their creative capacities”.
“We don’t grow into creativity,” he said, “we grow out of it.” .
What do you think? Without the humour, would 70 million people have viewed this speech?
If you are writing a speech and would like some help with its structure, word choice, and more, you can contact the JMP Writing Coach for advice or email dawn@jmpwritingcoach.com
