homeschool speech and debate

Of Love and Office Supplies: Philosophical Perspective’s Thoughts

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Of Love and Office Supplies: Philosophical Perspective’s Thoughts

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Philosophical Perspectives” is the author’s chosen pseudonym.

There are many things about the NCFCA that were… not awesome.

But as I’ve been remembering my years in the league, I’ve also been remembering the beautiful things – the friendships I gained with people around the country.

We were a strange bunch – “like-minded”, high-achieving homeschooled teenagers who liked to spend their spare time researching trade policy, arguing about Calvinism, and discussing the validity of resolutional critiques. We shopped for suits (at goodwill) and cooed over office supplies. We compared flow charts and rehashed debate rounds to figure out how we needed to boost our evidence boxes.

My church growing up hosted a New Year’s Eve party at a rec center every year which, as a tangent, I always thought was a dumb location – what were you supposed to do, if we didn’t want to play basketball?  Work out? Communally? Anyway, after several years of sitting there, bored, I hit upon the perfect solution – I brought my debate box and re-wrote my case.

I saw my friends in person maybe once a month, usually at tournaments.  Tournaments are weird places to hang out. We would be in rounds from 8am-10pm, if everything was running on time.  I remember once not finishing until midnight.  We grabbed moments when we could – during bye rounds or speech rounds if we weren’t competing. But we were exhausted, high on adrenaline and Red Bull, and most of the time competing against each other. We were also under the watchful eye of parents in every hallway.

Relationships may have been sparked at tournaments, but friendships grew and deepened online – mostly through Xanga, AIM, and HSD.

For the uninitiated, Xanga was an early web-blogging service, predating even MySpace. For us, it was facebook before there was facebook.  You could write articles or update your status, and friends would comment or give “eProps,” the predecessor of facebook’s “like”.

AIM stands for AOL Instant Messenger. It was the one way we could have unmonitored conversations, since most of us understood the internet better than our parents.

HSD stands for Homeschooldebate.com, a forum established to discuss debate, judging, and coaching – but also quickly became home to myriad conversations about anything and everything, from serious to silly.

All three of these became spaces of deep community for me. As I re-read one of my (now private) Xangas recently, I was struck by how normal so much of it seems. I talked about how awesome my friends were, re-hashed tournaments (mostly the social happenings and tournament outcomes), posted inside jokes, and, more often that I care to admit, “meaningful” song lyrics.

It was on my other (secret) Xanga that I remembered the other stuff. There I wrote journal entries – some public, some private, and some protected (only visible to specific readers). I wrote about my faith, reflected critically on the competitiveness of the NCFCA, and processed problems in my family. I wrote about boys, love, belonging, and identity. I wrote about beauty, about pain, about Jesus.

I shared my soul with my friends on that site. They responded with love, support, and friendship. They called me out when I was spiraling. They talked me through my depression, and nursed me through my neglect. They reminded me that I was loved.

I did the same for them. I remember friends thousands of miles away IMing me when they were depressed, on the verge of self-harm. I would send them a song, and we’d talk until they could fall asleep. We dealt with eating disorders, self-harm, depression, anxiety, addiction, and death. We were a rag-tag bunch who were just helping each other survive.

And survive we did. We even managed to have fun. One of my favorite memories of my time in the NCFCA was a tournament held at a university, where I did very well. While usually out-of-towners stayed with other homeschool families, this time, we were allowed to stay in the dorms, without parental supervision. So we stayed up all night, drank artesian root beer, and watched a U2 concert. I held hands with a boy I liked under the couch cushions. We giggled, we ate candy, we made fun of M. Night Shyamalan. I think it’s one of the few times I felt like a teenager.

There are many skills the NCFCA gave me – critical thinking, public speaking, how to argue well, and how to understand all sides of an argument. This online community was its hidden gift. I learned how to share my heart in writing. I learned that big ideas are ok, that asking questions is good. I learned that I was beloved, messy and depressed as I was. I learned about music, and movies, and art. I learned that I didn’t have to win to be loved. I learned that I didn’t always have to be mature beyond my years, that it was ok to be silly. I learned how to listen, and that not every conversation is a debate. I learned how to walk through suffering, and how to ask for help. I learned how to sit with someone in their pain. I learned how to love and be loved, unconditionally.

