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

A new documentary called Immutable follows students in the Washington Urban Debate League

over a two-year period as they face 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.

I'm saying that Asia is going to start a war.

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.

Imagine it for the first time when we use this as a hookwikid.

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.

But they're paying money and not receiving SSI.

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.

I just saw it as some opportunity and going into debate and starting to compete

and actually when it felt good, I liked this word 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.

Millhouse is part of the Washington Urban Debate League,

which helps students in DC area public schools hone their debate skills.

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.

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.

We looked it 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, Jeff, is that you see brilliance emerge.

Well, interesting. We're negative.

Debaters have to be ready to argue either side of a topic.

High school senior Satara Mazumdar approaches it this way.

I think I have a couple of approach of both like 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.

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

I think really the biggest takeaway is that debate can be anything you want it to be.

It is not just your standard like 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. How about you Noah? Um, I feel the same.

I actually started the debate team at my middle school at Kettering Middle School.

And so I thought 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 wanted care about what's going on in the world,

but how that affects us at home.

Most of all, Ornstein says he hopes that in this politically polarized time,

immutable can show that civil disagreement is still possible.

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 for broadly, we hope that that will resonate.