Marshallese debate

I’ve done a hell of a lot of debating in my life – three years of policy debate in high school and four years of parliamentary debating in college. Throw in a smattering of competitive speaking and Model UN, and you have the makings of a supreme dork. Luckily, my dorkiness has come in handy on a few occasions. Most recently, this year I was asked to teach “listening and speaking” to Upward Bound seniors. I wasn’t exactly sure what “listening and speaking” meant so I just changed it into a speech and debate course because that’s what I know.

Teaching the course has been difficult, as expected. Marshallese hate drawing attention to themselves, which of course is exactly what speech and debate is. My students started out with thirty second speeches and slowly made their way to four minutes. Now they’re starting to compete in abbreviated parliamentary debate rounds and their improvement has been noticeable.

Nevertheless, what’s also been noticeable is how differently they approach debate compared to what I’m used to. Marshallese culture is very communal. What is mine is also everyone’s. It’s simply unfair for me to have something and not share it. Thus, when my students began debating and would sometimes miss what their opponents said, they did what they were used to. During the middle of the round they asked their opponents what they said. And their opponents graciously repeated their arguments. After a speech ends, they again speak to each other to clarify what was said during the speech. I was at once flabbergasted and touched. The competitive juices that drove me to debate just does not exist in the same context.

My student was not selected to be a Gates Millennium Scholar. It’s disappointing but I keep telling myself that neither she nor I have anything to be ashamed of. She was part of the first group of applicants form the Marshall Islands, and was selected as one of 1,800 finalists from an applicant pool of 14,000. It’s not a baby step, it’s a big boy step, and maybe next year someone will be selected.

Helping to alleviate the disappointment is the fact that the same student was selected to be a Taiwan Scholar. There were two from Marshall Islands High School, both girls, again. Henry was not chosen for the second straight year. Neither was Jean.

I’ll be back in the United States in forty-two days. Hope to see a lot of you then.