I work now as a campus pastor – and I remember all of these things, as I sit with people in crisis. My friends in the NCFCA taught me more about love and honesty than anyone else since.

So, I’m taking a minute to celebrate those friends – from Xanga, AIM, and HSD days. It was a beautiful (and I think, sacred) community that we formed. For all we weathered, I’m grateful. It was, strange as it seems, a place of calm, and sanity, in the middle of the storm.

A Brief History of Homeschool Speech and Debate

HA Editorial Team21 Comments

A Brief History of Homeschool Speech and Debate

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

******

“There is warfare. We are soldiers. We have weapons.”

~Shelley Miller, NCFCA Oregon State Representative, 2013

*****

As we embark on our Resolved: series, you will see a lot of acronyms being thrown around. I figured it would be helpful for those unfamiliar with the homeschool speech and debate world to see a brief summary of what those acronyms mean. The following history of the key organizations and individuals is important to keep in mind as a general context for reading the posts this week.

HSLDA Debate

Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) began a homeschool debate league in 1996. Christy Shipe (then Farris), the daughter of HSLDA’s chairman and co-founder Michael Farris, started the league when she was a senior at Cedarville University. The goal of the league, according to Michael, was “to improve your child’s reasoning powers, clarity of thinking, and ability to stand for the truth of God’s word.” Whereas competitive forensics sees the skills of forensics as ends in themselves, homeschool debate sees them as means to a larger end: “to help homeschoolers address life’s issues biblically, with God’s glory, not their own, as the focus.”

The very first national tournament was held in October 1997 at Loudoun Valley High School in Purcellville, Virginia. Christy Shipe was the tournament organizer. The debate team from Cedarville, of which Shipe was a part, played a crucial role in the beginning. Deborah Haffey, Cedarville’s debate coach at the time, was influential in Shipe’s love for debate. HSLDA’s original debate teaching materials featured Haffey. And the very first homeschool debate summer camps — as far as I can remember — began at Cedarville, via the university’s Miriam Maddox Forum, led by Haffey, Jonathan Hammond, and later Jeff Motter.The final round of HSLDA’s first national tournament, by the way, took place a separate venue than the rest of the tournament. It occurred at the 1997 National Christian Home Educators Leadership Conference in front of 400 home school leaders from 44 states. It was judged by Michael Farris, Deborah Haffey, and Bob Jones University’s debate coach, Dewitt Jones.

NCFCA

After five years past, the homeschool debate league had grown significantly. HSLDA decided that the league should become a distinct entity from itself. So the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association was created in 2000, co-founded by Christy Shipe and Teresa Moon. The association’s original seven-member board of directors included: Shipe, Moon, Todd Cooper, Michael Farris, Skip Rutledge, Deborah Haffey, and Terry Stollar. NCFCA’s stated goal is “is to train students to be able to engage the culture for Christ.” From the very beginning, NCFCA had a significant amount of in-fighting, resulting in a rapid burning-through of its leaders. Todd Cooper, NCFCA’s original president from San Diego, was booted almost instantaneously. My father, Terry Stollar, became the second president, and resigned after significant disagreements with the board. The first two presidents — as well as Moon, who served as Director of Forensics — all hailed at some point from California, which is interesting considering what I will later mention about “Region 2” and its split from NCFCA. Mike Larimer took over the presidency after my father. Teresa Hudson is NCFCA’s current president.

While debate was primarily the focus when the league was under HSLDA, NCFCA branched out significantly in their more diverse inclusion of speech events. As of today, NCFCA includes two types of debate — Policy and Lincoln-Douglas — as well as a variety of speech categories — biographical narrative, oratory, persuasive, duo interpretations, humorous interpretations, apologetics, extemporaneous, impromptu, and so forth.

