I had the opportunity to spend the last ten days participating in Public Forum format debates in China with two current members of the Lakeland District Debate team and one recent graduate.  We participated in tournaments organized by the National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA) of China and Dipont Education Management.  In all, we competed in one tournament in Hangzhou, engaged in demo debates in Nanjing & Shanghai, and

We spent April 15 & 16th in Nanjing, China where we engaged in some demo debates and sight seeing. Our first two demo debates were at Nanjing Foreign Languages School (NFLS).  NFLS, coached by Thom O’Rourke, is widely regarded as one of the top three schools in all of China. In the first debate, Humza & Jatin faced off against Priten and Ryan Wang, last year’s quarterfinalist in the China

[Related: Lakeland District Debate arrives in Hangzhou] On April 11, 2014, the Lakeland District Debate Team began the Zhejiang Regional Tournament in Hangzhou on the topic of whether China should prioritize reductions in income inequality over economic growth.  One hundred and thirty three teams from Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Ningbo competed in the tournament. Like the Chinese teams, we were given our code for the pairings. And the debaters were welcomed

Over the next ten days, Lakeland District Debaters Humza Tahir and Jatin Bharwani, as well as coaches Priten Shah and Stefan Bauschard, will be traveling in China to compete for the first time. April 10 We arrived in Shanghai mid-afternoon on April 10th and enjoyed a great “hot pot” Chinese meal where we had the opportunity to have some boiled staples — shrimp, tofu, vegetables, chicken, and lamb — as

Amand Luo, Dipont Education Management, Debate Program COO Jeff likes to recall the story about his first visit in early 2012 to Montgomery Bell Academy, an all male high school located in Nashville, Tennessee. A high school debate tournament was being held at the prestigious academy. As a VP of Dipont Education, Jeff was in charge of laying the groundwork for the first officially sanctioned and internationally recognized debate program in China.