For the next few weeks, we will highlight each of our classes to offer a snippet of what is going on at TEEN DAY this year.
This year, TEEN DAY is offering a Debate class. The class focuses on formal debating skills and styles, but also argumentation and active listening in the context of discussing controversial topics. And there has been no shortage of controversial subjects used for modelling, discussion, and debate!
Should homeschoolers be allowed to participate in school sports?
Should people eat animals?
Should a nuclear power plant be built near Ithaca, NY?
Should the minimum wage be abolished?
I asked a couple class members what their favorite part of the Debate class has been so far:
“My favorite thing was a game where you had to state why people should save you from a sinking boat.”
“I think my favorite thing was the game where we advertised a random object. That was pretty fun.”
A lot of the focus of the class so far has been in how to form and recognize a good argument with important debate (AND conversational) skills such as:
- Making your point(s) clearly and succinctly.
- Focusing on the most important issue(s).
- Redirecting an opponent’s argument that misses the point.
- Responding to someone’s best argument instead of their worst.
The Cornell Speech and Debate team has a group of enthusiastic and brilliant student volunteers working with the class. They’ve brought their own experiences and skills from the hill to our classroom to help transform our debate enthusiasts into real debaters!
But don’t take my word for it. Check out their very first debate: Should zoos be illegal? (Available here in parts, because it turns out the TEEN DAY administrator does not excel at video editing.) Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
One of the classes at TEEN DAY this year is 
autonomy, and the right to assign copious amounts of homework—orchestrated a TEEN DAY coup wherein the TEEN DAY administrator was arrested and carted off to jail (by the Literature instructor no less). It was an embarrassing moment in TEEN DAY history, but one from which I’m sure we’ve all learned something (like don’t ask a budding autocrat to teach a class.)
On a more serious note, the classroom discussion continues to be rich and insightful, and the tone of the course encourages participants to draw their own conclusions. As the midterm elections get closer, the opportunity to see these abstract ideas play themselves out on the national and statewide stages will afford concrete examples of what is being discussed and read about—an opportunity to experience democracy in action!
TEEN DAY Ithaca 