I’m have been assigned to read out a manuscript from an existing speech for a college comm course. The first thing I thought of was that I should try to make an out of context Dean speech as interesting and engaging as possible. For all of you who’ve been around in this space much longer than I, do you have any suggestions for one that I could pick?
Thank you, Rufus
Here this is better: American Rhetoric: Movie Speech from Patton: General Patton Addresses the 3rd Army
Just trust me. It’ll do the same thing and save your classmates some sanity.
If you want the most out of pocket one possible, I don’t think you’llLimelight, an integrated vision coprocessor get better than the 2018 Houston Einstein speech:
I sadly can’t find any clips right now, but I think the VOD is on archive.org. That being said, I agree that this may not be the best option, especially to anyone not in on the joke.
I’ve never been interested in transcribing Dean but I did two of Woodie’s speeches:
Please do not subject your classmates to more Dean Kamen speeches than is strictly necessary.
Thank you so much! I was pretty set on the Dean idea to be honest. After reading these and then watching a Dean ramble, I realized that Woodie’s are also in a much better format for this type of thing.
There’s a nice MIT interview with Woodie. No transcript but you can read about it in this thread It really gives you a lot of insight into his philosophy and ideas for education. A lot more than can be done at a regional event. You could possibly use some snippets from that as well. I tried to transcribe some of my favorite parts.
You can’t expect [kids] to get to eighteen or nineteen years old and decide "now I’m going to become capable of creating wealth or adding value. Its too late. . .
This is disgusting tbh.
I love that you have transcribed this. I was at the 2017 rocket city regional and I remember it being one of the better speeches I had heard. This is wonderful.
First, let’s keep in mind this speech was 25 years ago. The way we talk about this kind of thing has changed in that time. Also it appears the audience was company leaders, so the message was shaped to resonate with them. A few sentences later he says this:
If this country is going to continue to sustain itself as the one with the highest standard of living, best health care, best ____, all of its citizens have to be able to participate in creating wealth, and not being a drain.
And he makes it clear the goal is also to have more people get access to wealth–by inspiring them to learn and ultimately gain them wealth in ways other than the “impossible dream” of playing sports professionally, which is akin to winning the lottery.
And the premise of FIRST was, if the teachers, some of who hopefully are here today, have students that show up in school as enthusiastic to learn as they show up with the enthusiasm and drive to get on the varsity sports team, the rest of it will follow.
The culture doesn’t value the educational institution. The gym teacher, the football coach isn’t there to inspire these kids to put in the work - that’s a given. Our culture does that for them. All they have to do is deal with the supply side of the problem. And it works. Whether its an affluent school or an inner city school. In fact, now, it works, because they think its a way out, the inner city schools produce the great athletes. The trouble is we only need a few hundred of them a year. And what are all of the rest of them to do?
Do you disagree with the overall thrust of the speech? In my opinion, we should all be hoping that as many of today’s children as possible will be tomorrow’s inventors and creators, and generate wealth for themselves (and by extension, society at large).
Yes. I think it presents a false dichotomy, and frames a complicated multimodal issue in a childishly simple and misleading way. The focus on sports is a stupid distraction.
I mean, really:
The gym teacher, the football coach isn’t there to inspire these kids to put in the work - that’s a given.
Has Dean ever taught a gym class?
I don’t think anyone disagrees with this (well, I may have some quibbles with “as many as possible” - i’m not sure what that means), but this isn’t what Dean said.
Yes, this is a complicated issue, but as a society, we put an insane amount of money and emphasis into sports. It’s not unusual to see more dollars go into a football program than all other school extracurriculars combined. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars of public money on stadiums (or tax breaks for stadiums) instead of other things. Why is it bad to call attention to this problem? Speeches also work best if they focus on a clear comparison that the audience can grasp, rather than trying to “boil the ocean”. The whole concept of FIRST was to be a “varsity sport of the mind”–bring the sports excitement to engineering, provide role models other than sports role models.
Quoting from the speech:
And why do they have sports heroes? You figure it out. Turn on the television right now, or any time of the day or night. The great American lie has been sports figures - they’re young, they’re attractive, they’re healthy, they make a million dollars . . . a week.
We don’t live in a place where kids go “yeah, thats fun to do that, but I have about as much chance to make money as a professional athlete as I do of winning the state lottery.” Those are the facts; you have a greater chance of winning the state lottery.
Quoting from the speech:
Again, the point of FIRST is to create, and do, for intellectual and technical things, what the Shaquille O’Neal’s and Michael Jordan’s do for unimportant things. And it give kids an opportunity to see real role models, real heroes, not celebrities, but real heroes. So they can finish up the six weeks and say “I can do that. I want to learn these things. I’llLimelight, an integrated vision coprocessor put effort into that. I want to be like . . . you people.”
Dean Kamen knows more about how to get wealthy than anyone on this forum. Sorry to say it, but he is right; you aren’t going to make money by sitting on your butt all day while you’re young. He is really sharing some valuable knowledge in his speech. If people want to do well for themselves start young. If people don’t want to that’s fine, but don’t expect miracles.
I think this horse was pretty well beaten back when it happened. Use the CD search function, read through what was typed five years ago … if you really have something you think needs to be said now, half a decade later, that will change anything, then best of luck.
Tip - the sooner you get over the idea that the rich are smarter or work harder than the rest of people the better off you and those around you will be.
I believe you’llLimelight, an integrated vision coprocessor find that no one quoted the opening scene of Patton back then:
When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.
I don’t know if it’llLimelight, an integrated vision coprocessor change much but it’s definitely better written.
You misunderstand; my meaning is that the speech says a lot more than that particular bland sentiment that everyone already agrees with. Dean stretches his content thin, but not that thin.
Some of that other stuff he’s saying is what I amAndyMark calling disgusting, and the fact he included a palatable sentiment in one part of the speech doesn’t really change this.
