Resolved. Robert Litan
school teachers (with scholarships) in debate-centered techniques; and funding rigorous evaluations not only to test the validity of the concept but to provide teachers with scientifically grounded feedback about how to improve such instruction.
Perhaps philanthropists, working with school districts, and researchers will be motivated by this book to launch one or more randomized control trials (RCTs)—long the standard in testing the efficacy and safety of new pharmaceuticals and more recently used for assessing various educational reform ideas—of DCI, with performance measures not limited to educational performance and teacher satisfaction during a few years but broadened and extended for a sufficient length of time to measure the longer-term workforce and civic benefits of this instructional technique. However, even in the best of circumstances, developing, funding, and assessing those studies and their results may be a decade away or more. Can we afford to wait?
I believe not, and I will show in the course of this book that a strong presumptive case already exists for all these benefits, enough so that much experimentation and refinement of DCI is warranted now. Indeed, my intention is to convince you through a combination of logic and evidence that when those definitive studies are finally completed, they will confirm the propositions advanced here, or at the very least point the way to how DCI can be refined to achieve the multiple benefits I assert for it throughout this book.
More specifically, there is presumptive evidence that much more widespread adoption of DCI would equip many more workers than otherwise would be the case to have the communications, critical thinking, and research skills that employers say they want. It would make workers and our entire economy more productive, which would translate to higher and potentially more evenly distributed and higher wages. Furthermore, if all Americans had the skills that debate imparts, many more of us would be more open-minded and, thus, the voting public eventually would be less—I believe much less—politically divided.
In this age of information silos on the internet and on television, the last claim may strike some readers as hopelessly idealistic. But bear with me; in chapter 5, I support this claim in more detail.
For now, it should be sufficient to note that our Founding Fathers recognized that reasoned, fact-based debate is essential for any democracy to function. It directly follows, therefore, that a citizenry equipped with the skills debaters must master should improve political discourse, the understanding of essential government activities, and thus the functioning of government itself.
To be sure, there is plenty of evidence from past U.S. presidential elections backing historian Yuval Harari’s claim that many, perhaps even most, voters act on their feelings or emotions toward candidates or parties rather than using rational thought.19 Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan has called this the “magic pony” syndrome, describing a series of recent presidents as magic ponies who lacked substantial executive experience but, nonetheless, were elected, in large part, as she sees it, because enough voters were sufficiently dissatisfied with the status quo to believe that only a new magic pony would solve their problems.20 While Harari and perhaps many others would question whether voters will heed Noonan’s plea to give greater weight to candidates’ past relevant experience and deep knowledge—in other words, more weight to reason—the merits of her plea are hard to dispute. Even Harari himself demonstrates that the many challenges facing future leaders in this country and in others are extraordinarily complex and demand reasoned-based leadership. But for voters to realize and act on this insight, they must themselves be better trained in exercising reason above emotion.
Debate training can help do this, by ensuring that the next and future generations of young people have experience and training in arguing both or multiple sides of issues so that, by the time they reach adulthood, they will vote for and demand leaders who have these same qualities. DCI teaches through active student participation in learning that many, if not most, problems in life do not have simplistic solutions. Knowing this in high school makes it more likely that, as voting adults, students will be skeptical of those who promise them. Debate training also teaches that compromise is not a dirty word but something that is necessary for deliberative democratic government to work.
Properly run debates also have the virtue of separating ideas from the identities of those who offer them, while teaching participants to avoid putting labels—conservative or liberal, democratic or republican—on ideas, which should be considered on their merits rather than as markers of identity. This runs counter to the prevailing tribal tendencies in the voting public, as well as among elected officials or those running for office who seek to reinforce partisan divisions. But if Americans are ever to have a chance at tackling the many stiff challenges our society now faces—doing a better job of assuring that all benefit from economic growth, addressing climate change, reducing the large and growing structural federal budget deficit, and establishing a broadly acceptable compromise on immigration policy, among many other issues—governments must be led by those dedicated to solving problems rather than posturing politically for the next election.
Of course, substantive policy changes that address people’s real fears that economic changes could leave them out in the cold would also clearly help. I and others have written essays or books offering sensible ways to help Americans adjust better to continued changes and to broaden the benefits of future growth. Some of those ideas are summarized later in this book, especially in chapter 5. But sensible ideas will be implemented only if voters rationally weigh them and then vote for representatives who support them. DCI can help bring this about.
If I am right about the educational and civic virtues of a debate-centered education, why shouldn’t all voters, who are already adults, be trained in these techniques? In an ideal world, they would be. In the real world, however, it is unrealistic to expect an already highly polarized electorate to embrace such a broad educational reform for themselves, although one organization, Better Angels, discussed at the end of chapter 4, is trying to do something close to that. But it is not too early for a new generation to be exposed to and trained in debate-based thinking and learning. As they are, by osmosis, the benefits of such training should seep into the minds of some of their parents, in off-hand conversations or at the dinner table when topics like “What did you do or learn at school today?” are routinely discussed.
Some might say that the demise of civility in our political discourse, and even in many of our personal relationships, is irreversible. Or that too many parents will oppose education that purposefully teaches students to be open-minded, forgetting that this is precisely what education is supposed to foster. I do not believe that will happen, though. Most parents who see their children excelling and being excited about learning, especially if they see improvements in educational outcomes (grades and test scores today, hopefully better measures of educational attainment in the future) that I believe debate-centered education can and will deliver, will be pleased with these outcomes and will not resist them. Indeed, beyond the specific skills that DCI imparts, including the ability and willingness to see both (or multiple) sides of most issues, DCI makes learning exciting and fun. How many parents will be opposed to that?
I do not urge that DCI be adopted in a one-size-fits-all fashion imposed by the federal government, which is politically impossible in any event and inconsistent with local control of education in America, which has deep historical roots, but rather on a voluntary basis from the local level up. That may make the technique slower to penetrate the educational system—even assuming the formal evaluations prove to be positive, as I fully expect—but it also fits with the need for experimenting with and refining the idea, which may have to be tailored to benefit different student populations in different ways.
One major advantage of concentrating on improving instructional techniques is that they can improve all public schools without pitting advocates and opponents of public charter schools against each other. Shortly after the mid-term elections in 2018, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley posted an op-ed declaring that the “blue wave may wash education reform away,” referring to the growing opposition within the Democratic party to school choice, principally charter schools.21 Whether or not this assessment proves true or lasting, it is a mistake in