Kevin Li was ready for passionate arguments and contentious opponents when he joined Centennial High School's new debate team, but he says he was not really prepared for the filing.
"I thought it was going to be: `These are my beliefs and I am going to defend them,'" said Li, a sophomore. "It's definitely more analytical. Everything has to be backed up, everything has to be proved and supported."
That means many hours reading and organizing hundreds of pages of support - including academic studies and government reports - so that they can be used at a moment's notice.
That might not seem like exciting stuff, but local educators think that if they can get students comfortable with the format, lingo and organizational basics, they can build competitive debate programs at every Howard County high school in the next five years.
Centennial, Glenelg and Reservoir high schools started extracurricular debate programs this school year with the help of Ronald Bratt, a Columbia resident and founder of the nonprofit Capitol Debate.
Bratt is providing coaching to students and teachers at the three schools for a year. After that, he said, they should be able to carry on while he focuses on more schools.
A parallel program is bringing policy debate to middle schools through the gifted and talented program, either as part of the regular classes or as a separate seminar.
Debbie Blum, a county resource teacher for the gifted and talented program, said teachers are using a simpler format with the younger pupils but that "the skills are still going to correspond very well and lead into the [high school] debate program."
For many years, Wilde Lake had the only debate program in the county. It focused on a different debate format than the one used by the new teams.
The Wilde Lake program grew to include individual speaking events about seven years ago, said coach Kelli Midgley-Biggs, and it has added policy debate over the past couple of years with help from Bratt.
Wilde Lake also invited competitors from other schools, including Atholton and Long Reach, to practices and tournaments in recent years.
The three new high school teams have attended - and received awards at - a couple of interscholastic competitions for novice debaters. They are preparing for another Saturday at Towson University.
