Visions of Educating Education

When it comes to Toastmasters, most people see it as a global organization with clubs all around the world that delivers a public speaking program.  When I look at Toastmasters I view it from its founders values - the founder being Ralph Smedley.

In Memory of Ralph Smedley (from Toastmasters)

What I immediately see in Smedley is a history as an innovative educator.  He cared about education and when Toastmasters grew in organizational size, he did not seek any high office that came with that expansion, instead he chose to keep on focusing on producing educational programs and his first desire was the betterment of the individual both as a leader and as a communicator.  Toastmasters was chartered with an educational mandate, and while worldwide growth has now created both a peer-to-peer system and a hierarchical system to support that based on private membership, the key for me is about the founders values.

Basic Training for Toastmasters - Ralph Smedley 

The initial growth of Toastmasters was through community clubs but in recent years the addition of corporate clubs has had a major impact in worldwide growth of membership, and today more corporations are creating specialist clubs restricted to their employee's because human resource departments have understood the tremendous value it provides in their professional development programs, as well as for leadership development.   Toastmasters has always been way more than simply a place one learned public speaking.

The advent of college toastmasters is a more recent development and I view it as the most important development of all, because this places toastmaster clubs where Ralph Smedley had his heart, as an educator and today having an organization that is purely based on an educational mandate finding it's new members in the ranks of students at colleges and universities offers tremendous possibilities. 

When I look at the first ever publication of the Toastmasters magazine which was published in April of 1933, the first story in that magazine is deeply rooted in education, a high school student contest which Ralph Smedley adjudicated.

Toastmasters First Issue of Toastmasters Magazine 1933

The growth of Toastmasters however followed on at the community level rather than through colleges or universities and Toastmasters set an age limit that a Toastmaster must be 18 years or older to join this organization.  While it has led programs for gavel programs at the high school level, it has not pursued a serious educational mandate through colleges or universities, albeit that clubs do exist in this sector.

Now that college toastmaster clubs are beginning to spring up over the last decade,  there is an opportunity to explore and develop further the educational relationship between Toastmasters and campus based clubs.  A 2015 article in Toastmasters Magazine featured a story about this focus as a development and details some of the initiatives in the educational arena.

Campus Based Clubs - Toastmasters Magazine Article from 2015

What is clear to me is that there are now three distinct types of clubs within Toastmasters :

1. The original Community Clubs

2. The rise of Corporate Clubs

3. The introduction of Campus Clubs

College Toastmasters holds an even bigger promise because the reality today in most campus settings is that Toastmasters does not have as much foothold as it actually warrants.  Organizations like Enactus which were created by corporate organizations in the food industry and in particular by companies like Walmart have embedded themselves in the culture of colleges through events such as the Enactus World Cup.  This has created a student organization of some 70,000 worldwide and created bragging rights through this competition. 

Enactus is still a product of the corporate space rather than the educational space, and this is the area where college toastmaster clubs have plenty of opportunity and scope to define themselves.  In order to define themselves, the link between Toastmasters founder and colleges needs to be more clear and strategic.  This is where I see the principle linkage to Ralph Smedley and all that he ever stood for and this then is about talking Ralph Smedley's educational vision into the 21st Century.

When Smedley was interested in education, Toastmasters like many other organizations at the time were a men-only institution.  In 1973 that all changed when clubs who had already secretly allowed women in as members but who reported their names as "male",  meant that a change had to be made.  The change also was important because this was in advance of Toastmasters 50th anniversary celebrations - and the change was the right thing to do.

Today the role of women in Toastmasters is critical, with women being a substantially important contribution to the well-being of thousands of Toastmasters clubs.   If the revolution of breaking down that barrier has now fully been realized, and Toastmasters has expanded its traditional community club development into corporations, the greatest revolution should be for Toastmasters to get back to its founders values, in the heart of educational institutions, where the educational mandate should be viewed as a great home-coming.

It is from this background where I now envision what college toastmasters can be and a future for making College Toastmasters club highly central in the ecosystem of learning and education.  Where Toastmaster clubs charter on a student basis,  (because they can also charter on a faculty basis), there many clubs are chartered on two symbiotic charters, a Toastmasters International charter, but also a Students Clubs Charter.  It is this charter which combined with understanding the values that inspired Ralph Smedley to create Toastmasters, which is the basis of a creating a new vision of College Toastmasters clubs in the 21st Century.

Such a vision is about a grassroots movement where we begin educating education about campus clubs and the potential emergent development of college toastmasters clubs that are not only sustainable (because at present maintaining a college club is a difficult practice) but also an education in leadership, communication and also a home-coming of the very founder values that led to Toastmasters creating a global reach of over 400,000 worldwide members, and this membership will increase even more with new campus clubs emerging.

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