Lies the teacher told you
During my brief stint teaching high school, I assigned my students the task of preparing and delivering presentations. I remember telling them, repeatedly, that the skill required to make an effective presentation was something they would have to have to succeed in the business world. It’s the teacher’s pat answer to the constant question: Why do we have to do this?
“You’ll need it, someday.”
Since then, having spent a few years working in corporate America, and having sat through innumerable, seemingly interminable presentations, I think back to what I told the impressionable young minds in my classroom and have to confess that in my own direct experience I have yet to see any evidence supporting what I tried to convince them of.
Frankly, the people in charge around here seem to do quite well for themselves, in spite of themselves.
