As schools shut down debate teams, this Bergen teen is working to save the tradition

Andrew Chun remembered starting high school in 2020 while the COVID-19 pandemic was in full effect and the damper the virus put on one of his favorite activities: debating.

"I saw that a lot of different middle school programs, specifically, were being shut down or discontinued through the pandemic," Chun said. "I found that there's a larger need for debate opportunities for younger students, particularly because of how it was rewarding for me personally."

The pandemic and his love of debate led Chun, now an 18-year-old senior at Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, to form Cornerstone Debate. Chun has been on debate teams since he was in the sixth grade at Tenakill Middle School in his hometown of Closter and is currently the captain of one of his high school debate teams.

It's an opportunity that can have long-lasting benefits, he said.

The benefits of debating

"I found that civil discourse and critical thinking and all the public speaking skills that I gained from debate were really important for my progression in my academic career and within other aspects of my life," Chun said.

Numbers from the National Speech and Debate Association bear out some of Chun's concerns about the shrinking of debate programs. The association reported that 2,146 New Jersey students participated in NSDA-affiliated programs in the 2019-20 school year, compared with 2,066 students in 2022-2023, a 3% decline.

Cornerstone Debate is a student-led nonprofit that offers free virtual and in-person public speaking and debate classes at local New Jersey libraries, including Closter and Palisades Park. The nonprofit also runs summer camps, tournaments and seminars for middle school students and high schoolers up to sophomore year.

Chun said the classes since 2020 have been taught by at least 10 high school- and college-age volunteer instructors with debate experience to over 300 students across the country and globally. They are offered in fall, winter and spring. Students learn different styles of competitive debate through persuasive speaking techniques and building and refuting arguments.

The young debater said that when creating Cornerstone Debate, he wanted to provide a flexible model of debate learning to accommodate students with various learning styles and schedules.

"Communication is important, and spreading this discourse is very important, but the way we do that should be through accessible means. A model in which students can pursue what they want, have the opportunity to dabble in a lot of different events and choose what works for them," Chun said.

Cornerstone Debate focuses on fundamentals

Chun said Cornerstone's curriculum is geared primarily toward teaching the fundamentals of debate.

“A lot of our foundational classes are based on those soft skills like being able to communicate in a civil and productive manner. These deliberations involve persuasive speaking, public speaking and lots of logic-based lessons,” Chun said.

In Cornerstone Debate's summer camps and workshops, he said, students learn more extensively about debate in different formats not always offered by similar debate programs, including public forum debate, policy debate and parliamentary debate.

He said that in the three years since the nonprofit began, the best thing many students have taken away from being involved is learning basic skills about debate while doing games and activities, or what he called "experiential learning."

"That's what's most appealing to the students," Chun said.

"Over the past few years, I have found very little success and enjoyment, from both the instructor and the student side, of just listening to a lecture or teaching a lesson," he said.

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Skills that work 'outside the classroom'

Chun said plans for Cornerstone Debate include partnering with a European education firm to offer workshops in 2024 to young people in Pakistan to develop skills in public speaking and forming a partnership with a Malaysian educational institute to help with its debate classes.

The program also offers specialized coaching to advanced student debaters at a low cost, with the proceeds donated to other nonprofits that deal with pressing global issues covered in Cornerstone Debate's classes, such as global conflicts, the crisis in the U.S. health system and the pandemic.

Chun said he enjoys seeing students blossom in debating with the help of his volunteer instructors.

"I think there's a lot of skills that can be applicable outside the classroom, and that's why we want to teach those skills beyond what is taught in the schools," he said. "It's about leaving the debate space better than before. That's really the primary goal."

Ricardo Kaulessar covers race, immigration, and culture for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kaulessar@northjersey.com

Twitter: @ricardokaul

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bergen County teen is on a mission to save school debate teams