Stossel in the Classroom Student Contests

Stossel in the Classroom runs three student contests under one umbrella: an essay competition, a short-video competition and an AI challenge. They share an interest in public questions and independent reasoning, but they do not reward the same work in different packaging. The editorial decision that matters most is choosing which track makes a student's thinking clearer rather than choosing the newest or most comfortable medium. The essay track gives sustained argument room to breathe. The video track adds voice, pace, image and production choices. The AI challenge is more unusual: the submitted evidence includes a conversation with an approved system and a reflection on what the exchange revealed. In that track, clever prompting is not enough; the student must show judgment about the tool's answers and about their own reasoning. The programme is worth watching because it does not present AI as a universal shortcut. Its rules draw different boundaries for different forms. That makes authorship part of the intellectual task. A strong entrant should be able to point to the decisions, research and revisions that belong to them, regardless of whether the finished artifact is prose, video or a documented dialogue.