I had to take Speech in high school
It was one of the most stressful and also most beneficial experiences of high school. It helped me learn how to overcome the intimidation of public speaking as much as any human can. There is no trick, you just have to experience public speaking a few dozen times and you start to get used to it. Some people are able to memorize an entire essay and combine it with hand motions and eye contact to create a ‘speaking experience’. Personally I prefer to work from a rough outline and speak from my knowledge base. Hand gestures and such are corny and I never cared enough to take public speaking to the next level.
My experience wasn’t unique. Everyone in my class of about sixteen students was nervous and quickly got a lot better. Apart from one or two especially quiet kids, I remember us mostly enjoying this class - at least we weren’t listening to the same teacher drone on while we take notes. There was the typical amount of busywork handouts we had to fill out and chapters of a book we had to read, but the days we delivered or received speeches were always entertaining.
My 10th grade class had 46 kids overall. We had boisterous kids and timid kids and everything in-between. Two of the most quiet were Danny Han and David Huyan. I should mention that my school was only about half white, the rest being Black and various POC kids of the doctors and professors working at the University. These two guys Danny and David were not related and did not know each other prior to high school. I had virtually no interaction with them. They were among the many students who were not interested in smoking weed and partying, so I had little in common with them. I have changed their names here, but their actual names were similar in tone and spirit. At the great risk of sounding like a monster, these two Chinese kids looked alike, hung out together all the time, and had very similar names. I don’t remember anyone confusing their names, but I’d be shocked if it didn’t happen time to time.
The pair came out of their shells our senior year, and I recall them attending a few parties. I remember how they both owned a version of this white T-shirt that might have been skater attire or other Hot-Topic type gear. It was understated, just a single line of text on a white plane that read “do not conform”. This connected with our post-grunge ethos, and was a T-shirt that I might have bought if I encountered it. The problem was that both of these guys owned the same shirt. On more than one occasion they would both be wearing the shirt purely out of random rotation. My school was very literary, so I am sure the literal definition of irony was not lost on anyone.
Danny was in my speech class but David was not. Danny was fine at speaking, although it was strange hearing him talk for five minutes straight. Other quiet kids could sometimes be heard to rant at length about TV shows or books, etc. Anyway, we had all become accustomed to everyone’s speech styles after several months of the class. We had covered the basics of public speaking on a variety of topics and with different limitations placed on us. We eventually came to the advanced topic of Debate.
Debate as a sport is idiotic
So after over six months of learning how to speak, we came to the highest academic level of applied speech - debate. This began with a chapter about the fundamentals of debate structure, and then some worksheets. We then had a lecture about efficient research and note-taking. Then we read up about the history of debate from Socrates to Lincoln/Douglass and watched some dramatic recreations on VHS. It was all very dignified and theatrical. It seemed to be focused on being compelling, likeable, relatable, and approachable - the things we had been taught so far.
So then we pop in a tape of a modern debate competition at the high-school level. I recall the first thing I noticed was that both teams were dressed like prep-school nightmares in their khaki slacks and blue blazers. Girls wore dresses fit for the Amish. The topic is announced, hands are shaken, the teams take their seats, and the judges initiate the debate. The first team member approaches the podium with a strange energy in his stride. When he is given the green light, he begins speaking as fast as any human possibly can. He is gasping for air and diving into his sentences like an olympic sprinter whose also throwing shotputs. It is so incredibly distracting and weird that I haven’t taken in the content of a single word, just marveled at the spectacle. I begin to question if perhaps this person has some disability and I am laughing at their speech impediment. Perhaps this is an Autistic individual who always communicates this way?
No. The next speaker is every bit as frantic and desperate as the first. Each competitor not only spews out their prepared lines like a hostage in an action movie begging for their life, but they interject their sentences with exasperated derision at their opponent. It is as if they lose points for any moment of dead air.
So at the end of round one, we stop the tape and discuss the techniques. Most of us are like me, baffled by what we just watched. It seems high level debate competitions are not about convincing an audience of anything, but rather grabbing up as many points as possible. It doesn’t matter if your rebuttal was a good idea, just that you rebutted a point. This seems to mean the players are encouraged to throw out as many points as possible in the hope that the opponent cannot rebut all of them in their time. So its really a competition of lung capacity.
We then find out that Danny Han and David Huyan both attended debate club over the summer. This was just another extra-curricular class that existed solely to put on a college application. Danny and David were almost certainly going through the motions dictated by strict parents, but who am I to judge. Maybe the two quietest students in my class both independently chose to attend a public speaking class over the summer for fun. Anyway, they had dutifully internalized every technical aspect of debate, and regurgitated that knowledge accurately. David visited our class and the two had a debate for us to see the skills in action. I was still reeling from the video of the preppy kids frantic vocalizations, and thought maybe that was limited to the most desperate elite debate teams.
No. Danny and David conducted an equally maniacal breathless back and forth. They filled their allotted time up to the second with repeated facts and scoffing noises. Apparently it is more important to speak like a desperate schizophreniac than to be understood by a common audience. They would rather repeat the same statements three times like a lunatic than say it once clearly. It was very strange. These two quiet kids almost foaming at the mouth in their desperation to get us to agree to their side. This topic was given to them and it was not of personal relevance at all. Their pro/con status was decided by coin flip. It was unimaginable to me.
At the end of the debate, we were all meant to choose a winner by writing their name on anonymous cards. Several of us wrote ‘DH’ in an obnoxious insensitive joke on the absurdity of it all. The class was divided into groups of four to choose a topic and debate in front of the class. My group chose school uniforms, and my partner insisted we take the opposing stance. Although I also did not like the idea of uniforms, I knew there was going to be ZERO evidence against school uniforms. Our performance was shitty and we all four just went through the motions. My side ran out of facts very quickly and they had an infinite supply of pro-uniform articles. We ceded our time and graciously lost the debate. None of us tried to do the meth-head approach.
All of this has been on my mind again recently with the right-wing speaking tactics of the day. Rather than making one cogent point, the game is to shotgun blast out as many statements as possible. If your opponent cannot refute them all, you win? These are people who probably excelled at high school debate. They probably also still say Great Gatsby is their favourite book. They probably still know their locker combination.
The conclusion is the same as many others. We need some agreed upon rules of engagement. An untrue statement should get you zero points. Not answering a question gets you -1 point. The problem is we need an agreed set of truths that allows for a large grey area. Being honestly wrong about something is not dishonorable. Avoiding a problem or passing the blame is whats lacking in honor. These bad-faith debaters simply want to rewrite the rule-book to favor spectacle. Just like DH’s desperate frantic begging, these people are using the optics to make their backwards ideas seem correct.