Learning to Play the Game: My Journey Through Silence by Jonathan Kohlmeier

Author:Jonathan Kohlmeier [Kohlmeier, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781483459134
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
Published: 2016-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Constitutionality

I joined the debate team in my junior year because I wanted to practice public speaking. I felt like it was something I needed to do. My mom said I was good at arguing. I liked thinking and talking about issues, and a few other kids at school also said I should try. People had asked me to join the year before, but I had dismissed the idea. Or I should say it dismissed the idea. My first year, I didn’t debate. I watched and listened to learn as much as I could from the other kids on the team. Mr. Anthony was the debate coach, which I was excited about because he was my favorite teacher, and he really knew what he was doing. He was a very good presenter in class and it seemed like he knew how to talk really well. Only a few schools in the county were in the competition. Every year, there were two debate meets at hosting schools and then a third match, depending on if your team made it to the finals. Each school had two teams of two kids. During a match, each team competed four times, twice as the affirmative and twice as the negative. Each debate lasted about forty-five minutes. It was a lot of talking for a day.

I was the main researcher on the team. We all did research, but it was my only job. I tried to give feedback whenever I could during practices, but I didn’t think I had anything useful to say. The resolve for the first year was, “The federal government should enact substantial legislation to combat the obesity epidemic.” Our job was to create an argument for both sides: one that agreed with the resolve and came up with a plan to solve it; one that disagreed with the resolve, stating that the status quo was good enough. I had fun with it, but it seemed so fake to me. The arguing, the judging—all of it, especially because each judge seemed to grade the debates differently. We also weren’t allowed to use the Constitution as a basis for argument in any of the debates. There didn’t seem to be a unified concept. I thought my opinion of the judges was fairly objective, but because I was in the competition, it might have been frustration. It just seemed like a game that we needed to learn to play, but the rules were contrived in such a way that I didn’t understand. That year we won four out of sixteen debates. It was the first time for all of us at this competition. I was the only junior, so it was fun to hang out with some of the seniors and learn from them.

The next year I was the only kid still in debate from the previous year. Mr. Anthony and I had to recruit new kids. I thought two of the guys in the grade below would have made an unstoppable team, but they both said they didn’t want to join.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.