Monument Members are speech and debate competitors who receive weekly releases of bestselling source material. These downloads consist of debate briefs, cases, limited-preparation scrimmage assignments, modeled speech scripts, and coaching prompts. Throughout the competitive season, Monument Members will receive hundreds of valuable downloads that will assist them in competitions.
Questions? Get quick answers by emailing support@monumentpublishing.com.
Scroll through the following to help give you a better understanding of how Monument Members can serve you.
About Our Membership
Monument Memberships are intended for speakers and debaters planning to compete in various speech and debate leagues. A weekly email drops to members called “Monument Mondays” that assembles source material that release that Monday. Throughout the competitive year, Monument’s authors and coaches keep members on the competitive edge, always preparing them for upcoming tournaments.
About Monument’s Methodology
The following are (mostly) unique methodologies to Monument’s success. Not everyone coaches this way, but — after decades of teaching and growing our curriculum and programs — we believe this method to be the best way to teach speech and debate. This is the “Monument Methodology”:
- Traditional. There is never a loss for new, progressive ideas to make speech and debate better. No doubt, we will entertain the latest winning strategies. However, when the newest idea is exhausted, we are usually left with traditional stock issues, Aristotelian rhetoric, and logic. Monument teaches you to master traditional forensic theory.
- Structure and Strategy. The plethora of debate techniques are vast and wide, and Monument encourages many of them. However, teaching higher-level strategy before embracing fundamental structure is extremely damaging to students, especially new ones. Monument guides you through structure and strategy…in that order!
- Flow. Understanding proper horizontal flowing technique is the first fundamental understanding of any debate format. Failing to flow properly is failing to know the structure of debate. Speeches, too, should shoot straight and be understandable, not rapid-fire or chaotic. If you don’t flow it, you don’t know it.
- Research. All competitors should start with research when building a debate case or a speech. Starting with an idea and finding research to support it is a backwards method of preparation that leads to frustration and harmful ignorance. Let the research guide you.
- Modeling. The most efficient way to teach speech and debate (or any school of education) is through modeling. This scientific pedagogy, known among educators as “imitation,” is empirically proven. We hire champions to write our source material, and our Members enjoy modeling their success. Model the champions and those who coach them.
- Purpose. We believe every student has purpose in life, a “calling” that is unique to the individual. Our methodology supports individual purpose by training hearts and minds for action in that purpose. We do not proselytize or promote a hidden agenda. Instead, we see speech and debate as an arena of competition that helps launch young people into life. Monument’s mission is to “train minds for action.”
About Monument Content
Students can participate in many different leagues that provide competitive opportunities to apply their speech and debate learning. Monument Members enjoy direct support for several leagues, and cross-over to smaller leagues or organizations is simple. Follow the links below to find out more about what these leagues have to offer:
Within each league, there are several events. Monument Writers write material for specific events, and Monument Members enjoy this material immediately upon release (hot off the editing press). The following is a list of events we support in Season 21:
- Lincoln-Douglas Debate
- Parli (or World Schools) Debate
- Policy (or CX) Debate
- Extemp
- Impromptu
NOTE: Source material for Apologetics, Interp and Platform have been put into books and will be available in Monument Plus.
About Copyrights & Permissions
Basically, if you are not an active Monument Member, you may not download or use Monument Member material. Usage gets a little complicated in partnerships (i.e. Policy or Public Form debates). In these cases, the one with the membership needs to be the controller of Monument Member material. Sharing logins is strictly prohibited.
For more detail on copyrights and permissions, see our copyrights and permissions page:
About Monument Writers
All Monument Writers exhibit past success in competition or have coached national contenders. Monument Writers must value ethical evidence standards, display exemplary writing and communication skills, and have a “teaching spirit” — the genuine desire to help the next generation of speakers and debaters. We hire approximately 30-40 writers every year.
If you meet these skills and would like to apply to become a Monument Writer, fill out our application. We pay for publishable work, and we enjoy writing strong letters of recommendation for students in their future endeavors.
Our Writing Team Apply to Be a Writer
About Monument’s History
Monument Publishing has been providing resources since 1998 to students and competitors across the country, primarily the NCFCA, NSDA and Stoa leagues. Officially founded with the first release of Blue Book, the authoring community of Monument Publishing has grown to hundreds of champion contributors. This history is rich with resources geared to making the speech and debate experience simple, successful and fun. We launched our membership program in 2016, and a year later launched Monument Members as its own website to accommodate with our larger demand.
Contact Us
Would you like to know more? We have a coaching team who would love to hear from you and answer your questions. Visit our contact page to inquire.