Resolved. Robert Litan
in their educational systems. Indeed, this is how I met Mike Wasserman of the BDL and Scott Wunn and Nicole Wanzer-Serrano of the National Speech and Debate Association, who kindly promoted the Brookings essay through social media.
I am also grateful to Atlantic editor Jim Fallows, Jeff Finkle, president of the International Economic Development Council, and Frank Partnoy of Berkeley Law School (all former high school and college debaters, which I also didn’t know until we talked), who strongly encouraged me at the beginning of this project to see it through. Likewise, I greatly appreciate the close editing of an earlier draft of this book by my law school classmate, and former high school and college debater, Don Sloan.
Likewise, I gained much from reconnecting with my long-time friend Ken Kay, who has been a leader in education reform from his home in Arizona since leaving his Washington, D.C. law practice about two decades ago. Ken founded EdLeaders21, since absorbed by Battelle for Kids, which helps superintendents around the country to stay on the cutting edge of education pedagogy. In addition to providing valuable advice that is relevant to the last chapter of the book, Ken introduced me to the remarkable book by Ten Dintersmith, What School Could Be, which I reference and draw on at several points in pages that follow. For those who agree with Dintersmith’s emphasis that “project based learning” (PBL) is the best way to prepare students for the twenty-first century, consider this book a companion, for debate centered instruction has features akin to PBL while also offering the advantages of developing students’ oral communications skills and furthering a mindset that will make them better workers and citizens when they reach adulthood.
I also want to give a big shout out to Megan Callaghan of Bard College, who furnished me with important facts about Bard’s Prison Initiative, and the debate team inside prison it fosters, which readers will learn about in chapter 6, and to Lynn Novick, who created a documentary about these debaters, for introducing me to Megan.
As I wrote the book, I often thought of my debate partners in high school (Jan Hornberger Duffy, Gretchen Miller, and the late Marc Salle) and college (Brian Jones, Don Klawiter, and high school coach William Robinson). Without them, debate wouldn’t have changed my life in the way I describe in the book, and I certainly wouldn’t have had the faintest idea of why and how to write a book that draws on that experience. I hope they enjoy and maybe even agree with what follows.
I showed early drafts of this book to numerous people, and I thank every one of them, they know who they are, and the book would not be what it is without their help. I also thank each of the individuals who formally reviewed the book at the request of the Brookings Institution Press. Although readers won’t know where and how, I assure you that the comments I received greatly improved what you are about to read.
I benefitted greatly from the advice of William Finan, director of the Brookings Institution Press, who enthusiastically took this project on, and the careful editing of Kathi Anderson.
Finally, I am grateful to my wife, Margaret, for encouraging me not only to undertake this project but in everything else I do (and not minding the workaholic tendencies that book writing brings out in me). She has never been intimidated by my debate experience, although she sometimes will jokingly suggest during a discussion, “You must have learned that in debate.” To all future debaters, in competition or in classrooms, you will probably have similar experiences in your lives, which I hope will be one of many reasons you find debating to be such a valuable skill. And to those who don’t have a formal debate background, I hope you will find what follows to be engaging and inspiring—enough so that you, too, can help revolutionize education and help save our democracy!
In early March 2020, mayors, governors, and ultimately President Donald Trump began enforcing strict social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, whose unprecedented economic consequences will be felt for at least a few years. My heart goes out to all who have lost loved ones during this awful episode in our history.
The pandemic forced the closure of schools throughout the United States, and led me to modify some of my recommendations for universal debate-centered instruction in at least high schools to take into account remote learning, which fortunately was available for most U.S. students during the crisis and may need to be used more regularly in the future, even without another pandemic. Paradoxically, many students may find it easier to express themselves orally in the comfort of their own homes—talking through a computer—than in front of their schoolmates in a typical classroom setting.
More experimentation with debate-centered instructional techniques in remote settings should be undertaken. Hence, the recommendations outlined here may be even more relevant and important than before the outbreak of the pandemic and the need to transition to remote learning.
ONE
Improving Education and Healing America through Debate-Centered Education
An Introduction
I think debating in high school and college is most valuable training whether for politics, the law, business or for service on community committees such as the PTA and the League of Women Voters … I wish we had a good deal more debating in our educational institutions than we do now.
President John F. Kennedy, August 19601
America is as divided politically and economically as it has been at any point in my lifetime, nearly seven decades long, a period that spans the divisive and tumultuous years of the Vietnam War and, later, Watergate. People are sorting themselves, in their work and at home, into “blue” and “red” bubbles to an unprecedented degree, and increasingly are living in very different worlds, choosing their news sources and friends and splitting their families along political lines.2 Widening income inequality (especially manifest in the wide disparities of who has suffered the most during the economic contraction triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020), the economic division between rapidly growing blue regions of the country and less rapidly growing areas, or even shrinking red regions,3 coupled with the receding American Dream for too many, all surely have made matters worse.
We are now more than just polarized and are growing more so at a faster rate than other industrialized countries.4 We are becoming tribal, where whatever you may say or write is viewed by others entirely according to which side of the political divide you fall. Former Secretary of Defense and highly decorated Marine general James Mattis put it well when he wrote these words in August 2019: “We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions.”5
At no time in recent history has this tribal conflict been more on display, and the political rancor more in evidence, than during the impeachment of President Donald Trump. As this book went to market, the country headed into unchartered territory with an impeached but not convicted president campaigning for reelection only several months into the nation’s experience of its second-greatest pandemic and one of its worst recessions in history. It remains to be seen whether the only silver linings in this horrible episode—the extraordinary coming together of people online and the support for medical professionals and millions of lower-paid “essential workers” who fought the pandemic on its front lines and kept the economy from totally collapsing—will begin to heal the country’s deep political divisions, or whether those divisions will grow deeper.
Political leaders, academic and think tank scholars, journalists, and pundits across the political spectrum have suggested several ways to do what General Mattis urged before the pandemic crisis to bridge the differences between us. Some options have to do with changing the institutions of government to encourage more political moderation and compromise: finding ways to reverse and prevent gerrymandering (such as using independent commissions to draw district lines); changing the mechanics of voting (such as a nonpartisan primary system that picks the top two candidates for each elected office, regardless of party, to run in the general election, or choosing the winner based on voters’ rank order preferences); or eliminating the electoral college, if not by constitutional amendment then by enough states passing legislation declaring the presidential victor in each state as the one receiving a majority