On Top of Down Under

At a time when many of his peers couldn’t care less about world affairs, high school junior Nick Edwards is fast becoming an expert on Australia’s economy.

On command, he rattles off trade statistics: The country scheduled to host the next summer Olympics--where tourism is a $6-billion industry--has no government apparatus to promote tourism, 17-year-old Nick says. An agricultural powerhouse, Australia is home to 24 million cattle and 2.6 million pigs.

Esoteric information, perhaps. But it’s giving Nick and 14 other Camarillo High School students the foundation to debate foreign affairs from a Down Under point of view.

In March, the teens will put their trivia to the test when they represent Australia at the National High School Model United Nations conference in New York City. Camarillo is the only Ventura County school sending a delegation to the three-day gathering. To help pay for the $500 trip, each student attending is selling candy and washing cars.

“I’m learning all about diversification of trade,” said Nick, the school’s head delegate, during his school lunch break Tuesday. “It’s like jumping into this whole fountain of facts. You just start drinking. It’s really interesting.”

For months now, members of the Camarillo Model U.N. delegation have studied Australian trade, immigration policies and environmentalism in preparation for the conference. While there, 2,300 students from around the world will experience first-hand what it’s like to formulate international policy, from the grand rhetoric of committee debate to the niggling over resolution language.

Emulating diplomats from Azerbaijan and Botswana to Uzbekistan and Yemen, the students attending the conference will attempt to forge compromises on such tricky topics as eliminating international terrorism, disbanding armament stockpiles and divvying up water rights in Israeli-occupied West Bank. Some successful delegations will win the right to attend an international Model U.N. gathering at The Hague later this year.

With the globalization of business, more and more teens have flocked to Model United Nations conferences in the last four or five years, said University of North Carolina student Katie Starrett, the conference’s secretary-general.

“They develop an understanding of other countries and a broader view of the entire world,” Starrett said. “It’s not just, ‘I’m China. Here’s where China comes from.’ They begin to see where all the countries come from. They also come away with a much greater sense of self-esteem.”

For the Camarillo squad, the self-esteem will have to come later. On Tuesday, they were much too busy sucking on pencils.

Under the direction of advisor Rita Neumeister, a speech and English teacher, squad members practiced delivering a eulogy while holding two pencils between their teeth--a forensic trick to improve pacing and diction.

To get their positions across in the allotted time, Neumeister estimates, the students will need to speak clearly at about 200 words a minute. On Tuesday, though, they were still tripping over their tongues.

“Time’s up,” Neumeister told a student during the lunchtime practice. “If my plane goes down next month, none of you is giving my eulogy. . . . What’s important is that you get the ethos, pathos and Logos in there.”

What the students still may lack in enunciation, they’ve already made up for in insight. Senior Sara Te said her understanding of other countries is already expanding.

“Especially in a town like this, where most people are white and fairly well-off, people think we’re all that’s out there,” said 18-year-old Te, a veteran of speech and debate competitions. “This program is a really good way to find out about other people and the way the world works.”

From her studies, Junior Kari Kooker said she is now grasping the complexity of the international drug trade and its link to South American poverty. Kari is also intently following the recent U.S. skirmishes with Iraq.

“I’d much rather know how we’re involved in other places than be clueless about the United States’ involvement,” said Kari, 16. “I like to formulate my opinions and have the facts to back them up.”

County schools Supt. Charles Weis said the conflict resolution skills and understanding of other countries would serve the Camarillo students well.

“It’s a great learning tool--not only are they learning all about another country, but they have to address issues from the perspective of that country,” he said. “Our world is getting smaller. This generation of kids is going to need international relations knowledge and training in order to maintain a peaceful and economically feasible world.”