A symposium speech is a talk given by someone that involves the audience participating in discussions and making their own speeches or presentations. Symposiums are often held by universities, colleges, government organizations and private, public and nonprofit groups. The topics for a symposium speech are as varied as your imagination.
Speech on the Original Symposium Speech
The first symposium speech in history was from Plato. He spoke about love and then the seven audience participants spoke about the topic. They spoke of the god Eros and how he can help men gain honor. They also discussed the good and bad sides of love and sexual desire, how each person has two sides, and the relationship between love, beauty and desire.
A symposium on education can cover a wide number of topics. You could discuss the pros and cons of public versus private schools, people's views on religious schools, the skyrocketing popularity of online schools, technology in the classroom, school uniforms, prayers in schools or drug testing in schools. If you are looking for ideas on the teaching aspect of education, your symposium speech could cover classroom sizes, the education of new teachers, a mandatory retirement age for teachers and the challenges of teaching special needs children.
Changes in medicine are coming at such a rapid rate that you could hold a symposium with a medical theme every day and never run out of new things to talk about. Potential speech topics include organ donation and organ allocation, advancement in transplants, the progress of an AIDS cure, sexually transmitted infections, fertility advancements in older women, the obesity epidemic and optical surgical procedures.
A symposium with a political theme could get the participant's blood pressure boiling while being highly successful. Some topics you could speak about include reducing the voting age to 16, additional taxes on junk food or fuel and health care issues. For issues dealing directly with the presidency, you could discuss if presidents should be allowed to serve more than two terms, whether people not born in the U.S. should be able to serve as president and the accountability of the presidency.
Symposiums dealing with aspects of the law can be eye-opening. Potential topics for discussion are the double jeopardy law, DNA evidence and the legalization of marijuana. Legal issues with social implication such as gay marriages, polygamy and the age of consent are also potential topics. Gun control, illegality of euthanasia and the First Amendment also offer the opportunity for discussion.