CFC/ICC

Crucial to the growth of both HSLDA debate and later NCFCA was Communicators for Christ (CFC). David and Teresa Moon began CFC in 1997. Teresa was also the personal debate coach of many of NCFCA’s original “legends.” In the early days, the Moons traveled around the country, from state to state in their motor home, with a team of student instructors — later termed “interns.” As CFC taught speech and debate to other homeschool parents and students, it served as a “feeder” of sorts into NCFCA.

As CFC’s popularity grew, Teresa expanded CFC’s focus from homeschoolers to Christian schools in general. She refashioned the for-profit CFC into the non-profit Institute for Cultural Communicators (ICC). Today, ICC continues its CFC tours, but also offers “a variety of programs, events and teaching materials designed to help all Christian students, from all educational backgrounds — public, private and home — [to] become ‘cultural communicators’ — people who can impact their culture through excellent communication of the truth.” ICC’s stated goal is “to provide support and guidance to Christian schools, churches, and community education programs as together we train well-rounded communicators.”

A crucial concept about ICC’s goal is embodied in their “Flood the Five” conferences. The premise of these conferences is that only 5% of Americans are “ready” and “willing” to command any sort of public platform. So ICC “is committed to coaching Christian speakers to flood that 5%.”

HSD

HomeschoolDebate.com (HSD) was created by Andrew Bailey, an NCFCA alumni. HSD is an online forum for competitors, alumni, parents, and coaches from all over the country to connect. HA’s Nicholas Ducote was a board administrator on HSD for four years, and also owned the site (after Bailey and McPeak moved on) for two years, from 2007-2009. I myself used HSD significantly to market Plethora, my research book series, from 2001-2005.

HSD features threads on the current year’s debate topics, on homeschool league politics, on ideas for improving debate skills, and — well, and everything else. Some of the most popular threads on HSD in the past had nothing to do with speech or debate. The most popular threads were the “Just For Fun” and “Controversy Corner” threads, where us homeschool kids would argue about everything from free will versus predestination to that year’s presidential candidates. We would also create role-playing games and fictional stories about each other, projecting fellow competitors into soap opera storylines or superhero graphic novel contexts. HSD was, and continues to be, extraordinarily popular. When competitors would actually gather in person at national qualifying tournaments or the national tournament itself, it was always a highlight to meet in person these people you would socialize with digitally for the year prior.

HSD became a microcosm of some of the speech and debate world’s important developments: the promotion of evidence and research books, the promotion of summer camps, the connecting of alumni with current competitors to pass on both competition strategies and life lessons, and a channel for graduates to help younger kids work through questions about faith and humanity. HSD was also the starting place for the Great BJU Protest of 2009.

The Great BJU Protest of 2009

In 2009, NCFCA announced that the National Tournament that year would take place at Bob Jones University. This caused an outcry from many competitors on account of BJU’s extreme legalism and history of institutionalized racism. Some competitors believed the board made a poor decision that could hurt the image of both Christianity as well as homeschooling. This issue was also exacerbated by two other issues: how NCFCA allegedly ignored California’s previous suggestion of Irvine as a location, and how the previous year NCFCA also held a national tournament event at a Shriner’s Temple. Going from a Shriner’s Temple to a place popularly conceived as racist and small-minded infuriated quite a few people. As early as March of 2009, months before the tournament happened, members of HSD were considering how best to address this — some suggesting a boycott of the tournament, others suggesting petitioning the board to change the location, and others suggesting wearing stickers or walking silently out of the opening ceremony when BJU would give their “come to BJU!” talk.

In the end, a petition was sent to NCFCA leadership to change the location. Mike Larimer, then-president of NCFCA, gave what one of the protest’s organizers called “an expected non-response.” But the petition picked up when alumni from all around the country started showing overwhelming support for the protest. (I myself proudly signed the petition, though I was long graduated from the league. Standing up for what you feel is just and right is what this whole training was about!) As support for the petition ballooned, and word got out that protestors were planning a “walk out” of the opening ceremony, the NCFCA regional coordinator of Region 8, Lisa Kays, did something highly controversial. Kays sent an email to all the other regional coordinators. In her email, she demanded (1) that any competitors from her own region that signed the petition must immediately remove their names, and (2) ban anyone that is unwilling to remove their name from competing at the National Tournament.

