It’s still early in the school year. Get your kid to join debate team.

The old-school display of oratorical excellence has suddenly become an outsized measure of leadership ability and prowess in this country. It’s like the cool kids are figuring out what the nerds have known all along: Being good at debate will take you far.

Tuesday’s presidential debate was all anyone could talk about this week. Never mind multimillion-dollar ad campaigns, legions of campaign volunteers and endorsements from famous people. Never mind rally size, the ear injury or the graveside photo shoot. The make-or-break event in the race for the highest elected office in our country has become the live, in-person, unscripted debate.

In a world that has become warped by altered images, out-of-context quotes, fake videos and outright lies, watching a person argue their position in real time offers a glimpse of how they think, raw and real. It doesn’t tell us everything about a candidate’s abilities and fitness for office, but it tells us plenty about their ability to maintain composure, think on their feet and connect with the people they intend to serve.

President Joe Biden may have wrought stability out of chaos, brought decency back to D.C., and put professionals rather than cronies in cabinet positions, but none of his accomplishments mattered when the debate in July revealed his frailties. It effectively ended his decades-long career in politics.

To hear former President Donald Trump tell it, Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t smart and couldn’t string three words together to make a sentence. Her performance in Tuesday’s debate spoke truth to those lies. The structure, discipline and mental agility one learns when studying debate are high level skills that Harris clearly had down cold. 

It could be that America’s future was decided by those two debates.

So sign up your kid and find them a suit. That buttoned-up nerdiness blended with a precocious love of domestic policy is a powerful combination. Public speaking is one of the scariest things known to humanity. Once a person conquers that, other things are easy.

I have volunteered to judge Hawaii high school speech and debate events for years. I try to stick to speech events rather than judge debate because I am in awe of what the students can do and don’t feel I have the proper background to evaluate them. It’s one thing to watch training videos, it’s quite another to actually have first-person experience arguing a case against a smarty-pants team from a rival school.

The thing that always impresses me about high school debate is that the students love how difficult it is. They stand there, scrubbed and coiffed and ready to spit fire. They construct their rebuttals in minutes while the other side is speaking. When it’s over, they sincerely thank their opponents for the opportunity to go against them. There is no name-calling, no personal attacks, no going over the allotted time to speak. It is as elegant as it is fierce. The presidential debates would do well to emulate the formality, decorum and rigor of high school debates.

The high schools represented at the 2024 State Speech and Debate Championships were Aiea, Hilo, Iolani, Kahuku, Kamehameha, Leilehua, Maryknoll, Moanalua, Pacific Buddhist Academy, Parker School, Punahou, Roosevelt and University Lab School. In decades past, many more public schools participated, and they fielded as many debaters as private schools, but in recent years, the state winners have come mostly from Punahou and Kamehameha.

The Hawaii Speech League reports that there are about 300 students statewide that participated in speech and debate last year. Federal Judge Jill Otake, state Sen. Stanley Chang and former state Rep. Aaron Johanson were debate champions in their day. Legions of Hawaii doctors, lawyers and political leaders are alumni of the statewide debate program. Nationally, high school debate alums include Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and former Attorney General Janet Reno.

Luly Unemori, who went twice to nationals as a member of the Baldwin speech and debate team in the 1980s, said, “Perhaps more relevant today than ever, those high school experiences helped me think more critically about the information out there, to separate credible information from misinformation and sift through thick fogs of diverse opinions.”

‘Iolani English teacher Theresa Falk recalled, “Writing evidence cards and spending hours practicing saying what I want to say helped me manage my anxiety. To this day, I’ll write down speaking points when I need to have a difficult conversation, even if that conversation is with myself.”

There is such an emphasis on teaching STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in schools, as though only the “hard skills” will save the world. But being able to speak extemporaneously in an impactful, organized fashion is extremely useful in any career path. It’s too bad so many public schools that used to be powerhouse speech and debate teams don’t have that opportunity for their students anymore.

I’m not suggesting Hawaii schools take on yet another responsibility along with all the social welfare, job training, emotional, medical and safety responsibilities heaped on top of teaching core classes. But veterans from that illustrious list of past Hawaii debaters should think back to how rewarding that incredibly hard work was, and take it upon themselves to volunteer, particularly at public schools, to provide debate club opportunities for more Hawaii kids.

We need to grow local leaders. Here is one proven way.

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.