Jun 02, 2023 At 03:22 PM EDT
Isabella Long was built for debate.
Many high schoolers stumble into debate as shy, soft-spoken kids eager to find their voice. But Long seemed destined to make compelling arguments.
After participating in a debate in one of her sixth grade classes several years ago, the soon-to-be junior at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Early College in Denver was hooked.
She was assigned a side of the argument she said everyone in the class hated but found that making and defending her case was something she really loved.
As a theater kid, Long had no issue with public speaking or sharing her opinion. In eighth grade, she joined the debate class to be competitive because she said she liked arguing.
"I've kind of always been a person to express my opinions," Long said. "But I was a lot more hesitant [to share] my opinions before because I didn't feel like I had an educated opinion because I found it so difficult to do that research."
Long's debate coach, Rachel Bruce, knew she would be a great debater from the first time they met over Zoom during the period of online learning amid the COVID pandemic.
"She spoke on camera, and I knew she had it," Bruce told Newsweek recently. "She had a natural talent for debate. I didn't need to coach her much."
Bruce described Long as a "force of nature" who is heavily involved in her school's extracurriculars, including drama, ROTC, the Gay-Straight Alliance and the Honor Society.
"She speaks up, she's talkative, she's smart, she listens really well, she's good in school, she's outgoing," Bruce added.
Through debate, Long said she learned how to research and refine her arguments. While she has always been willing to offer up her thoughts, Long said her comments are now better informed.
"My friends tell me, 'You're so opinionated, everyone knows your opinions,' but they are educated opinions now—I know what I'm talking about," she said.
Competitive high school debate is nothing like some of the intense political debates that people are familiar with, featuring a stage full of politicians vying for screen time to create viral moments and raise funds. The sport presents a more focused, organized and civil discourse about a pressing policy topic. Unlike in political debates, student debaters spend months preparing to argue both sides of a single topic.
In one round, Long said she can have a "heated" conversation about whether Turkey should be included in NATO and then start discussing feminist ideology in the next round. That type of informed "randomness" is really appealing to her.
"We're all having informed ideas, and we're trying to have a nuanced conversation," she said. "In competitive debate, you throw out the most random ideas and it works."
Long describes herself as being "aggressive" in the debate rounds, especially during the cross examination. She also tries to appeal to the judges' emotions—making them feel guilty about choosing an opposing policy to win.
"I've moved more into this idea of, like, I want to make you cry [to] get you to feel that emotional appeal," she said. "I've always found it meaningful if you can feel bad about your policy or make the judge feel bad about voting [for] this terrible thing that's gonna happen now—I feel like I won."
As a theater lover, Long knows all about evoking emotion with her performance.
"Theater has a lovely aspect of emotion to it," she said. "I'm trying to make you feel something."
This carries over into debate rounds where Long thinks carefully about what words to use and emphasize at moments during her argument.
She has even integrated some of her debate exercises in the theater club, like implementing the common trick of speaking with a pen in one's mouth to help fast-talking debaters with enunciation.
Now that arguing has become one of her many hobbies, Long said debate has helped her when she engages in discussions outside of the competitive space in her personal life.
"We joke a lot about [whether] debate makes you better at arguing with your parents," she said. "I know it's an appeal for a lot of people, especially for me because I do end up in a lot of situations where I'm arguing politics."
In those instances, Long said she usually brings an informed argument, even if the one she's arguing against isn't.
"I'm able to sit there and say, 'Hey, I have done research on this, I know what I am talking about,'" she added.
With the expansion of the internet, information is of course more widespread and accessible, especially for younger people, in a way it wasn't for older generations. Despite consuming all of this information, Long said young people are still dismissed by adults who don't think someone in high school could possibly grasp the magnitude of the complex issues we face.
"As a society, we [have] this habit of saying, 'Oh, you're too young to understand,'" she said. "But because of the internet, no one is honestly too young to understand."
She said children as early as elementary school are hearing about gun violence, climate change, immigration and other major issues.
"[Young people] have opinions on them and they have educated opinions on them, but no one cares about their voices," she added.
Even if teenagers don't have personal, practical experience with these issues, Long said they are "significantly more informed than older generations" because they can cut through "whitewashed or Eurocentric" views of English or history with better research and critical-thinking skills.
Older generations, she said, were taught "that it is better to stay silent and keep [their] heads down" and not question what they were learning.
This is why Long believes the critical-thinking skills of debate should be implemented in all school curricula. At MLK, debate is taught as an elective class, making it a more accessible option for students, like Long, who don't have the time after school.
"We're doing [debate practice] every day as opposed to some after-school teams [who] meet once or twice a week," she said.
Debating against different people with various perspectives and opinions and having to constantly switch sides of an argument throughout the year fosters greater empathy, according to Long.
"Debate allows you to go in, have these discussions—even though they do often get heated in the round—and then sit down after and have a very civil discussion and even make friends," she said, adding that she's friends with many of the kids she has debated against from other schools. "You're able to understand both sides. I may not agree with you, but I understand where you're coming from."
"You don't get that kind of maturity from students as young as she is. She can pick up on things [the] first time," Bruce said of Long. "She could do [debate] in college."
As she continues her high school career, Long hopes to stick with debate. She said her involvement in the activity has inspired her to pursue law and activism. In college, she thinks she might study clinical psychology before heading off to law school to maybe work as a lawyer for the military.
Long jokes that law is a pretty common goal for competitive debaters, and it's a natural progression for someone who found not only what she's passion about, but what she's best at.
"It's very stereotypical that all debaters have to be lawyers," she said. "But it's true that you go into [debate] and you fall in love with it, and you're like, 'I could do this for a living.'"