Yes, you read that right. Lisa Kays, one of the heads of NCFCA leadership and who is now on the board of ICC, wanted to ban people from the National Tournament for speaking up against legalism and racism. As one of the protest’s organizers said at the time, “I am incredibly saddened to see this. This is nothing less than strong arm tactics against a very legitimate and very respectful protest.”

As it turns out, this protest organizer was not the only one who was saddened by this tactic.

STOA

In 2009, after years of strained relationships between the leaders of Region 2 (primarily California) and the national leaders of NCFCA, secession happened. Due to differences in governance philosophy, the structure of tournaments qualifying students for Nationals, and allegedly how certain NCFCA leaders (mis)handled the BJU Protest, California broke from the homeschool forensics union. A new speech and debate league was formed, STOA — which is not an acronym but a reference to ancient Greek architecture. While there are several accounts discussing STOA’s split from NCFCA in 2009, and while the official date is listed everywhere as such, it seems that the original genesis of STOA as an organization began in 2008, as evidenced by STOA’s original blog post dating back to August of that year. This split was announced on HSD in July of 2009 with the title, “California secedes from NCFCA. NO JOKE!”

The original leadership for STOA were Lars Jorgensen, Scott York, Marie Stout, Jeff Schubert, and Dorr Clark. Lars Jorgensen, who was the NCFCA regional coordinator for Region 2 since 2004, was the one who officially announced the split on August 10, 2009. STOA’s goal does not differ significantly from NCFCA’s: “to train Christian homeschooled students in Speech and Debate in order to better communicate a biblical worldview.”

*****

As of today, there are two homeschool speech and debate leagues: NCFCA and STOA. HSLDA continues to sell speech and debate material geared towards these leagues. Many of the original movers and shakers are still involved. Christy Shipe is still on the board of NCFCA. Teresa Moon continues to run CFC and ICC. Lisa Kays, one of the key players attempting to shut down the BJU protest, is on ICC’s board. Scott York continues as president of STOA.

And most curiously, a lot of us competitors who frequented the HSD forums a decade ago still frequent that forum to this day. There’s something about HSD that feels like home.

A Letter of Gratitude, A Call for Dialogue

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A Letter of Gratitude, A Call for Dialogue

By Nicholas Ducote, HA Community Coordinator

As this project has continued, I have challenged myself to analyze many of the institutions and cultures of my youth. (I wrote about an overview of my experiences and contemporary observations here.) I look very fondly on my time in NCFCA and CFC, but my female peers from high school (overwhelmingly) had a lot of criticism due to their experiences.

All of us believe in the mission of teaching kids to express themselves, think critically, and hone their verbal skills. But many of us have now realized that some of the toxic teachings of religious fundamentalism have negatively impacted many of the children in the league and Christian homeschool debate culture. This is not to say that NCFCA must abandon its Christian motivation and purpose. There are, however, simple steps that could be taken to lessen the negative impact of purity teachings and modesty doctrines.

I speak these words of criticism with a heavy heart because I know the tales of the suffering of many of my peers will be dismissed as atypical experiences or dramatic whining. Each and every one of us approaches this task of speaking about and criticizing Christian homeschooling debate with love, deep respect, and admiration for many of our dear friends from the league. Our criticisms are not a condemnation of NCFCA, CFC, STOA, et al (see here for an overview of the differences in these acronyms). Rather, consider our criticisms a call to “be holy for I [Christ] am holy.” I know perfection is impossible, but Christian homeschool debate taught me to fight for the impossible if I believed it was right.

We will publishing some pieces this week that are very critical of Communicators for Christ and the Moon family. I have fact-checked them and considered each one with an open mind. It is hard for me to comprehend how it could be so bad for some, when my experience was so positive.  I don’t say this to diminish others’ negative experiences because, as I read these stories, it all made sense. Yes, things like the pressure of competition or the Body Shaming/Modesty Police didn’t impact me negatively, but I support and defend all the stories that we publish here.

