| In retrospect, I found the actual debate part of debate to be mostly a chore. But the research and learning parts were a lot of fun. Some things I learned about in high school because of debate: 1. A lot of stuff about the actual topics that we debated. Both in substance, and also in the relevant components of federal policy tools. Eg, I still know a lot of useless facts about US agricultural policy, US foreign aid policy c. mid-2000s, statistics on realistic offshore wind production capacity c mid-2000s, etc. Contra the narrative here: the actual policy topic stuff doesn't tend to age very well... 2. How the Federal Reserve works: its history, its basic structure and mandates, the reason for its mandates, how decisions get made, how it interacts with other components of the federal government, etc. Also weekly deep dives into quantitative easing as it was being invented. Consequently, also quite a bit about the BOJ (I graduated in 2009, so my peak debate participation years were 2007-2009.) It's very important to note here: fiscal policy was NOT the debate topic that year! The topic was alternative energy. But we could link into fiscal policy via alternative energy by arguing that green energy investments were in essence stimulative fiscal policy and would trigger inflation when combined with QE and interest rate policy. And then we could benefit from having the most up-to-date evidence about what Bernanke would do (see #6). Again, in 2008-2009. As high schoolers. Without much or any adult direction. What other extra-curriculars let kids play these types of games? 3. Some really useful law and policy specific research skills. How to find and read proposed legislation. How the legislature actually works. How to find and read court opinions. I know this stuff sounds trivial, but I still regularly have conversations with 30-70 year olds who have never actually read a bill or SCOTUS opinions, so it's apparently not something that people learn how to do in high school, or college, or graduate school. 4. Yes, also quite a lot of critical theory. (It's part of the game and I don't get why people get so fussy about it. If the argument is bad, win. If you get an unfair judge and lose anyways, oh well. It happens and winning actually isn't the point anyways.) 5. But most importantly, lots and lots of research skills. 6. Quite a lot of natural language processing to help with 1-4, which became surprisingly relevant lately. Policy debate has its flaws. But, at least at my high school, there was no other activity that came remotely close to providing the pedagogical opportunities available in debate. Perhaps at elite private schools or schools in the wealthiest suburbs there are good alternatives. IME, that's still true now. This year's topic includes AI. I judged some debates this year and learned some stuff about AI by judging rounds. I'm not an expert or anything, but my PhD was at least AI-adjacent and I've been in AI labs for a good half decade now, so it was kind of surprising to learn new stuff from high school debate kids. Anyways. I'm more convinced than ever that the kids are okay. Let them play their word games. |