The other day a friend of mine sent me an article from my home town paper in Rapid City, SD, reporting that my once top-notch high school debate program has atrophied and faces the very real possibility of being cut:
It’s been a rough decade for the Stevens High School debate team.
They’ve had seven teachers in seven years, fewer and fewer students are participating, and half of the program could be on the chopping block for the 2009-10 school year. District administrators have been working on finding ways to cut five percent of the 2009-10 operating budget to counter a $2 million expected shortfall.[…]
Until now, Stevens students interested in debate could take it as a class during school hours and also compete on the debate team, which practiced and competed after school.
But students said they were recently told that their classes, beginning debate and advanced debate, could be cut. The cut would leave the students with only an after-school club.
Stevens High Debate was hands down, far and away, pound for pound, without ANY question the single most valuable activity of my entire formal education, which today includes college, military training, and law school. To this day, I STILL apply those lessons and discover new applications of those skills which has immeasurably improved my life.
Debate teaches you to research, to think on your feet, and to read between the lines. It teaches you to debate instead of argue, which involves persuasion – you’re trying to bring a third-party neutral over to your side. It taught me to write, to organize my thoughts quickly, and to take good, fast, and accurate notes.
Without debate, coming from a broken and abusive home, I would have struggled much more in high school to gain confidence, direction, and a proper intellectual foundation – not to mention a decent GPA. Without debate, I wouldn’t have earned my Navy ROTC scholarship. Without debate, I would have been a far less successful college student. Without debate, I wouldn’t have learned how to do the kind of real, in-depth research that forces you to actually understand an issue. Without debate, I would not have been as successful as a military officer. Without debate, I would not have gotten into a top-ten public law school. Without debate, I would not be a successful attorney.
What Stevens really ought to do is cut the worthless “Basic Speech” classes. When I was there, some kind of speech class was required, and you could take the regular speech class as an alternative to Beginning Debate. The problem was that students gave (at best) four or five 3 minute speeches in an entire semester, and performances which would embarrass a 1st Grader during Show-n-Tell could still get you a “C”. instead, everyone should take a semester of Beginning Debate. Every student will benefit from this excellent program, from the guys interested in the trades to the future Congressmen.
(My coach, forced to teach one of the regular speech classes, actually did this. The wailing and the gnashing of teeth was delicious to me. And it proved a) that it could be done, and b) that the vast majority of high school students can and will clear the bar no matter where you set it.)
Cutting debate is pathetic, shameful, and foolish. What angers me is not so much that the program is in extremis now, but that it was allowed to languish for so long by a short sighted administration(s) who allowed this valuable program to die by hiring unqualified, uninterested, and/or incompetent coaches (a trend that was already starting the year after I graduated). If the numbers are low, it’s because of a faculty that isn’t pushing kids with talent and potential to a more challenging program. What a shame.
If I still lived in Rapid City, I would volunteer to coach after school in a second. I hope some enterprising local starts a fundraising effort that won’t just get flushed down some toilet created by some overpaid and unnecessary administrator. I’d love to contribute.