I wanted to include a letter I wrote to Mrs. Moon a while ago, before Ryan and I began this project. I had a feeling that we would eventually get around to NCFCA and CFC, if only because so many of us share that experience on common.

*****

Mrs. Moon,

I was chatting with Devin recently about how beneficial my time on tour was for me. He mentioned that a lot of former interns have written to you about their scarring, possibly traumatizing experiences, they had one tour (no details, just very generally). I was honestly very shocked! Devin said I should pass on the kind words to you. I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, but my experience was fantastic. Yes, I had to memorize a sign-language dance to Mary Did You Know, but it’s a great memory.

My adolescence was very troubled. My family got deep into ATI, which I now consider to be a cult. At the first CFC conference I attended in 2003, Caleb Smith’s charisma opened me up to really express myself. From there, I developed critical thinking skills in the networks fostered at your conferences. I remember one conversation I had with you, I think it may have been in Austin in the downstairs coffee shop (I don’t expect you to remember), and I asked you about why CFC operated for-profit instead of a non-profit. You said you had a vision and you didn’t want it to be lost. This really bothered me for a long time and I thought it was a sort of “pat” answer. In the last few years, I’ve come to appreciate the work you did on an entirely new level. You opened up thousands of sheltered homeschool kids to so many ideas and the ability [to] process new ideas. I can honestly say I probably learned more from CFC [about how to think logically and empirically] than I ever did about all the sciences combined in high school. Without CFC, I never would have found debate, which was my only way to process out all the cultist nonsense. I credit debate 100% with where I am now.

Not only did the conferences change me, but the tour experience itself was life-changing. For the first time, I was out of my parents house and given real responsibilities. Emotionally, I experienced the first few months without a sense of impending doom, constant anxiety, and other home problems. I will also never forget that you made some pretty big exceptions to your rules for alumni participation levels to even let me tour with the team. I remember a conversation we had sometime before I toured after a regional tournament. I waited away from all the people partying to try and talk to you, you made it clear that you thought I had a lot of potential, but I needed to focus and buckle down. You were one of the first people to give me any sort of self confidence and sense of purpose.

I thrived in that environment and I kindled my love for teaching. Never again have I had so much “class room” time simply teaching subjects I’m passionate about. The skills I learned coordinating tournaments, administering things, herding participants prepared me for being dropped into Afghanistan with three weeks to design a curriculum, teach it, practice debates, organize, run, and administer a tournament. I know without CFC there’s no way I would have been prepared for that. And now there’s a thriving debate league in Afghanistan – thanks to the determination of Josh McCormick. 

******

Many of us are where we are in large part because of Christian homeschool debate. Ryan and I have the tools to do this because we were trained to be counter-cultural warriors who fight the power in order to defend truth. It is unfortunate that criticism must be leveled at what many of us hold so dearly. Yet we would betray those life-changing lessons if we did not.

We want younger people in these groups to have a better experience, to have the “life-changingness” without the emotional trauma. I don’t know what that means exactly — but almost ten years ago, Ryan Stollar tried to start that conversation and he was punished for it. So we are going to have this damn conversation, whether it is comfortable or not.

Debate As Socialization: Luke’s Thoughts

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Debate As Socialization: Luke’s Thoughts

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Luke” is a pseudonym.

One of the very first things you learn in debate is the necessity of defining your terms.

So I’d like to begin with defining “socialization.”

In the spirit of late 1990’s homeschool debaters, I am going to use an online dictionary. Here’s how Dictionary.com defines “socialization”:

“a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position.”

This definition of socialization fascinates me, because it has absolutely nothing to do with how we homeschoolers think of socialization. When we made fun of outsiders asking that age-old question about it, we’d kinda laugh it off and say, “Um, we have lots of friends! We don’t have a socialization problem!”

