Athens Debate was founded by Sachin Jain in May of 2017. Athens is currently home to nearly 100 students (5th-9th grade) across its Palo Alto, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Saratoga locations. Athens has quickly become one of the largest middle school debate programs in the Bay Area. About the founder: Sachin has 16 years of experience competing and teaching speech and debate. His students have achieved great success at the local, state, and national levels. He completed his undergraduate degree Summa Cum Laude from UC Berkeley and his Masters of Public Policy from UC Berkeley's policy school. Sachin has worked in political and policy capacities at the United States Senate, White House, San Jose City Council, the Governor of California, President of the UC System, and the Mayor of San Jose. The Athens Approach: Debate has the power to be transformative. With the right approach, debate can become a vehicle that channels natural curiosity towards some of life's most challenging subjects and vexing questions. At Athens, teachers augment natural student curiosity with curriculum and an educational pedagogy that prioritizes deep learning and content mastery. In placing a premium on the mastery of logic, writing, philosophy, communication, and public policy, students develop the intellectual toolkit to tackle any issue. Through Athens' innovative curriculum, students: learn how to ask the right questions, engage in vibrant discussions through socratic questioning, improve their technique with creative teaching methods, do their own research and write their own cases from scratch, play constructive games that "trick" them into learning advanced philosophy and logic, and engage in a robust online learning platform that takes their debate education to the next level. In the end, through this no shortcuts approach, Athens students don't just become good debaters, but strong thinkers. The Athens process may take longer but it leads to more meaningful success.
