It's Debatable!

One of Barb's good friends and former co-worker asked us to be a volunteer judge at the Debate Tournament being held this week end at our local High School. They not only provided us with a great schedule, they conducted training to help us judge correctly. It was a complete hoot and I enjoyed the time immensely.

The topic this year is should the US significantly increase the social services provided to the people living in Poverty. Now, you might think that fiscal conservative would be so repulsed by the idea that I might not be fair. In fact, both affirmative teams won their debate and the second debate was clearly so close that I almost had to flip a coin to determine the winner. The first debate was a proposal to increase the size of the Job Service Corps to provide training in those skills that are energy driven. Solar, wind, heating, insulation, low voltage lights are the focus and paid for with the funds returned by the banks as they pay off the loans given them by the stimulus money. Winner on so many levels that I didn't have a problem with this one.

The second debate was to revamp head start and was so controversial that had the Negative team attacked it on the Topicality as not meeting the spirit of the topic that they could have won. There was no real expansion of this program, only qualitative improvements. They want a nationwide curriculum and for all the teachers to have a degree. The negative team had so many places to find fault that it should have been easy to defeat this proposal. They played softball and whiffed the fact that the proposal didn't meet the guidelines of substantial increase. Bummer for the negative team.

I think it is a wonderful topic for the National debaters to look at. They get to think of ways to improve what's out there and how to pay for it. A bonus for Barb and I was the fact that we got to meet the cream of the crop of the students today. Suits and ties, freshly washed faces and smiles around. 'Cides, Tupperware gets to sell all those "Totes" that are filled with facts and figures.

I hope you all get a chance to meet some of today's kids and see that in spite of the technology moving forward, the kids today are a lot more like the kids of my day. It did crack me up that the old timer of yesterday is now a timer function on a cell phone.

Get out and do something nice today. Going to be 70+ here and I for one will be out there with a big smile on my face.

MUD