Why Debate Teams Are Bad

by Chananya Weissman

I was on the debate team in high school, and people told me I should wear a tie to the debates. "It's only proper," they said. "The judges will think there's something wrong with you if you don't wear a tie," they asserted. So I wore a tie. One with pictures of vegetables and a few recipes for God-knows-what. It was a pretty cool tie.

The judge of one of the rounds was a nice woman who was absolutely hypnotized by my tie. There I was, pleading that citizens between the ages of 18 and 25 should not be given batons and made into an auxiliary police force (honest!), and her eyes were riveted on a garlic, a tomato, and a palate-pleasing possibility. We lost that particular round.

The following year I declined to stay on the team and have had a sour view of the whole "sport" of debating ever since. One would naturally assume that my negative experiences distorted my objectivity, and they would of course be correct. Nevertheless, I feel quite strongly that debating provides greater detriment than education to the participants, and that my anecdote is a mere manifestation of this, albeit an unusual one.

In principle, debating is supposed to enhance one's research and speaking abilities, while obviously helping one learn to develop and present cogent arguments. In reality and by inherent necessity, debating also teaches people to mimic the same lawyers and politicians whose persuasive tactics they scorn. Points are awarded, after all, not for arriving at truthful conclusions, but for presenting one's case in the most convincing fashion. Judges are not impressed by courtesy and integrity, but by the systematic dissection of the other side. Indeed, anyone who's ever debated knows that it's bad tactics to allow the other guy to speak uninterrupted during the cross examination. Doing so allows the judges to listen to their side and, G-d forbid, possibly find merit in what they have to say.

A popular form of debate nowadays is blind style. A topic is chosen in advance, but the participants don't find out which side they must support until the time of debate itself. The idea, of course, is to teach people to see both sides of an issue and build a case respectively. The result is that what should be a legitimate discussion becomes a sham. Both sides can conceivably be arguing for what they intensely disagree with, yet they must fight and plead all the same. Their faces belie the convictions of their heart as they attack their own beliefs. What's the point? Do they really learn to give credence to the opposition, or merely to play poker just long enough to win the attention of the judge?

And what of this judge? This supposed idealized, impartial representative of the common man is not there to arrive at the truth, whatever that may be, but to award smooth speech, swagger, impeccable looks, and a killer instinct. The meaning of the words is secondary to the package they come in. Just the sort of thing true debate is supposed to transcend.

In an ideal situation, if one side were to find themselves arguing for something crazy, say, that people with brown hair and green eyes should be fairly represented in television sitcoms, that side would have a near-impossible time winning the debate. As it is, all they need to do is dress well, speak well, and brutalize the other side, and they stand a fighting chance.

After all, moderated debate neither educates the participants nor clarifies anyone's beliefs. It teaches them to be convincing liars.