Spencer grad touts skills learned in debate

Spencer High School alumnus Mark Woolsey received a smile and challenge from Jan Myers, his former high school debate coach, while making a Friday afternoon stop in Spencer. (Photo by Kris Todd) [Order this photo]

Mark Woolsey credits a Spencer High School teacher and his 1976 start in debate with opening several of the most important doors in his life. Several of those doors have extended onto the international level.

The 49-year-old son of Joanne Woolsey, who formerly served as the director of nursing at Longhouse Nursing Home, and the late James Woolsey, who served as a podiatrist in Spencer, has worked the past seven years as a speech and debate instructor at Yavapai College in Prescott, Ariz.

The 1979 SHS graduate also debated in college on scholarship. Woolsey met his wife, Denise, while both were members of the collegiate debate team.

On his way to rebuild flood-damaged homes in Cedar Rapids this past weekend with Sara Krogshede, the foreign exchange student from Denmark the Woolseys have hosted this past school year, the two stopped at Mel and Jan Myers' place in Spencer. There, he fondly recalled the interaction he'd had with other high school students as a debater, deeming it a "great cultural learning experience" for him.

He also recalled being dragged to a debate meeting in 1976 by Chuck Fagen, his best friend at SHS. Although he didn't have an interest in the extracurricular activity, Woolsey remembered Jan Myers, who taught and coached debate at the time, telling other potential novices in attendance that they wouldn't be allowed to participate in the program's out-of-state travel until they were varsity team members. Woolsey also took Myers research assignment handed out at the meeting as a challenge.

He returned with five times the pieces of evidence she'd requested, as well as a newfound desire to travel with the SHS debate team.

By his senior year, the accomplished SHS debate team Woolsey was a steadfast member of had finished as runner-up for the state crown.

Today, Woolsey credits Myers and his participation in the SHS debate team with having one of the largest influences on his academic career.

"As I look back on my high school career, (debate) definitely had the best memories. I didn't realize it at the time, though. But now, as a college instructor, I know the kind of tools that you learn through debate really are helpful in life. You learn things like research skills, public speaking and critical thinking skills. I think self-esteem is another big asset of debate and forensics," he said. "Over the years, debate has opened up so many doors to so many different pathways for me. It's an activity, I think, you don't really understand what you're learning and what you're developing until you start getting involved in other activities and finding out that these skills really can apply in many different areas."

After spending one semester at the former Westmar College in Le Mars, Woolsey transferred to Northern Arizona University, where he graduated with a degree in speech communication. He then pursued and received a master's degree from California State University, Northridge (CSU) in speech communication.

Woolsey's mentor during graduate school, Dr. Don Brownlee, was involved with a Chinese educational program which developed the idea of bringing American debaters to China for a tournament.

"They were using it primarily to hone their English skills. It was thought that debate was a good way to teach English. They didn't realize the critical or political aspects of it," Woolsey recalled. "I worked on a project where we developed a training video on how to debate. It was a demonstration debate. That film was sent over to China and distributed through different universities in China. It then sparked an interest of having a debate tournament in China."

Woolsey was among the two-person teams from CSU allowed to travel abroad in January 1989 to take part in the communist country's first debate tournament at Xi'an University. He recalled a high-ranking education department official's warm welcome during a reception held in honor of the American debaters arrival.

"His speech was about how this was a place in history," Woolsey recalled. "I think we'd kind of taken it for granted until we arrived there and realized that for Chinese students this was kind of a turning point. When we got to know the students, we realized that for them, debate was a chance to express opinions, to challenge opinions and to critically think. It was also kind of a newfound freedom of being able to openly criticize."

Woolsey remembered being told three rules by a government representative right before his first debate: Debaters could not criticize or put down their opponent, their opponent's university or the country their opponent was from.

"That one we had a little trouble with because we were debating United Nations policies," he said of the last rule. "The Chinese debaters were arguing how well their birth control policies had worked and how the United Nations helped to set them up. The only way for us to argue against it was to criticize the policy. I remember having prepared this debate and having kind of a decision to make, whether or not we were going to listen to the rules or just go out and do it. We decided we were going to go ahead and debate it the way we always were taught to."

At the tournament's conclusion, Woolsey was named a top speaker and among the country's top team members. When he was asked to serve as a keynote speaker at a 2003 international speech conference held in China, he reflected on his experiences from 1989. Woolsey also saw then that the Chinese university had a trophy case with his picture and others from the first debate tournament hosted in China displayed in it.

During their stay two decades ago, Woolsey said American debaters also viewed the Great Wall of China and the lifelike Terracotta Warriors uncovered in 1974 near the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi. The graduate students also saw Mao Zedong, the first chairman of the Communist Party of China, lying in state. Woolsey said they witnessed poverty firsthand and, with individual interpreters, were allowed to enter places such as a monastery that American tourists had never been allowed before.

"Again, I think we begin to see in Chinese history it was a very small piece of change that was going on," he said of the experiences they were allowed to take part in.

The American delegation of debaters also witnessed a few public uprisings while touring the country. At one in particular, military police stepped onto their tour bus and told them to not take any photographs of the situation. In hindsight, Woolsey said he wasn't surprised when he heard about the Tiananmen Square protests, which culminated in the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre. Instead, he recalled being worried about the safety of the Chinese debaters he'd befriended just months before.

"What I did learn was that there were uprisings in other parts of China. But what the world saw was only Tiananmen Square and Beijing, which was probably the focus of the uprisings," the Arizona-based college professor said. "But, there were also riots and uprisings going on at a lot of other universities. American journalists couldn't get to those areas, though, so there were no reports on them."

In his current position, Woolsey visits with high school and college debate representatives across the country. Many are finding themselves having a hard time making financial ends meet. The college professor pointed to his collegiate alma mater as an example of a university which lost its debate program funding last year. In contrast to this extracurricular program cutting action occurring across the nation, Woolsey pointed to his participation in the International Debate Education Association, which hosts a forum each year in a different country.

"Debate is flourishing all over the world. It breaks my heart to come back here to the United States and hear stories about colleges and high schools losing the program -- not just cutting their budget, but losing entire debate programs," he reported. "It almost makes me think, 'Is the rest of the world moving forward and we're moving backward as far as our critical thinking, our knowledge of the world and the kind of experiences that not only do you share in a debate room, but when students come together to debate at a tournament, the interaction they have outside the room.'"