Author: Sabrina M. Weiss

One formative activity for me was high school debate.  I had always enjoyed giving speeches; even when I was 8 I had memorized a fairly long passage to perform as a narrator in a school play.  I had strong opinions, and I enjoyed performing for audiences, despite being strongly socially introverted.  

So it was a perfect fit for me when I found my school’s debate team in 10th grade.  I did both Lincoln-Douglas (philosophical, values-based) debate and Oratory, a prepared and memorized 8-10 minute speech on a controversial issue (I did animal experimentation my first year).  While I enjoyed competing in a sport with my mind, the skills I took away from it have aided me throughout my life, in high education, military service, political activism, and teaching/coaching.  I later coached debate and mentored several amazing students, many of whom also went on to coach and teach debate.

Debate as foundational skills development

Skills I learned included: taking effective notes, processing information and analyzing it on the fly, researching topics deeply and without bias, managing my time on the micro and macro level, speaking clearly and confidently, dealing with disagreement and criticism, stress management, and accepting failure and growing from it. The immense amount of research (for high school level students) that is done, mostly self-directed, not only taught us a great deal of facts about topics, but also taught us how to research topics deeply and thoughtfully.  

These are all incredibly valuable skills for everyone to learn and practice, and I believe that they are even more important for neurodiverse learners and learners with disabilities, because they can help us self-regulate and cope with difficult social situations.  Micro-time management especially is valuable, as it helps us to be aware of ourselves, our thoughts, and what we say in a limited amount of time.  The structure of debate – with set times for each participant to speak – promotes organization and converts anxiety into anticipation.  The turn-taking is extremely welcoming for people who struggle with social cues in conversational turn-taking, or who tend to get talked over (as I did) by others.  I can always spot the other debaters in a group because during icebreaker activities, where we’re asked to speak for a set amount of time (2 minutes, for example), the debaters always come in right on time. 

Popular perception of debate: bullying

However, the popular perception of “debate” among non-debaters focuses on hostile conflict – yelling, being overbearing, spewing out a lot of words to overwhelm an appointment, “owning” one’s opponent (or a whole demographic – “owning the Libs”).  Unfortunately, there are several personalities who make their living bullying other people – usually people younger and less experienced, and often physically smaller – and as a result, laypeople who say they are interested in “debate” actually just admire and emulate those bullies.  

Because of this, I have been extremely hesitant to offer a debate class for homeschoolers and learners looking for enrichment beyond their schools.  There is a strong self-selection bias for participants (usually boys) who want to “debate” because they “like to argue”.  This position is ignorant of the groundwork that needs to go into effective debating, and also misses that much of what people see as “debate” is just arguing and bullying.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should…

I see debate much like martial arts – I do in fact know how to hurt someone mentally and emotionally because I can understand a person from watching and listening to them speak and argue, just as a martial arts adept can spot weak points on a person and know how to hit them where it hurts.  But the true demonstration of skill is to engage and challenge, not to harm, and so I choose to use my skills to help others grow, which can include them getting a little scuffed up mentally where I challenged them.  Just as with physical sparring, we sometimes come away bruised, but it’s a healthy conflict with some discomfort as a side effect, not the goal, of learning.

Thanks to my debate training, I am able to detach myself from enmeshed discussions to see the underlying causes of disagreement, or to recognize that the person I’m disagreeing with has fundamentally different assumptions.  Lincoln-Douglas debate, in fact, specifically focuses on framing of the debate and on values, which I draw on to this day to help me teach social justice and ethics-related topics.  This debate training helped me to learn about social constructionism and other sociological topics, like structural oppression, in graduate school, because I was able to adeptly paradigm shift where needed to see things from other perspectives.

“Wax on, Wax off”

Because I care passionately about these skills and believe that everyone should have access to learning them, and because I love debate when it is educational and healthy competition (often with ourselves), I want to offer a series of classes related to debate.  However, I am also mindful that without the right types of structure, it will be too easy for participants to slide into bad habits that we all see – the arguing, the bullying, the shouting – and forget about the foundations that are needed first. 

In this, I take inspiration from Mr. Miyagi, of The Karate Kid, who started training Daniel through chores, like waxing the car.  “Wax on, wax off” seemed like nonsense that had nothing to do with learning karate at first.  But eventually Daniel saw that the motions he repeatedly performed were used to block attacks, and the muscle strength and memory he developed from doing that chore repeatedly helped him to do it effectively, without needing to think about it, in a high pressure situation like a sparring match. 

