Welcome to Now Debate This 2009
After many months of eager anticipation from students, parents and teachers, we are pleased to announce the Great Debate 2009: How can the United States achieve energy independence?
To answer this question, the Now Debate This team will once again adventure into the past to pave the road ahead. Hence, our motto: Experience History. Create the Future.
Mission Statement
Now Debate This is a national high school debate forum and scholarship contest that enables America’s youth to creatively explore humanities and sciences by using research, critical analysis and communications skills to challenge and inspire our society to resolve contemporary issues.
Goals
1Enlist America’s youth to create viable solutions for our greatest contemporary challenges through researching and experiencing history, and engaging in the productive interchange of ideas.
2Use technology and the Internet to provide accessible and impartial debate and scholarship opportunities to all high school students and teachers.
3Engage students with Call to Action Service Projects that produce positive results in their own communities.
4Effectively partner with institutions and organizations to offer the most rewarding opportunities for students, teachers and communities, including interdisciplinary application of debate in education.
5Impact participants long-term by helping them develop the crucial life skills applied in debate.
The Challenge
 In 2009, we will once again focus the lens of history, this time on one of our nationʼs most pressing problems: the energy crisis. Our debaters will explore such issues as alternative energy, climate change, foreign and domestic policy, economics, innovation and national security, in the quest to develop solutions that Americans can embrace for positive change in the future. Before such solutions may even be considered, it is crucial to understand the reasons why the United States, and indeed the world, has reached this crisis point. Such understanding must be enlightened by the lessons learned from compelling stories from the history of energy.
 To that end, Now Debate This in 2009 will explore the lives and legacies of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Alva Edison, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Albert Einstein, who will each provide insight into the innovations, economics, foreign and domestic policy and the moral and ethical dilemmas presented then and now.
After weeks of preparation and study, our students will walk in the footsteps of these American legends. Then, they will prepare their cases and debate for the scholarship of a lifetime.
Now Debate This: Washington-Lincoln '08
In 2008, our inaugural exploration delved into the presidential leadership legacies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, with the aim to enlighten contemporary choices in the most historic election of recent times. The venture was most successful and highly fruitful, and the work continues, as the content our students created is developed into educational products for the classroom. Although at first glance the Now Debate This program appears to be a scholarship competition for 16 high school juniors, the objective was and remains, to engage broad audiences, through the use of online resources and in-community service.
In 2008, our brand new Web site attracted more than 600,000 page views, national news coverage with print, television and radio coverage in the millions. Tens of thousands of people in an eager public viewed student entries in the tens of thousands on You Tube, and the final round, in which two students debated for $200,000 – with one standing to earn a $150,000 grand prize—was streamed live online, with the public declaring the winner.
Over the next few months, we will unveil a number of opportunities for many people to join the Great Debate. We expect an even higher participation rate this year.
Great Partners Think Alike
 We are very pleased to partner once again with the National Forensic League Speech and Debate Honor Society. NFL brings 83 years of teaching the art of debate and the techniques of competition, two essential skills that will forever benefit the individualʼs education and life experiences.
In addition to supporting our scholarship competitors, Now Debate This will team with NFL to bring debate to teachers and students across disciplines. For example, the 2009 topic of energy independence will find its solutions through the debate of History, Social Studies, Science and English/Speech. We have already developed and have available on this Web site a list of educational standards met by the Now Debate This program.
We encourage everyone to visit this Web site frequently, and Join in the Great Debate!
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Now Debate This has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Great Ideas Brought to Life.