One of the best things about my job is that I get to spend time with real teachers and real students learning about their challenges, their opportunities, their worries, and their good work. Last night I was asked to be a judge for the second annual Richard Allen Schools' student debate in Dayton.
We spend a lot of time talking about all the problems and challenges facing schools in America but it is important to step back every now and again to appreciate the great things happening in them as well.
The topic of the debate was ???Resolved: The new generation of African-Americans celebrate themselves, not their legacy.??? The debaters were 7th and 8th graders from one of Dayton's premier charter school networks (three schools) and there were two teams. Each team had five members and fifty children had applied for the ten slots.
The young people engaged in more than 90 minutes of lively debate, citing a range of references and weaving together powerful arguments that included quotes from the likes of Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, Bill Cosby, John F. Kennedy, W.E.B. Dubois, Barack Obama, Kofi Annan, and Winston Churchill to name just a few.
They dealt with issues of racism, the corrupting influences of pop culture, economics, the education gap, the African-American family, the unemployment crisis facing young black males, the responsibilities of successful African Americans to give back to their communities, the meaning of the Tea Party, and the meaning of President Obama's election to their generation. All participants were armed with facts and well-prepared to make their case. Each spoke with eloquence and purpose, and frankly the level of debate was vastly superior to what we see among most adult politicians.
The audience was made up of parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers, fellow students, and school supporters and as the debate went on the excitement in the room became electric. There was laughter, applause, oohs and aahs, tears and then a roar of approval for all the participants at the end of event. Each child was beaming with pride at a job well done. Then, my three fellow judges and I had to caucus and select the winners.
In caucus we quickly came to realize that the margin of victory for both team and the individuals was paper thin. The young man who won the award for best performance spoke for 15 minutes and during that time he made excellent use of language, diction, vocabulary, and pronunciation. His arguments were lucid and powerful. He mixed facts with humor and managed to make eye-contact with all the judges and seemingly with the entire audience. I told my fellow judges that ???he was amazing as a 7th grader??? and they corrected me by saying ???he was amazing as an adult!????? In announcing the winners a fellow judge, a recently retired federal judge, captured the moment when he simply said ???Wow!???
We spend a lot of time talking about all the problems and challenges facing schools in America but it is important to step back every now and again to appreciate the great things happening in them as well. I came away from last night thinking that despite all the challenges we face as a nation that the future may very well be brighter than the past just because we have such terrific young people growing up behind us.
???Terry Ryan