But what’s really funny is not the question itself. What’s really funny is that having friends, or park days, or co-ops, has nothing to do with socialization. Because socialization isn’t just interacting with like-minded or ideologically similar people of the same (or even different) peer group. It’s about a process that allows you to become you. And my early homeschooling years had nothing to do with me being me. They had to do with me being a mini-version of my parents and my subculture. I wasn’t learning how to think for myself. I was learning to think like my parents. Actually, that’s not fair. I was learning to think how the writers of our homeschooling curriculum wanted me to think. My parents, like me, were pawns on a cultural chessboard that transcended our little home.

But then debate came around. Debate was like my own Enlightenment, my own personal Great Awakening. Debate forced me and inspired me to look at different sides of an issue, to examine opposing viewpoints with earnestness and dedication. Debate taught me to question assumptions and challenge norms. Debate put me in a position to realize how complex life actually is. And it is far more complex than my homeschooling curriculum tried to trick me into thinking.

As the black and white facade faded, for the first time I got to figure out what I thought. What values and policies and ideas I thought made sense. I was beginning the process of acquiring a personal identity.

And as I acquired my own identity, I also learned the norms and skills necessary to being a good citizen in the public square of ideas. In short, I was becoming truly socialized. I learned how think for myself, how to articulate my own thoughts, and how to interact with people that thought differently.

The socializing aspect of debate was truly a blessing. It made me me. And that’s something I would never give up for anything. Learning to be one’s self — and to publicly express that individuality — is one of the greatest lessons someone can ever learn.

The Bruises Becoming My Silent Screams: Timothy

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

The Bruises Becoming My Silent Screams: Timothy

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Timothy” is a pseudonym.

Trigger warning: self-injury.

I don’t really remember how I got the idea. It just sort of happened.

I was at a homeschool speech and debate conference run by Communicators for Christ, that traveling caravan that brought NCFCA to the Christian homeschool masses. I wasn’t exactly the model homeschool student. Which doesn’t meant that I wore pentagrams and listened to Korn. It means that, when I liked a girl, I would try to hang out with her. But a guy and a girl hanging out — in the I Kissed Dating Goodbye world — meant that, I don’t know,  they’d have sex. And we all know sex leads to social dancing. Or that was the running joke.

Apparently I spent too much time with this girl. Because I got dragged in front of three sets of parents and — in front of all of them, as well their kids — got raked over the coals for all sorts of questionable activities. Not making out, or holding hands — I don’t even know if the girl liked me, so, yeah, we didn’t get as close as even holding hands. But apparently just talking to a girl for those few extra minutes in between debate classes justified this public inquisition.

Frankly, I was shaken to the core. I had never had experienced such a strange situation, having parents — not mine, mind you, as they weren’t there — criticize me in front of peers, as if to make an example of me. I was horrified and embarrassed.

I wanted to cry. I felt confused and surrounded and had nowhere to run or hide but just had to sit there for hours, listening to this “purity intervention.” But I already felt like I was a failure. I did not want to be myself in the position of revealing the pain I was in. Then I would have felt even more like a failure.

So after that, in between classes, I would hide in the bathroom. I was embarassed and didn’t want to hang out with anyone. And then I started hitting my thighs. At first just to get the negative energy out. But then I began hitting myself harder. Harder to the point that I was beating myself. The more painful it was physically, the less I felt emotionally. I was using my fists to bruise my skin — the bruises becoming my silent screams.

That was the beginning. For the next few years this became my chief method of releasing stress and turmoil. When parents criticized me, when my parents wouldn’t stand up for me to other busybody parents, when I would later leave Christianity and fundamentalism behind and find myself ostracized by my former friends and communities — I couldn’t bring myself to accept myself as my own self. I’d simply punish myself, my body. I would think, I was predestined for hell. That’s what they probably were thinking anyways. I was a vessel for wrath; I was always a vessel for wrath; I might as well prepare myself for eternal punishment in the here and now.

Now I know better. Now I know that those parents were trapped by their own fears, creating their own prisons of perfection and trying to bring everyone else into their prisons as well. Now I know that my body deserves better, that I deserve better.

It’s taken a long time to find this new strength. But I did find it. And now I refuse to treat my body like those parents treated my spirit.