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Forensics for the day

Our child happens to research and write on a variety of subjects of her choosing to participate in speech and debate competitions as part of her curriculum in school.

This weekend as with a few in the past was dedicated to her spending time preparing and presenting through a series of elimination rounds to seek the ultimate endorsement from a panel of judges.

She did (we think) extremely well, at different venues with a first place win at a renowned national event, more so being an underdog in terms of her naivety to this whole exercise of debating with seasoned students that were coached at fancy academies dedicated to this ancient art form.

The other side of this coin is the parent involvement or lack thereof.   As parents we merely provide guidance where she seeks it otherwise relying on her own initiative and drive to engage and pursue this field.  But the contests place an extra burden on students' parents where we are also asked to judge some of the events.

As novices to this ourselves we at times found it unfair and difficult to cast our vote on a student performance where we did not know the rules of the game or were given a few minutes to comprehend them.  The basic plots involve Debate competitions in the formats called -

  1. Lincoln Douglas (LD) - named after a series of famous debates between Abe Lincoln and Senator Douglas respectively a Republican and Democrat over the topic of slavery
  2. Congress - a style representing a member presenting a bill for passage
  3. Public Forum 
Then there are several Speech categories like - 
  1. Extempore
  2. Impromptu
  3. Expository and
  4. Oratory
So this weekend we were somewhat more seasoned in the art of judging and were given ample work to evaluate a series of rounds in various categories that did not involve conflict of interest in terms of the school and therefore the student.

Overall the topics ranged from current events and personalities to dream big ideas and interpretations of these young minds to express their points of view.

From Hans Solo in Star Wars to Lady Gaga to Bernie Sanders; from despair and anger over Race Relations and Biases, to Use of Cell phones in the modern world and a world without Steve Jobs the young minds in middle school definitely impressed and make you hopeful that we might see great leadership and healthy debates to shape public policy in our sunset years.
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