This was grade 7 or 8 for me, I can't remember. And yep, I was like: "Duh, I'm like 13, I'm not going to touch drugs". But I remember not really believing the stuff these guys were peddling.
Then in grade 9 or 10, in high school, we had the Green Party stop by and lead an assembly where we could ask them questions. They told us that they would legalize marijuana in the country if ever elected (this was when they were very fringe and nobody took them seriously. these days they win like 1-2 seats an election). The whole cafeteria/auditorium erupted in applause. All of us wanted drugs, we wanted them legal, and we wanted them now. The teachers hated it, I think. I think initially they wanted to invite a political party the students wouldn't immediately dismiss, to get us interested in the political process. But instead what happened most kids got this out of it: "Those liars in grade 7 told us lies about drugs, but these guys.. these guys know what's up!"
I have never seen a more motivated auditorium of high school kids.
That's the kind of thing my own MLA would freak out over. Adriana LaGrange constantly squawks about public teachers having a "left-wing agenda" in schools (she's Catholic and has a pathological hatred of the public school system, so the premier felt she was the perfect person to install as Minister of Education). She and her post-secondary counterpart both feel that public schools are immoral and teach "radicalized ideology". Having a speaker from a political party come in and say they planned to legalize drugs would have given these two fits of apoplexy.
I don't remember any kind of motivational speakers in junior high. In high school, things got a bit political, though. In retrospect, I should have realized that my home room teacher was using us to further his aim to get noticed in advance of his planned post-teaching career of going into politics.
What happened was: Back in the Dark Ages of 1979, I was in Grade 12, and my home room teacher was a man named Bob Mills. Bob Mills taught biology, and did it in a very weird way ("when you eat, there's a little man in your esophagus who calls down to the little man in your stomach, 'The proteins are coming, the proteins are coming!' and the little man in your stomach tells the digestive juices to get ready because 'the proteins are coming, the proteins are coming!' and the digestive juices do their job, and..."). You should have seen the flabbergasted expression on the face of the student teacher we had at the time when he heard all this... turns out that Mills was much better at environmental science than human biology.
Anyway, in 1979, the local public school board decided that our high school - which was on the trimester system - would switch the following year to the semester system - two terms instead of three. Since the students were all accustomed to trimesters, there was quite a bit of grumbling about it. My teacher decided to
motivate us to political action in an effort to push the school board into reversing its decision.
There was a political meeting at the school for students and parents, and then the cow pies hit the air circulation... the son of the school board chairman happened to be in a couple of my classes. He and his mother were on opposite sides of this. This son also happened to be the president of the student council.
Long story short, there was a day of protest, in which about 90% of the students (me included) walked out of classes, attended a rally in the gym, and then walked over to the school board office and picketed it.
It ultimately didn't help, of course. The school went on the semester system the following year. Things got bad for the chairman's son, who temporarily moved out and stayed with a friend. And my home room teacher just loved it, that he'd had a hand in motivating that many students to support a political issue that he'd helped to stir up.
As for me, personally... it was an experience that had consequences I wouldn't have expected. For one thing, I got on TV (something I was unaware of as I wasn't facing the camera, but my grandmother was watching the news; they even sent a team from Edmonton to cover it, and she recognized my winter coat... we did this in December).
For another thing... I've mentioned getting a job in the '90s as a federal Deputy Returning Officer, and that the woman interviewing me worked for the same party that Mills had run for and was the incumbent. The woman asked - illegally - if I supported the Canadian Alliance, then put on a mock "oops, I shouldn't have said that... but since it just slipped out....?" and I knew that if the answer was 'no' she would find some pretext not to hire me even though I already had DRO experience at another government level. So I said, truthfully, that I had known Mills for many years as he had been my Grade 12 biology teacher (no mention that he hadn't been a very good one). She beamed, and took that as "of COURSE I support whatever political party my old teacher runs for!" and hired me.
So. Teaching so bad that I still remember one of the lessons word-for word over 40 years later, political rallies using teenage kids as practice material, and 14 years later it led to getting a job with Elections Canada.
Oh, and the fallout at the end of the 1979-80 school year (the year I graduated high school)? The chairman of the school board was the one handing out our diplomas. We didn't like her much, and a friend whispered to me that we should refuse to take it from her, just from the principal. I told her it was all over and done, and not to make a scene, just fake smile at her and move on.
The valedictorian made a serious speech, but the class historian did make reference to the Day of Protest. She said that at 90%, it had been the best-attended school event, ever, and "we should do it every year."
/anecdote
As for other motivational speakers... in my experience, most of them want your money. Somehow. There are a few exceptions, of course. I doubt someone like Malala would give a speech in an attempt to flog a book. Greta Thunberg has turned down the monetary awards she's been given.
But the motivational speaker in my life that I listen to every day is Maddy. When she speaks, I am motivated to either feed her or cuddle her (she sometimes panics if she's not sure where I am, and starts meowing quite loudly).
we did have two speakers at our school, one being a literal holocaust victim. now that was a talk. motivated me to haze nazis ..even more.
Hm. Reminds me of the time when my Grade 8 social studies teacher invited someone to speak to us about apartheid. The speaker was a young man who had lived in South Africa and later came to Canada. It was an eye-opener, as none of us could fathom not being able to speak to someone, let alone be friendly with them, based on the color of our skin.
