Resolved. Robert Litan
accomplish the same objective.
Another very different idea for helping bridge our political divisions is to require young people, after high school or college, to devote at least a year to national service, either military or civilian.6 In addition to fixing some of America’s problems, national service would mix Americans of all backgrounds at a highly impressionable age, reducing stereotyping, building empathy, and restoring some sense of national cohesion and purpose.
This book advances a very different, perhaps counterintuitive, prescription: incorporate debate or evidence-based argumentation in school as early as the late elementary grades, clearly in high school, and even in college. Debate-centered education, as I call it (it has other names, as you will learn) would excite students about learning, thereby enhancing their engagement and performance. In addition, there are good reasons for believing it also would enhance their earnings prospects throughout their working lives while helping to heal our political and economic rifts.
Debating has deep historical roots. Its use in education, resolving legal disputes, and by deliberative bodies of all sorts hearkens back to ancient Greece and Rome, and to famous philosophers such as Aristotle and Socrates. Civil discourse through debate among candidates for political office, and among citizens, also has long been a characteristic of effective democracy.
Why not, then, greatly expand debate participation beyond the world of “competitive debating,” which for decades has been limited to a small fraction of the U.S. high school student population? It seems like an easy question to answer in the affirmative. But the fact is that debate as an instructional device is rarely used in school classrooms. I have written this book to persuade school leaders, policymakers, and the wider public why this should change.
I know I can’t wave a magic wand and make the changes I recommend happen all at once. At best, debate-centered instruction (DCI) will take decades to fully penetrate the education system, while moving it into the entire electorate will take even longer. Skeptics who are persuaded by the case I am about to make will correctly point out that we do not have the luxury of time. We need to heal our nation much sooner, for all kinds of reasons. I agree with that; if you do, too, then I hope you can be in the vanguard that brings about the reform outlined here much more quickly. However rapidly change comes, we must start somewhere and some time. Why not now?
The Virtues of Debate: A Preview
My case begins by recognizing and then building on the virtues of competitive debating, whose major features are outlined in the next chapter. Until you get there, all you need to know is that competitive debating, even with some of the changes over the years that I criticize in later portions of the book and which a few critics claim would harm our national political discourse if widely adopted, is very much the antithesis of the partisan and uncivil shouting matches we see daily on cable TV or in congressional floor speeches. Debating in school develops a much different and much more important set of skills: research; thinking logically and critically and doing it on your feet; listening carefully to others; backing up arguments with evidence (not fake news!); working collaboratively with partners; speaking persuasively in a civil fashion; and perhaps most important, being able to argue both (in some cases more) sides of nearly any issue or subject. Understanding how to identify and articulate the merits and drawbacks of multiple sides of almost any subject or issue is important in all phases of life and is key to a healthy democracy.
Although it has had problems counting votes in elections, one county in Florida, Broward, is a national leader in recognizing the educational power of having its students participate in some form of debating activity, and proudly touts the improvements in educational performance that have resulted.7 Since 2013, all high schools, middle schools, and even elementary schools beginning with 4th grade in the county have been required to offer speech and debate classes. After getting off to a slow start, this “Broward Initiative” is now thriving, with over 12,000 students currently participating. It is not surprising, therefore, that two of the leaders of the national movement for gun control who emerged after the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, centered in Broward County, in February 2018, David Hogg and Jacklyn Corin, debated competitively.8 Several other students from the school had been preparing for debates over gun control before the tragic shooting took place.
Hundreds of thousands of former competitive debaters know the value of debate from their own experiences. Many successful politicians, actors, and business leaders were once debaters. Look through the sample list provided at the end of this chapter. Some of the names there may surprise you.
Over two decades ago, a cadre of educators believed that competitive debating—through its training in research, thinking, and speaking—would be especially valuable for minority students, who often come from low income families and attend school in urban school districts. In the late 1990s, these educators put this idea into practice by forming city-wide “urban debate leagues,” initially in Atlanta, and shortly thereafter in Baltimore, Chicago, and New York. With early major financial support from the Open Society Institute (OSI), the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL) was formed in 2000 as a national organization to help these city-specific debate leagues in the United States. The idea borrowed from similar efforts by OSI to spur competitive debate programs in high schools and colleges in Asia and Eastern Europe as a way of inculcating free speech and democratic values in those parts of the world. The NAUDL, and its over twenty debate leagues around the country, is still going strong, even without OSI’s support, roughly twenty years later. Similar efforts aimed at enhancing the education of minority students on a state-wide basis can be found in some states, such as the Speak First program in Alabama.9
But the adult success of former debaters does not necessarily prove that their participation in competitive debate was primarily or even partially responsible for that success. Former debaters may have become accomplished as they aged because they have the traits that would have made them successful anyhow and only incidentally participated in debate in their formative years because they were and still are naturally good speakers and students. Chapter 2 reviews some studies that take account of this possible “self-selection” bias and shows through one rigorous statistical method that, in fact, competitive debate has made a positive difference among minority debaters, especially girls.
That the limited evidence of the value of competitive debate is positive should not be surprising. Even the most naturally gifted people can and do benefit from formal instruction in any activity, especially when combined with practice and hard work. Just ask Michael Jordan, Lebron James, or Patrick Mahomes, or any other highly successful athlete, entertainer, or teacher. Indeed, what is true for successful adults is also true for students, as the pioneering research of psychologist Angela Duckworth shows. “Grit,” as she calls it, is as or potentially more important for success in school and later in life as innate talent. Using the principles of debate more broadly in all classroom settings can be a powerful way of engaging students in the fun of learning, thereby encouraging them to stick with education—precisely the trait of grit that Duckworth has documented to be so important in education and in life.
In any event, in my own case, selection bias clearly wasn’t an issue. Until the age of fifteen, I had a severe stutter, and my mother, on the suggestion of a friend, had to more than twist my arm to persuade me to enroll in a speech and debate class in my sophomore year in high school. Thank goodness she did, because competitive debate cured the speech impediment that, up to that point, had made me reluctant to speak up in class and which years of formal speech therapy was unable to fix. It also taught me the research and thinking habits that gave me the confidence to succeed in school and have a successful professional career thereafter. In interviews conducted for this book, I have listened to similar and even more compelling stories of how debate transformed the lives of people starting out in life with much greater disadvantages than me.
One such example is Eric Tucker, who grew up in Iowa in a low-income household with multiple learning issues and self-admitted behavioral issues. He says he was enticed into competitive debate in middle and high school by the prospect of traveling and hanging out with cool kids. Debate gave Eric a purpose in life, helping overcome his learning difficulties (which clearly were greater than my own) to gain an Ivy League education and then