The nation-wide forensics circuit, numbering upwards of 250,000 middle school and high school students, heretofore essentially reinforces students’ exposure to the social-science and public-policy, conventional wisdom. But now, thanks to SDI, students’ can go beyond this wisdom. Consequently, our students are better positioned to win debates, advance their careers and lift society!
There is this common misconception that forensics is mostly about critical thinking and communication technique. But it is also heavily about knowledge—specifically, government, economics, policy and history. Furthermore, the forensics circuit may tend to emphasize (1) what might be called second-order thinking (the quoting of experts) and (2) the commonplace perspectives, namely, present-day versions of liberalism and conservatism.
The contribution that SDI makes is to sharpen the participants’ ability to utilize the conventional wisdom and to introduce them to the non-conventional, as well. Therefore, we help train them the way the ancient and medieval West trained those who built or transformed civilization! As such, we impart powerful Classical Technique (in effect, how to become an expert in your own right) and Strategic Knowledge (the mountaintop view of relevant history, including important present and historical statecrafts, and powerful research aids, that is, where to find major competing sources of information). In sum, we train our students not in pedestrian leadership but in statesmanship!
* Home of the BIG INNOVATION in forensics coaching! CLICK and watch this 16-minute Video.
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* PhDs and MAs on staff.
* We support Public Forum, Policy, Lincoln-Douglas, Congress and UN
* SDI Consulting comes in two forms–Boot Camps I and II.
* While second-order thinking prevails or mostly prevails on the forensics circuit, we teach first-order critical thinking of the type that built Greece and Rome and that top professionals use today.
* Our instructors are experts in the subjects that are typically encountered on the forensics circuit and thus are grounded in public policy, international relations, politics and history.
* Classical Rhetoric informs everything that we do.
* The top leadership-academy practices that the West has seen, including those of Cicero, Quintilean and John Quincy Adams, inform us too.
