New documentary 'Immutable' follows student debate team as they find their voices

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: A new documentary called “Immutable” follows students in the Washington Urban Debate League over a two-year period as they faced challenges in their own lives and on the debate stage. In the program, students from middle school through high school learn how to think critically, challenge their own opinions and find their voices through debate.

“Immutable” starts airing tonight on many PBS stations.

I recently spoke with three people connected to the film for a closer look.

Student: I’m saying that Asia is going to start a war if the United States…

Geoff Bennett: The U.S. role in NATO, Social Security benefits and economic inequality, not the kind of topics you usually hear teenagers discussing, but in debate competitions, nothing is off the table.

Urban debate leagues took hold in the 1990s, opening the door to competitive debate for students in city schools.

Will Baker, Founder, New York Urban Debate League: Imagine if for the first time — and we use this as a hook with kids — adults have to sit in the back of the room for an hour and 45 minutes and just listen to your ideas. That’s really powerful.

Noah Millhouse, Student Debater: That they’re paying money and not receiving SSI.

Jonathan Capehart: Noah Millhouse is one of the students featured in the documentary “Immutable.” Now a high school sophomore, Millhouse started debate during COVID after his mother pushed him to give it a try.

Noah Millhouse: I just saw it as a summer opportunity. And going into debate and starting to compete and actually win, it felt good. I liked the sport of debate. I liked the people I met. And it just felt like something I was able to adjust to and just learn new things.

Jonathan Capehart: Millhouse is part of the Washington Urban Debate League, which helps students in D.C. area public schools hone their debate skills.

Norm Ornstein, Matthew Ornstein Memorial Foundation: It teaches life skills. It teaches public school kids a whole host of things, how to speak in front of any audience, get your own voice, how to do research, how to write, how to sort out information from misinformation and disinformation, because this is policy debate.

And that means that every assertion you make has to be backed by a piece of evidence. And if that evidence is bogus, you’re going to get caught with it.

Jonathan Capehart: Norm Ornstein’s late son Matthew was a national debate champion in high school. After Matthew died, Ornstein founded the Matthew Ornstein Foundation, which now hosts a summer debate camp for students.

Norm Ornstein: We looked at — for a way in which we could carry that set of missions forward and thought, let’s try and bring all of this to people who don’t have those resources. It’s been just a rich experience for us to see what happens when you can take kids and give them the tools and the resources.

And one of the elements of this, Geoff, is that you see brilliance emerge.

Student: Wow, interesting.

Jonathan Capehart: Debaters have to be ready to argue either side of a topic. High school senior Sitara Mazumdar approaches it this way.

Sitara Mazumdar, Student Debater: I think I have a coupled approach of both one of strategy and one of empathy. Even if you do not want to debate or argue a certain side, you will encounter people in real life who hold those beliefs. So it’s important to kind of get in their own minds and think about how they would approach an issue and see it from their side.

And I think the second is, in terms of empathy, being able to not just understand what someone is saying, even if you disagree, but also why they say it and what experiences they might have had in their life that have led them to believe that.

Jonathan Capehart: Along the way, students learn how to make arguments about issues that affect their own lives.

Sitara Mazumdar: I implore you to vote affirmative. Just to reiterate, all the autistic adults are not receiving the employment services that they need, 1.9 million autistic adults.

I think really the biggest takeaway is that debate can be anything you want it to be. It is not just your standard stock image of two people yelling at each other. It’s not just like an argument at the dinner table that you might have. It can really — you can take it and use it as a platform to talk about issues that you most care about.

Amna Nawaz: How about you, Noah?

Noah Millhouse: I feel the same. I actually started the debate team at my middle school, at Kettering Middle School, and so I sought it to be as an experience because of what I had felt. And the experience is being able to foster a community, being able to bring others in so they can begin to understand not only what’s going on in the world, because we want to care about what’s going on around, but how that affects us at home.

Jonathan Capehart: Most of all, Ornstein says he hopes that, in this politically polarized time, “Immutable” can show that civil disagreement is still possible.

Norm Ornstein: We’re at the 250th anniversary of the founding of this nation.

And spreading at a time of deep division the whole idea that you can have civil discourse, that you can argue strenuously about things, but not end up in a pitched battle,if people can come away understanding that that’s possible in the society and not just while these kids are doing debates, but, more broadly, we hope that that will resonate.