Colllege Outreach

Secondary Schools  Outreach

High Schools

Middle Schools

Community Outreach

DEBATE AND EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH PROGRAMMING

Training in debate improves valuable analytical and speaking skills and enables the discussion of important issues, whether scientific, historical, religious, or political. It contributes to the intellectual and ethical development of its participants by challenging them to make defensible judgments in which they must critically investigate complex issues, question given assumptions, evaluate the reliability of data, and consider alternative perspectives. Debate stimulates and refines communication skills that empower individuals to speak for themselves, to discover and use their own voices. It provides excellent listening, note taking, interpersonal communication, and conflict resolution training, and teaches practitioners to ably organize ideas and manage complexity. But most students debate because it is fun.

For these reasons, the CCDU encourages speech and argumentation training through its comprehensive debate and educational outreach initiative, designed for academic institutions and community groups. Operating primarily in socially and economically marginalized communities, outreach programs have provided training to more than 10,000 students and coaches in the past 3 years.

Debate Union staff and students promote the integration of debate in the curriculum and specialized academic programs, produce curricular materials for debate and public speaking classes, sponsor extracurricular debate clubs and interscholastic tournaments, and host workshops and conferences to facilitate debate expansion projects and professional development.

• CLAREMONT COLLEGES NATIONAL DEBATE OUTREACH

The CCDU sponsors the nation’s largest and fastest growing secondary school debate education outreach project through its community service organization, Claremont Colleges National Debate Outreach (CCNDO). More than 5,00 secondary school students and teachers will participate in class and/or interscholastic contest programs in 2004-2005.

Debate Outreach has supported hundreds of high school policy debaters in league and invitational events, initiated high school parliamentary debating throughout California, and sponsored state and regional high school parliamentary championships in a half dozen states. The Middle School Public Debate Program (MSPDP), currently serving thousands of students, is being adopted in other states and countries. The Debate Union hosts championship tournaments on campus for high school and middle school students.

• COLLEGE OUTREACH

The CCDU works with student groups, faculty, and administration at colleges and universities throughout the United States to establish competitive speech and debate programs, as well as public speaking and argumentation programming.

• COMMUNITY OUTREACH

The CCDU sponsors speech and argumentation seminars on campus and in the community, providing professional communication training for student associations, civic groups, political organizations, and business and service clubs. In addition, the Debate Union sponsors public lectures, town hall meetings, and other events on local, national, and international issues of controversy and concern. For example, the CCDU network sponsored more than 70 public debate and discussion events and workshops in Fall 2004.