What’s billed as the world’s largest academic competition is underway this week in central Iowa as Des Moines hosts the National Speech & Debate Tournament.
Organizers say it’s drawing 11,000 middle and high school students, coaches, teachers, and judges, with an economic impact of $22-million.
Scott Wunn, executive director of the National Speech & Debate Association, says depending on the topic, student have had months to prepare, or perhaps just minutes.
“Most of the debate events they found out on May 1st that they’d be debating those,” Wunn says. “There is one debate about policy debate where they’ve been debating patent rights and copyright law, things like that, all year long. And then there are some debate events where they receive the topic one hour before they debate it.”
The student competitors range in age from 12 to 18 and Wunn says they need to be well-rounded, well-versed, and very aware of current events to tackle a dizzying array of debate topics.
“It is anything you could possibly think of, really, stripped from the headlines,” Wunn says. “One of our events, we’ll be debating whether or not the benefits of executive orders outweigh the harms. They’ll be talking about environmental issues. They’ll be talking about K-12 education. There’s so many different areas that they will cover throughout the course of the week.”
It’s a common thought that many of these young debaters will eventually pursue legal careers, and while that’s sometimes the case, Wunn says this event is preparing students for any profession they seek out.
“There’s no greater activity in the world than speech and debate to prepare students for life skills, college readiness skills,” Wunn says. “We have over 2,000,000 alumni that have participated in the National Speech and Debate Association. Certainly, we’ve had our fair share of lawyers. We have four members of the Supreme Court that are sitting right now.”
Wunn says this extracurricular activity is the place where students — for decades — have found their voices and opened their minds to alternative perspectives.
“Every facet that you can imagine professionally, we have alumni that go into that,” Wunn says, “because this activity truly does prepare them with the creative skills, the critical thinking skills, those collaboration skills that are necessary to really thrive after middle school and high school.”
The 7,200 students are from 1,300 schools across the US. They’re competing at 11 venues in the Des Moines metro, while 42 champions will be named on the final stage at the Iowa Events Center on Friday.