Students in Kealakehe High School’s Global Studies after school class have picked up national awards this year and one team has made it it the “Sweet 16” at the International Public Policy Forum competition.
The high school has been participating in the debate competition for the last 12 years under the direction of teacher Justin Brown.
The IPPF, sponsored by the Brewer Foundation and New York University, is the only competition that gives high school students around the world the opportunity to engage in written and oral debates on issues of public policy.
“They (IPPF) will pick a topic that has a profound statement and the students will either write to affirm that statement or negate that statement,” Brown explained.
This year, the topic was on Universal Basic Income. The students needed to write a seven-page paper, with citations, either making the contentions of why that statement is logical and justified in their framework or why it isn’t.
Out of over 300 entries from around the world, the IPPF chose 64 teams to enter the bracket. Out of five teams Kealakehe entered, three made it to the 64 cut.
“We were the only program in the world that had three teams make it in the top 64,” Brown said.
Brown said he enters the students in the competition as preparation for the Model United Nations competition.
“It’s kind of our fall practice because they have to do a lot of research and understand argumentation. It’s very detailed writing using precise language,” he said.
Once in the top 64, students write a 2,000 word paper and send it to the judges, who assigned either an affirmative or negative viewpoint. The judges will then send it to the opposing team who will give their response and rebuttal, all through email.
“The judges are made up of a lot of law professors and lawyers and they give extremely strong written feedback, which is helpful for us to improve,” said Brown. “At each round half the teams in the world go away. We had two teams make it to the top 32 and one of our teams made it into the Sweet 16.”
The Sweet 16 team, comprised of Mei Kanada, JackOwen Zarley and Ailani Cruz, submitted their last paper on Monday and will find out if they have advanced to the “Elite 8” on April 1.
If they make the cut, they will get an all-expense paid trip to New York City where the competition will switch to a live debate with a top prize of $10,000.
“These are all the best debate and prep programs in the world we are up against and we’re this little rural Title 1 school hanging out there in the top 16,” said Brown.
All of these students who were competing in IPPF were simultaneously prepping and competing in other things.
Brown’s students were also competing in Worldquest, a knowledge-based trivia competition.
“We knocked off all those private schools to take the state championship,” he boasted. That team will be traveling to Washington, D.C the week of April 8 to represent Hawaii in the national competition.
If that wasn’t enough, 16 members of the team were in New York two weeks ago for the Model United Nations, where they represented the Republic of Korea.
“There are three levels of awards you can win there and we kicked butt in all three of those levels, winning top in the nation for research and preparedness. It’s all part of this global preparedness, how can they leverage what they are learning in school and out of school to think about policy, civic engagement and pressing local, state, national and global issues,” he said. “It has been a cool experience this year with this group.”
Anna Payesko was on the winning Worldquest and Model United Nations teams.
“It has been absolutely amazing this year seeing all of our success,” she said. “I’m so excited we won first place this year and get to go to D.C. You learn so much studying all of the different topics. After all this hard work, it is finally paying off.”
Brown’s after-school Global Studies class meets once a week.
“One of the big things we talk about is we are never going to defeat the other person, we’re going to defeat their arguments and even at this point in their intellectual training, it doesn’t matter what they think about an issue, it matters that they can find the best version of an argument, can they find the best version of the other side of that argument and can train their mind to be disciplined to execute the better versions of the arguments,” he said. “Later in life, when they have their issue, whatever it is, they owe it to their issue to find the best version of the case and this forces them arbitrarily at some level to have to really understand both sides. I really think that training intellectually is going to prepare them to be strong advocates for the issue of their choice later in life.”
“I had a lot of fun doing IPPF. It’s the first time I’ve participated in a competition of that kind, and I feel like I got a lot out of it. I improved my research, problem solving, and comprehension skills significantly, bonded with peers, and got to experience written debate for the first time,” said Zarley. “This experience helped me grow and identify areas of improvement for the future.”
Last year, with a different team, Kanada made it to the top 64 but did not advance.
“It was really nice this year to be able to go beyond that to get to the top 32. It was kind of difficult juggling all these different things we all had going on, but we were really good with communicating with each other. We did a lot of research on Universal Basic Income. Even though it was a lot to do, and difficult at times, we worked well as a team and helped each other through the process. Being a public school from Hawaii, it was incredible to see our names up there against all these private schools around the world,” she said.
She said joining Model UN and being introduces to IPPF was very eye opening because the research portion is valuable no matter where you go.
“Being a lifelong learner has always been my goal and I think the research aspect of IPPF and Model UN in general encompasses that value. Knowing how to research different topics and perspectives you don’t necessarily agree with or know about is valuable because it teaches you and opens you up to so many different things,” she said.
Brown said at the end of the day, what happens politically is an application of sociology, which is an application of psychology and the students can understand how incentives punishments and perceived likelihood of success informs their decisions in every day life.
”To see it coming to fruition at such high levels with so many students with so many things at the exact same time in this month of March is quite exciting. These kids are world class,” said Brown.
“No matter what happens, I’m really happy we made it to the Sweet 16,” said Kanada.
