PHOTO: John Meany of the Claremont Colleges calls the session to order Monday morning

 

Posted by: Alfred Snider

 

Twenty aspiring young debaters met for the first time under the instruction of John Meany as the National High School Public Debate Workshop began.

 

John Meany is the Director of Debate at the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of prestigious colleges in southern California. After a brilliant policy debating career at Boston College, John has an extremely successful coach and teacher in all formats of modern debating and one of the activities most creative thinkers and strategists. He has written three debate textbooks in recent years and currently directs one of the world’s largest, most successful and diverse debate programs at Claremont. He has taught and trained in a number of countries and is recognized as a world leader in training judges and coaches.

 

This morning the group will learn about various debate formats and the way the program will be designed. because there are students involved in several formats in the program, the emphasis will be on skills (basic and advanced) that are universally valuable, speaking, aregumentation, topic analysis and critical thinking skills. After lunch the students will learn about public speaking techniques, both basic as well as advanced. I will be giving a lecture on public speaking and dynamism. John will also lecture this afternoon on argumentation. After dinner there will be some recreational time but students will also have a homework assignment to prepare for tomorrow.