It is a good thing to begin our course of higher studies with learning to express ourselves well. People do need to speak in their own person, to learn to be themselves, and to take positions as their own. A course of study that only considers grammar rules and spelling and model passages will not reach the goal that any education should aim at, namely, that the person himself should be transformed and finish his studies self-possessed in mind and opinions. The modern emphasis on self-expression and voice is based on a real need: speech is an act of someone, it is addressed to someone, and it is about something that matters to at least one of them; and to speak or write well requires that the speaker or writer has experience already speaking and writing and has something to say that he believes and want us to take seriously.
It is also true that a student who is afraid to speak needs something besides a scheme of arguments and the general knowledge of how words signify things. The confidence to speak is also part of the art of rhetoric, and one learns that as part of learning the art. Sincerity, too, is something students need to find, although primarily by themselves; sincerity, for many students, just comes with age and experience, once they begin to see that their studies and subjects and disciplines actually matter.
Some teachers and students have the attitude that we should first find a voice to express ourselves and worry about the foundations of language later, if at all. That can easily come from having been trained in correctness without anyone ever asking the student what he or she thinks, and without a place to inquire into anything in a genuine way. Where someone’s education has been like that, the concern is fair. An education in speech that never reaches something a student cares about, such as an argument, a story, or a speech or poem, has not yet taught what speech truly is or shown what language is meant for in its highest forms.
We do, therefore, need to learn to speak for ourselves, and it is not enough to write correctly in a mindless or disconnected way. What this does not prove is that we can somehow express ourselves before words, or that we can best find our own voice without studying grammar, logic, and rhetoric.