High School Debate, Part 2

 

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I coached high school debate for several years during my teaching career. I taught in a school where the football team was much better known than the debate team. It wasn’t always more successful, but it was much better known and loved. Most of the students had little idea what our team did on those weekends we were gone to tournaments. One day one of my debaters said she was stopped on her way to practice by a friend, who asked, “What do you do in debate, just pick a topic and fuss about it?” Despite the fact that many students have little understanding about the activity, debate is one of the most challenging extra-curricular events a school can provide. 

 

Since the main characters in my upcoming novel are debaters, I thought it would be helpful to my readers to provide a little information in this post about high school debate. I am providing links to a few videos that might give you an idea of what it’s like to debate in high school. The first link is to a video on the National Speech and Debate Association website entitled “Feel the Energy at Nationals.” Here is the link: https://www.speechanddebate.org/nationals/. It reminded me of the first time I took my students to a debate tournament. Never having gone to a tournament before, I was amazed by the energy in the high school cafeteria as several hundred students were entering with their vast array of what looked like luggage, filled with evidence ready to be used to build their arguments. 

 

Students debate in various formats, but at the time I was coaching, my students usually used what is called policy debate. I couldn’t find any recordings of policy debate, but I found two interesting championship debates in the Lincoln Douglas format for 2021 and 2020. They were sponsored by a law firm in Cleveland () for schools in that area and they are both topics of current interest.  The most recent one for 2021 is concerning Universal Childcare: https://youtu.be/0lcF40tX-Y8.  The second one is from Cleveland also and it is on the topic of Predictive Policing:  https://youtu.be/brBaC_7GfK8. If you are one of those people who have not heard high school students debate, you might want to check one or both these videos out. I think you will be impressed with these students, both with their skill and with the “civility” with which they conduct their arguments. Maybe we need to send them to Washington!