Likewise, I’m starting with seemingly mundane, even “boring” types of classes, like “Use the News” – which involves watching news regularly, taking notes, and discussing what we saw in class.  But the skills being practiced – taking notes while watching/listening, recalling and verbally summarizing what was observed, and eventually, comparing sources of news – are all central skills needed for debaters and other effective communicators.  I specifically choose to use PBS NewsHour for its neutral, non-sensational reporting to provide a consistent baseline of audio and video content for learners – enough stimulation to be interesting and engaging, but not so much that it’s distracting.  And because we are bombarded constantly with information from all types of sources across the political spectrum, it is important to seek out reputable, reliable, and relatively neutral news sources.  Later in the class, we’ll start to look at less unbiased sources in a controlled setting to compare and contrast reporting styles; this is a core skill for media literacy and effective research.  

I am mindful that our learners are all across the spectrum in terms of ability and challenges.  We have learners who struggle with taking notes, with auditory processing, with distraction/attention, with memory and recall.  I believe that in most cases, we can practice skills to improve in areas we struggle in, and we can also learn coping skills to mitigate our disadvantages.  To support this ethos, I will encourage each learner to start with a self-assessment before the class, use that to set realistic goals for improvement, and then self-assess after the class.  This means that each student will have personalized skill goals in this course, and everyone will probably be on their own journey towards those goals while interacting and sharing in our live meetings.  This is my effort to balance student-centered learning with the necessity of live interaction to practice live communication skills, and I believe that it offers the benefits of both.

What’s next in the series? 

My goal is to aim for offering a live course with debate-type activities (presenting arguments, questioning each other, rebuttals, etc) by Spring of 2025, in two years.  In the 3 semesters before then – Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024 – I will offer courses on core skills and ideas that are each individually valuable, but that together should form an effective basis for approaching debate with an educational mindset.  

My plan for Spring 2024 is to offer a reading focused course on books like The Persuaders and Why We’re Polarized, which explain effective political activism and coalition building, as well as the context of the extreme political polarization we see today in the United States (which has bled into other countries).  I plan to include activities that build on the ideas from these books, but it’s important to understand the context of political disagreement and coalition building in order to push back against default presumptions of political conflict as always acrimonious and hostile.  Persuasion and debate require the ability to identify points of contention and commonality, and skills with communication to engage others effectively on these points instead of just berating and dismissing.  

I want to see how these two terms of classes go before planning the Fall 2024 class(es).  It may include ethical philosophy, a common tool used in debates because they provide common frameworks for many debate topics.  Resolution (topic) analysis and research are two other important skills that may warrant their own course, or could be included in the Spring 2025 debate course. 

The Spring 2025 debate course will require these prior courses (or acceptable substitutes, such as classes on persuasion or research taught by Dr. Michelle Parrinello-Cason) to have been completed satisfactorily, as the debate course will synthesize these skills and have rigorous standards.  Participants will need to be able to take direct constructive criticism and have effective self-regulation skills in order to thrive, as there are fewer options for accommodations or making up missed work.  

However, I want to emphasize that even if a learner is unsure about taking the future debate class, everyone is welcome to take the foundational skills courses, as they all offer skills and knowledge that are widely useful and helpful.

What kind of debate will you do?

Although I did 1v1 Lincoln Douglas debate, I have found that Intelligence Squared’s style of Oxford debate (historically 3v3, but also 2v2) works very well.  The tone of the debates focuses on expertise over rhetoric, and the goal is to convince the audience, who is polled before and after the debate for their position on the topic.  I intend to use a modified version of that style of debate for team debates.  There may be individual debates at some point, but it will depend on the composition of the class and timelines we have to work with. 

Individual events in Debate include prepared speeches, presentations with timed preparation, and impromptu speaking; depending on interest, I may work some of these activities in some classes along the way, as they develop core skills in public speaking and preparation and are not “head to head” the way debate is (which needs to be more closely regulated). 

Conclusion

I am excited to explore this direction for our community of learners, and I hope that I have answered questions you may have and piqued interest in this topic.  Please feel free to reach out to me with questions or comments.  This is a new endeavor, and I want to balance predictability and planning with adaptability and fit for our learners’ needs and interests.  As you can probably tell, I am passionate about the value of debate in education, but I also want to fulfill my ethical obligation to teach these skills responsibly and in an environment that is positive and constructive.

Read more about Dr. Sabrina M. Weiss and their teaching philosophy here!