A reflection on the future of the NDT.

• Author: Wade, Melissa Maxcy
• Position: National Debate Tournament

What will the National Debate Tournament look like in the next fifty years? The answer to this question requires an examination of projections about the educational system in which the NDT is housed. Demographic changes affecting secondary education in the 21st century inevitably influence the pedagogical and financial future of post-secondary education. The most casual observer would note that our current system of education at all levels operates on an industrial model where bells ring every fifty minutes to signal the end of a "shift" to prepare individuals for jobs on assembly lines which no longer exist. Educational studies professor Jacqueline Irvine evaluated the implications of demographic changes and the inertia of pedagogical orthodoxy and projected the future educational reality:

As the twenty-first century rapidly approaches, education is facing a serious dilemma. The 'typical' student that pedagogy and educational prescriptions are designed for is an endangered species. Highly motivated, achievement-oriented, white middle-class students from two-parent families are becoming scarce in most school systems-rural, suburban, and urban. In ten years. . .data confirm that. . .[increasingly poor minority populations] will completely alter the way educators will administer schools and instruct students. Unless the education profession makes reforms to accommodate these students, then the year 2000 will not bode well for education and society at large. There will be a large pool of middle-class white aged who will be asked to support financially the poor, nonwhite public-school children who are being taught by middle-class white female teachers trained in the pedagogy of the 1960's and who work in schools with administrative structures and hierarchies designed for schools in the 1900's. . . .When teachers feel alienated. . .they "tend to disparage students, consider them unteachable, [and] hold them personally responsible for failure. . ."(1)

The coming century will require radical pedagogical reform in order to promote a healthy society; one in which citizens have the advocacy skills needed to communicate across the chasms of difference.

The NDT is currently located in the midst of the demographic transition. I would suggest that the future of the NDT is based on its capacity to redefine itself in the pedagogical debate; that significant attention needs to be directed to issues of institutional exclusion; that a new mission needs to be...