I have a hard time agreeing that there's much of a parallel between "[what's wrong with] American politics" and a 15 year old "spending many long nights holed u

I have a hard time agreeing that there's much of a parallel between "[what's wrong with] American politics" and a 15 year old "spending many long nights holed up poring over amicus briefs or economic analyses". In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the backlash against highly technical forms of debate is most indicative of the current political moment. From my perspective, the backlash is basically just lots of people with at-best marginal interest and basically no skin in the game loudly condescending legions of volunteer educators. More-over, the politicians who most typify the current political moment more resemble the under-prepared student sweet-talking their way out of a substantive debate than the over-prepared egg head presenting an 15-point analysis of an amicus brief at break-neck speed. Critiques of overly-technical, jargon-filled, evidence-heavy debate styles aren't exactly difficult to sell. And there's a lot to be said for slowing things down (I insist on quality over quantity when I judge). But it's worth pointing out that the proposed alternative styles devolve into "dueling used car salesmen" at least as often as the former devolve into "speed competitions". I'd rather watch a bad speed match than a bad duel between clueless care salesmen, but that's certainly a personal preference between two objectively bad choices. In other words, most high school students aren't particularly good at making arguments and will settle for style when they can't win on substance. That's true regardless of the style you choose to emphasize. The important thing is that tens of thousands of kids learn how to present a speech in front of an audience and also get some practice reading "amicus briefs and economic analyses".