Former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell once said, “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.” So why isn’t speech and debate a requirement in all high schools?
At Speyer Legacy School in New York, speech and debate is mandatory for all students, beginning in kindergarten. The head of Speyer’s middle school, Paul Deards, remarked that he would sooner cut math, English, and science before the debate curriculum, if there were budget constraints. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal reported a "consistent trend" – one that forensic coaches have long-recognized – that prolonged participation in drama and debate significantly increases college applicants’ success rates at all schools tracking such data.
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These remarks and statistical data support my experiences in Youth for Debate (YFD), an organization devoted to developing individual voices through speech and debate. Currently, volunteers at YFD’s two chapters at Columbia and Duke teach our curriculum in underfunded and underprivileged schools. As a volunteer teacher with YFD on the Executive Board for Events, I volunteer at a local New York City high school, High School of Law, Advocacy and Justice, where I teach speech and debate to sophomores.
Before matriculating to Columbia, I did not fully understand how a speech and debate curriculum could transform the mindsets of both students and coaches. During my first semester with YFD, I witnessed many students metamorphose into motivated, uplifted and hopeful voices. Three students decided that after their experience in YFD, they wanted to attend college. YFD undergraduate coaches allow students to realize their full potential. These students feel as if they can depend on YFD coaches to be there every week to work on their own voices; their opinions are being fine-tuned and heard. They feel important in YFD because our program builds students’ ambitions; they learn life skills of public speaking, confidence, critical editing and teamwork.
YFD allows undergraduate students to experience the differences they have made in younger students’ lives. Teaching put all my effort and work with YFD into clear perspective; to simply hear accounts of transformations makes volunteering for YFD worthwhile. Listening to the students I coached talk of their dependence on me and the life skills they learned through our curriculum proves YFD’s value.
A sophomore at High School of Law, Advocacy, and Justice, said that YFD is “learning at its finest with awesome people and wonderful debates filled with amazing memories.” She decided that she wanted to attend college after participating in YFD, and told me about feeling hope and gratitude when stepping on Columbia’s campus for the debate tournaments.
In the words of Loretta Lynch, United States Attorney General, Americans must be willing and able to “re-examine basic concepts and presets to which we make our decisions.” Lynch’s words support administrative change, echoing my experience of shock regarding YFD’s effectiveness. Through YFD, students enact Lynch’s advice as they learn to re-evaluate common assumptions by considering multiple sides of problems and solutions. YFD’s curriculum empowers students, allowing them to distinguish themselves as worthy of opinionated thoughts and distinctive dreams for their lives after high school. Alumnae of YFD consistently dazzle their teachers with their knowledge and wisdom of topics that matter to both our lives and our country, according to YFD’s 2016-2017 President David Maloof. Maloof agrees with Deards in that “you learn more about the complexity of human experience in one day of teaching debate than you do in 100 history or social science lectures.” Volunteers like myself benefit from the process, helping younger students find their voice. Universities across the country can enrich their community and the lives of local students by integrating YFD’s model. Thus, YFD should have a chapter at colleges across America.
YFD is a reciprocal engagement, building the characters of the undergraduates as well as building the minds and lives of YFD’s students for the long term. With YFD, students are empowered, focused and inspired to learn.
