As parents, teachers, and kids we are constantly striving to find new opportunities for ourselves and our students to develop intellectually and expand our academic profiles. In today’s increasingly rigorous climate, students can often seek ways to distinguish themselves from their peers as applicants to colleges, universities, scholarships, internships and more. One avenue that can offer surprising value to students in this regard, while being a fun and dynamic activity is competitive debate.
Debate is far more than just teaching students to argue, and it can offer so much to students beyond trophies and resumé line items (although it can bring those as well!). Debate is a skill-building opportunity that helps build well-rounded students who grow into well-rounded individuals; it sets students up for success regardless of the academic or professional path they choose. Although some benefits of debate, like being able to argue and reason more effectively may be self-evident, there are a number of other, less obvious ways that taking debate classes and participating in competitive debate can help students develop. Below are some of the top six of ways learners can benefit from a debate education.
Debate comes in many forms, but all of them are, at their core, collaborative exercises. None more so than Public Forum Debate. A student learning debate will practice the skill of balancing the perspectives, needs and skills of different stakeholders in different high-leverage situations. In Public Forum, students work with a partner both in advance of rounds and during, fostering two different sets of collaborative acumen. Before the round has even begun, debaters have to learn to delegate responsibilities fairly and practice supporting their teammates both intellectually and logistically as they develop argumentation and potential strategies. During a round, teammates have to be able to discuss and decide together while functioning under extremely tight time margins- often having to assess a challenge, brainstorm solutions and organize a proactive strategy for implementation in a span from a minute or two down to a matter of seconds.
Even beyond the preparation and strategy, debaters learn to listen to others and take cues from teammates and collaborators. During a round of public forum debate, for example, teammates take turns “handing off” speaking responsibilities from one speech to the next, meaning that ideas, arguments and strategies function like a baton in a relay. When one teammate starts an argument, another teammate will likely have to continue it, meaning that a premium is placed on listening critically to collaborators to both defend their ideas and strengthen them where necessary.
As debaters, students have to practice advocating for themselves and others in a variety of ways. The most obvious and immediate is that debates typically center around an issue of policy, meaning that students, in the course of their preparation, will learn more about various perspectives and arguments for and against the topic, incorporating perspectives of real-world advocates and advocacy groups. Debate is one of the best possible ways for students to learn about real-world advocacy in this way because it is structured to require students learn about both sides evenly- a debate team has to be able to argue for AND against a topic because their side will be assigned to them randomly, and will switch off between rounds. This means that there is a distinct competitive incentive for students to balance their perspective and engage more holistically with the topic.
Beyond the obvious benefit of learning about real-world policy advocacy, debaters learn to become advocates for themselves. The best debaters are those who know what they need from those around them and know how to ask for it. By learning to identify underlying needs and, crucially, by learning to argue on behalf of others debaters are training themselves to argue for what they need. Self-advocacy is often cited as one of the most crucial skills that students need to succeed in high-pressure academic environments, and debate classes train students better than any other extra-curricular or supplemental program to be comfortable and confident in communicating proactively with classmates, teachers and administrators about what they need to achieve their fullest potential.
Among the skills that students can take from debate into their future academic and professional lives, arguably none are more apparent than the benefits of debate classes on developing students’ ability to investigate topics of broad regional, national and global importance. Over the course of a Public Forum Debate season, students will have to learn about a variety of topics, sometimes as many as five or six in a year! In debate classes, students learn to find sources that accurately reflect multiple perspectives on an issue, to evaluate the credibility of sources, analyze the underlying reasoning of the sources and piece them together to form coherent arguments. The best part about the research skills students learn in debate classes is that, by the nature of debate itself, students are not only incentivized but required to consider perspectives from authors and groups that have opposed views. Considering both sides of every issue, and considering several different topic areas every year helps students by helping them to avoid getting trapped in bias bubbles where only information from one perspective presents itself to them. In an increasingly polarized world, debate classes are one of the most practical ways to teach the next generation to think critically about information in order to consider multiple perspectives.
In both debate classes and competitive debate settings, students are, fundamentally, attempting to convince others that one position is correct and another is wrong. In order to effectively convince an audience of something, though, one has to first know the audience in question. Debate classes place a premium on making sure that arguments are tailored to a specific audience because debates can be evaluated by a wide variety of people who will evaluate things differently. Learning to adjust the delivery style, content, type of evidence used and the overall strategy of a round to the preferences of individual judges in a limited timeframe helps students learn to think critically about the wants and needs of stakeholders to optimize their arguments. Being able to adjust on these important axes sets students up to thrive in a range of settings, from interviews to essay submission to everyday discussions.
It should come as no surprise that classes teaching students to construct, structure and source well-reasoned arguments are also classes that help students practice their writing skills. Debate rounds to not happen spontaneously, they are comprised of arguments that students have spent extensive time in class preparing, editing and updating with new evidence, better analysis and more detailed positions. Good debaters are good writers, because there is a unique incentive for debaters to be clear, direct and well-reasoned, all things that are necessary to effective written communication. At the same time, Public Forum Debate uniquely emphasizes a debater’s ability to reach a wide audience, meaning that effective rhetoric, word choice, vocabulary and use of literary devices are all covered in debate classes as they prime students to write cases that resonate with audiences far and wide. Writing forged in the fire of competitive debate classes is often writing that will stand the test of time.
One of the first things students learn in any debate class is that an argument is only as good as the audience’s ability to follow what was said. For this reason, organization is paramount in debate and takes center stage in debate classes. Being able to structure ideas, group evidence and sequence things correctly while operating under tight timelines in debate rounds is critical to students. Debate is one of the best ways for students to learn to organize ideas because it simultaneously teaches prioritization, meaning that students have to develop a keen understanding not just of how to group ideas and how to structure them in order to accentuate their own internal logic, but also which ideas and arguments need to be considered first, which need more attention and when. In an educational and professional environment increasingly characterized by constant influxes of information, learning the skill of organizing and prioritizing effectively in a pinch is one of the best skills students can take from debate classes into their future endeavors.
So there you have it! Six of the best things that debate classes can offer students beyond competitive debate. Even beyond the classroom, some Debate firms are innovating new and exciting ways to apply the lessons learned from debate to the world outside the round. Bergen Debate Club leads the way on this front with their Bergen Briefs, a series of instructional materials that offer students a unique perspective on Logic, Argumentation and Biases that comes with built in practice exercises to prime students to put their newfound knowledge into practice!