:: Overview
:: Impact of Debate
:: Funders & Supporters
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Competitive debate should be available to all students, especially those in need of the special
skills that debate provides. Debate fosters students’ ability to acquire
the skills and experiences they need to access greater educational opportunities.
Debate improves three fundamental academic skills that translate very easily
into a variety of learning environments. Debate teaches critical thinking, research,
and presentation skills at profound levels.
The ability to analyze and evaluate arguments and ideas carefully is vital in
an information age. Few instructional methods teach comprehension, analysis,
and evaluation as well as debate.
The competitive motivation to do well while debating encourages students to think
more clearly, research thoroughly, and prepare their remarks carefully.
Once students have learned these fundamental skills, they become more proficient
in other academic settings.
Competitive debate also increases knowledge of content.
Debaters annually research thousands of books, academic journal
articles, government documents, think tank reports, magazine
and news articles on such broad topic areas as juvenile justice
reform, anti-discrimination policy, environmental policy, trade
issues, military commitments, and foreign relations.
If students debate for four to eight years, they learn a great deal about public
policy analysis, politics, economics and social issues.
Debate also affords opportunities for personal growth in several ways.
First,
debate improves self- esteem and self-confidence. The ability to stand up and
offer your opinion backed by strong evidence and argument improves one’s
willingness to engage in conversation. It makes you less afraid to learn. It
makes you more sure of yourself when you know that you can research a question
and develop an answer. Win or lose, debating improves self-confidence.
Second,
debate provides the opportunity for positive interaction with peers. Debate provides
students with an opportunity to live together at debate institutes, to engage
each other in social and personal issues in a safe and encouraging environment,
and to know students from different schools, neighborhoods, and cultural backgrounds.
The synergistic effect on students is to broaden their opportunities to know
students other than themselves while working together toward a common goal. A
graduate of the Emory National Debate Institute once described the experience
by saying, "While working on an argument together, I learned that we have
a lot more in common than we have differences."
And finally,
debate teaches students to understand the opinions of others. In modern debate,
students engage in switch-side debating. They have to debate both sides of the
same resolution.
This aspect of debate alone makes the activity worthwhile, for students must
come to learn their opponents’ strongest arguments. They must learn these
arguments both to defend them and to argue against them. Debate teaches students
to appreciate the opinion of others and to disagree with others with respect.
There is growing evidence that debate reduces the tendency to react violently
to frustrating situations. Much of the inexplicable violence we see today is
born of frustration. Words provide a better way of relieving that frustration
and resolving disagreement than fists, knives, or guns.
Beginning studies of competitive debate and violence suggest that several features
found in violence reduction methods coalesce with the skills debate teaches.
These studies point in a direction that would lead us to believe that debate
teaches conflict resolution skills, improves usable vocabulary, improves self-esteem,
and helps students distinguish argument from personal attack. Each of these skills
would lessen propensity toward violence.
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