The Wonders of High School Debate

I did make it through another speech meet on Saturday. One of my girls went 1-2, one went 2-1, and my son was undefeated again. Of course, next week varsity season starts, and the bar will shoot up much higher.

I’m still feeling a bit sluggish, so I’m going to recycle an article I wrote when I was trying to get a position as a columnist for a local paper. It’s all about the great things high school debate can do for students. Enjoy!

WHAT EVERYONE COULD LEARN FROM HIGH SCHOOL DEBATE

I am a huge believer in speech programs, not only because of the communication skills imparted, but because there are life lessons that kids learn in high school competitive speech that everyone should learn. When I run into former members of my team, even years later, they tell me that debate was by far the most valuable thing they did in high school.

Certainly, there are the obvious lessons: confidence, argumentation, persuasion. But debaters gain far more vital qualities. They become listeners, and I don't mean that they keep their mouths closed and silently formulate their next argument until their opponent finally shuts up. A debater who does this may miss the key argument, proving to the judge and her opponent that she wasn't listening, and there is very little one can do in any kind of communication that will do more to destroy one's credibility.

Second, debaters must be able to see both sides of the issue. Really see them—not just the flaws in one side and the strengths in the other, but the valid arguments and evidence in favor of both. In high school debate, kids don't get to pick a side. They must debate both sides of the topic. They must, through logic, reason, and evidence, prove that both sides are valid.

All too often, people allow their emotional investment in an idea to erode their treatment of those who disagree, but I have seen sixteen-year-old debaters demonstrate the kind of maturity we should all have in an argument.

In the spring 2000, the debate topic encompassed the conflict between children's rights and adults' responsibility for their safety. Most teenagers have a deep emotional investment in their rights, but less than a year before this topic was introduced, my students had seen it from another side. While their opponents (and they themselves, due to the nature of competitive debate) argued that young people were entitled to privacy and independence, they were remembering two of their schoolmates the year before. In part, these two boys' right to privacy had robbed my students of two of their teammates, Dan Mauser and Rachel Scott. Rachel competed in oral interpretation, and Dan was a debater. He should have been a junior in the spring of 2000, debating this topic with his teammates. Instead, guns hidden in an eighteen-year-old boy's bedroom ended their lives on April 20th, 1999.

My students knew that many things contributed to the tragedy that took the lives of twelve friends and a teacher. They also knew that if Eric and Dylan's parents had invaded their sons' privacy, they would have discovered the boys' cache of weapons and tapes elaborating their hateful plans. This topic hit my students in some excruciating places, but like their opponents, who didn't remember Rachel's quick wit and Dan's earnest speaking style, they argued that Columbine was a rare case. They insisted that children everywhere should not suffer for the actions of a few.

Did they really believe that Eric and Dylan's right to privacy was more important than Dan and Rachel's lives? No. Objectively, could they see that it might not be justified to deprive all kids of privacy because of the actions of a very few violent teens? Yes, but that objectivity did nothing to ease their pain. These were teenagers who continued to be able to see and argue both sides, rising above losses that many adults still stagger under.

Good debaters are as excited about the learning that happens in the course of an argument as they are about winning. I wonder where we would be as a society if everyone approached his or her disagreements with such a philosophy? Perhaps the most satisfying experience a speech teacher can ever have is when her top debater walks out of finals with an ear-to-ear grin and says, "That was the best debate of my entire life!" When the teacher asks if he thinks he won, the smile never falters as he exclaims, "I have no idea! My opponent was amazing! Man, what an awesome debate!" That there is what it's all about.