The college newspaper on my coffee table starts with the headline “VP’s trade insults,” backed by photographs of twisted faces, pointed fingers, and intense eyebrows. Tonight is the night before a high school debate tournament. My students are talking to their bedroom walls, addressing the nuances of nuclear power, poring over binders of academic reading, and collecting their multi-color pens.
My one instruction:
“Please don’t imitate what you saw on TV this week,”
The crushing reality of that hit me as hard as it hit the front page. I cannot look to the political debates for any kind of example or aspiration to give to my students. I cannot point to the contenders for leadership in my country and say “learn from them!”
We are one tournament in to the season, and the subsequent Monday we always hold a discussion about what they learned. I’d like to share what they shared with me. My students have learned that interrupting another individual lowers your chances of success. After one Saturday of experimenting, it has become apparent that mutual respect, even with an opponent, is critical to getting anything communicated to the judge. By their own experience, they have discovered that making up facts causes them to lose debate rounds.
It is with great dismay that a friend of mine put on the vice-presidential debate Tuesday night. Most of my friends know, unless you want a loud and shouting debate coach in your living room it is not wise to show her a political debate. I come with a warning label, I plaster it on myself with generous layers of reminders. The truth is not that I get angry, not that I can’t handle it, but that it breaks my heart.
I am overcome with disappointment to know that of the two men cutting each other off on screen, one had high school speech experience, but neither had high school debate experience. It showed. Don’t get me wrong, debate coaches disagree about as much as you would expect that we do, but we collectively cringed as Facebook reacted and the word debate was used. I am left to wonder how different the face of politics would be if these conversations were run the way we teach our students.
To be a debate student you cannot allow your fear of taking a stand determine your discourse. In our students, cutting someone off is a signal of fear. If you are so afraid of their statement that you wish to silence them, it means you’re not prepared enough to speak. If you can show me any moment in the vice presidential debate where a thought was fully finished I will be astounded.
And yet, in the Jamba Juice line two weeks, a philosophy major trying to sound educated looked me in the eye and told me that he thought high school speech and debate programs were a waste of time and should be disbanded.
“Oh that’s funny you say that, I actually coach one.”
Needless to say, he does not have my number.
However, the terrifying truth is that schools around the country are debating whether or not high school debate programs should be allowed to continue, whether we should be funded. My humble plea is that if you ever wonder whether or not high school debate teams are a needed staple in schools, please watch another political debate.
