Sophomore Jon Hovance took first place in his debut Edward Everett competition March 6. Sophomore Nina Morey took second, and junior Patrick McDonald placed third. All five finalists delivered 10-minute speeches on “Education in the Republic” in the 25th annual competition. 

The judges for the final round were College President Larry Arnn, Dean of Masters in Classical Education and Professor of Education Daniel Coupland, and former speechwriter to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush Clark Judge. 

“It wasn’t in the title, but when we talk about a republic, they were clearly all talking about the American republic. This makes total sense: they’re talking to an audience at Hillsdale College who truly believes in investing in the future of this republic,” Coupland said. “The prompt also referred to education in general, but if you go back and you look at the speeches, you’ll see that many of them capitalize on reading in particular, the role that literacy plays within a larger education.” 

Hovance structured his speech according to a problem and his proposed solution. 

“The problem I was trying to lay out is that there’s this idea of education that is beautiful, amazing, and has this transformative power that in a Hillsdale education we see a lot,” Hovance said. “But then when you actually get down to it and you go into a public school, all this kind of beauty stuff we’re talking about isn’t really apparent.”

More specifically, he focused on lack of literacy and effort to teach children to read high-level ideas. Hovance’s solution was abandoning the kind of progressive philosophy that views education as solely a means of employment. 

“One of the things that was really captivating for me was his use of location on the stage to be able to frame the ideas that he was speaking about,” Coupland said. “In terms of the visual use of location and referencing back, he used space to be able to frame the ideas he was trying to say. That was really powerful.”

After a weekend of performing as Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Morey took to the Plaster Auditorium stage to deliver her speech centered on the importance of reforming the public school system, specifically in literacy and civic education. She split her speech into three sections: the problem, the solution, and why the Founding Fathers are the proper lens to accomplish the goal. 

“One of the categories of my speech was what’s wrong with education using statistics about low literacy levels, about how kids are scoring on civic education tests. And then a section with some statistics on how we can fix it, what’s worked for students and what hasn’t, and different schools implementing different resources to help them,” Morey said. “Education, in civics, in the government, impacts politics heavily, because an informed citizenry can actually create a good government.”

Coupland said Morey clearly cared about what she was talking about and seemed to believe in the ideas that she was articulating. 

“Growing up with my older siblings coming to Hillsdale, I’ve always known that education is really important, and I think this research only cemented that fact for me,” Morey said. “If anybody here took a citizenship quiz, they would either ace it or close to it. But 3% of public high schoolers are passing these quizzes. Knowing the difference in the education we get here versus what they are getting helped me realize how important it was, how few students are getting the opportunities we have now, and why we should change that.” 

Morey said more people should enter the competition, even if they are afraid of public speaking. 

“It gives them excellent exposure to professors — just in the preliminary rounds, the mock trial coaches judged us, and it was incredible, and their ballots were so helpful,” Morey said. “If they make the final round, the people they meet and the people they impact could be lifelong connections. I know public speaking is terrifying, yes, but what’s the worst that could happen?”

Like many of the speakers emphasized in their speeches yesterday, Coupland said people ought to engage in public conversation, and the Edward Everett competition is one way to do that. 

“Here at Hillsdale, students and faculty are encouraged to get out, to be in public space, and to argue for ideas, not just hide it under a bushel,” Coupland said. “We have to be involved, and we have to rely not just on the strength of the arguments, but our ability to persuade others towards those good ideas.”