| I disagree with a handful of this article's arguments, and I'm happy to see a number of debaters chiming in on this thread with similar concerns. [I did parliamentary and policy debate in high school; now I'm a High School parliamentary debate coach] 1. @elefanten correctly points out that arguments are still evaluated at speed. This is my experience; the author characterizes it as "bludgeoning," but good debaters increase their speed to add evidence to a small number of strong arguments. Bludgeoning can happen, but it's uncommon. If McCordick's characterization of Policy were accurate, we could expect the fastest debaters to predictably win all their tournaments. This isn't the case. Speed is a rough correlate to ability inasmuch as it's an early product of commitment, but there are diminishing returns. By a third year in competition a high school debater isn't focusing on speaking faster at all. The real competitive edge is in argumentation. 2. McCordick's comparison between "corrosion" in debate and "corrosion" in American national politics is extremely hasty. National politics have not become more inaccessible because they're technocratic and opaque. The 2016 presidential debates were not run at 300+ wpm, nor did they involve detailed policy advocacies. Debate is characterized by technical elitism, national politics by right- and left-populism. How is debate jargon remotely like "the kind of language currently poisoning our public sphere?" 3. McCordick speculates that debate produces students who don't care about truth and public speech, but there's no real evidence of this. Even if there's validity to his stylistic criticisms, it's unlikely debaters are on the whole less civically engaged or politically literate or eloquent than their peers. My experience, at least, is that they're dramatically ahead. 4. He ignores all the skills besides rhetoric. Research and acadmic/technical literacy are critical to prepared debate, as they are to college academics. Debate teaches a number of mental models that I've personally found extremely useful––e.g. for grokking multiple opportunity costs in decisionmaking. It teaches work ethic and self-motivation, both skills admired in athletics. Also topic knowledge at a very accelerated level for high school students. 5. McCordick gives the impression that debate is homogeneously inaccessible, which is inaccurate for a few reasons. A) High-level competition makes up the vast minority of High School debate; the vast majority of debaters are active on nationally uncompetitive local circuits where traditionalist judge expectations keep debate slow and untechnical. B) Other commenters correctly point out the rise of new performative styles that preference debate on relatable terms, which have been highly competitive for years now. C) There are plenty of debate formats that aren't hypertechnical––McCordick even competed in two of them: Public Forum and Worlds. Parliamentary debate often plays a similar role where it's offered. 6. I agree with @ashark that debate's idiosyncracies are a product of Goodhart's Law. Competition is an essential incentive for the workload, in the same way that international science fairs incentivize research (the only other high school competition in which I've seen a similar work ethic). @ashark suggests in a different comment that the only way to counteract specialization is to allow subjectivity in judging. This would just substitute judge-appeal as the metric for competitive success, which is hardly a better proxy for truth-seeking and communication skills given judges' pre-existing political biases on a topic. 7. I understand frustrations with debate's apparent inaccessibility to laypeople. It's a frustration I experienced myself when I first started. Why, though, is there so much frustration over specialization in debate? Why not similar frustration over other specialized activities? Debate definitely doesn't bring politics to the polis, but it needn't. Not all politics is about eloquence; it's also about cost-benefit analysis, philosophical dilemmas, wonky details. It isn't necessary that everyone is a technical expert, and it's naive to believe that policy doesn't demand expertise. I find grindcore offputting, but that doesn't mean grindcore is "corroding" or "perverted." Interested in developing such expertise? Competitive debate is one of many ways in which to develop it. It certainly isn't perfect, but it teaches skills that don't exist anywhere else in high school curricula. Does it erode general advocacy skills and interest in truth? Certainly not for debaters who are good at it. If anything, it builds them. Skills are not mutually exclusive. On a petty note, the article credits Jack with winning "the high school debating national championship"––America Magazine should be more precise. Regis won first in World Schools Debate, not one of the major formats. |