At 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning, most people are sound asleep. For the debate team, the early hours merely mark the beginning of a long day. Almost every Saturday morning the debate team comes to Legacy to bus over to competitions all over the place. Although an entire day of arguing might not sound appealing to most, it’s what we live for. It takes dedication, critical thinking, and a whole lot of faking it. The argumentation and competition that takes part during the day gets our blood pumping.
But something else gets our blood pumping, over the summer MISD changed the policy pertaining to credits needed to graduate. Previously, Intro to Debate counted as a speech credit but now counts only as an elective. Now, Professional Communications will be only way to receive the necessary speech credit. Students are no longer incentivized to take alternative speech classes like Intro To Debate. And Thusly, the program has already begun to suffer.
Last year, when Intro To Debate counted as a speech credit, the debate program received about fifteen students and almost half of them are still in the program. This year, however, the debate team has only six new students enrolled.
This sort of contrast only spells the beginning of the end. With almost all of the leadership graduating this year the debate program is in serious trouble.
It doesn’t help there’s already a stigma against Debate: the activity that’s seen as something boring for dweebs and nerds. People don’t take time to learn how debate works, how incredibly beneficial debate can be, or what actually happens. When people are exposed to Debate gradually, such as through the Intro To Debate class, more people learn what Debate really is and it leads to more people joining the club.
These intellectual discussions are another thing that keep students out. Debate is seen as something only for smart people. A large majority of people fail to realize that, like football or baseball, debate takes practice. Coming into high school I already knew that I wanted to join debate. It was something I had been waiting for since I was younger. I didn’t even take the Intro to Debate class, I just went to meetings after school and learned about the way debate works painfully slow. I went to every tournament the club offered, once or twice a month. I didn’t win a single round of debate for a solid 6 months. These losses, at the time, felt so incredibly discouraging. Little did I realize I was getting better and learning so much about the world, politics, philosophy and more.
There is no person who can’t learn how to debate. It just takes some time, patience and dedication. When I came into high school, I had no idea who the philosopher Heidegger was or what the Trans-Pacific Partnership Deal was. It takes lots of practice and the Intro to Debate class gives an incredibly good introduction to Debate and gives students a good transition into the wonderful world of Debate. Now that the class has been disincentivized, the barriers have been built back up and the team is going to slowly die out without new members.
I could write another entire article about the benefits of Debate and other forensics programs. For example how state and national award winners have a 22% to 30% higher college acceptance rate. The forensics program is extremely underestimated and the district’s recent action towards the program only proves this. Imagine a world where people cared as much about their critical thinking and speaking skills as they did their football.
I concede that my advocacy sounds snobby, I do believe that other extracurriculars such as sports are just as important as debate. What I want to convey through this article is that throughout recent history, debate has constantly been playing catch up with other activities. With the recent action to cut the speech credit from Intro to Debate by MISD, the program has only been pushed further down into the ground.
But, the blame should not be put solely on the school, this is a flaw in the American School System. We glorify sports while we shove away arts, music, and other extracurriculars. If school boards really cared about the future of students, we would further embrace how beneficial these electives are. We need to stand up and defend what’s important: creativity. We need to fix the cracks in our education system’s foundation. We need to adjust public perception towards the effectiveness of electives. We need to give debate a voice.
If you want to learn more about how beneficial electives are, visit these links:
Breton Hawkins • Dec 14, 2016 at 11:49 am
This couldn’t be more on the nose. As a state finalist debater, but having also been in numerous electives, debate was the one that most prepared me for post high school education. Legacy truly has an amazing debate program, with an incredible coach, and it’s a shame that this unnecessary policy is hurting that program.