The End Of High School Debate?

[Debater Slayer]

Well, that's part of the reason that I stipulated the audience must be large enough. When you measure the audience reaction to the question before the debate, you are essentially measuring the overall bias of the room. Not everyone, but a significant enough number, is really susceptible to rational argument, logic and reason.

I don't think this is consistently the case, though. In my view, humans are not primarily rational actors. We evolved to survive, not just think rationally, and some of our heuristics, thinking patterns, and inclinations are quite prone to errors of reasoning and emotional bias.

There's also the question of which culture the audience is mainly from, since different cultures are generally more receptive to some ideas and less receptive to others. Cultural biases tend to heavily color most people's perceptions of other viewpoints, and an argument against Hinduism in India would be a lot less likely to gain traction than an argument for Islam in Iran or Saudi Arabia or one against Christianity in any of the three countries.

I can't think of any scenario where the audience could realistically be controlled for all of the cultural, personal, and emotional variables that could influence their likelihood of accepting one viewpoint or rejecting another for reasons that are not primarily or entirely based on sound logic and evidence.

Thus, if one side or the other can overcome the original bias of part of the audience, we can make a reasonable presumption that they did so using their arguments, for the simple reason that most of us don't change our minds easily.

Let me propose an example -- to simplistic but it may serve as instructive. Let's take a debate about "the existence of the Abrahamic God." Let's also assume that this is at a university, somewhere in America. The audience, being mostly students and faculty we can assume, will certainly know on which side they stand before the debate begins. A passionate speaker on the Yea side (for the existence of God), is unlikely to convince atheists with emotion. But what if he actually found an argument that could convince a few (look no further than the many such debates right here on RF)? Same thing, the Nay side atheist is really unlikely, no matter how passionate his exposition, to convince a believer to give up their belief -- unless she found some really convincing argument. It's for that reason that I suggested that the "winning side" would probably win by quite a small margin.

I think an audience at a university would still have their biases and other variables affecting their perceptions such that those variables could end up favoring one viewpoint over another, even if by a small margin, due to factors that may not be primarily or fully based on the soundness of the logic or the validity of the evidence in each argument.

 

[Debater Slayer]

Liberals.

From the article:

But let’s say when the high school sophomore clicks Tabroom she sees that her judge is Lila Lavender, the 2019 national debate champion, whose paradigm reads, “Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. . . . I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging. . . . I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments. . . . Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.”

Marxism-Leninism and Maoism are not liberal, since liberal democracy upholds free markets and has other principles that strongly conflict with both of the former.

 

[Revoltingest]

From the article:



Marxism-Leninism and Maoism are not liberal, since liberal democracy upholds free markets and has other principles that strongly conflict with both of the former.

It was a joke for Audie.

 

[Subduction Zone]

An interesting article in the news....

At High School Debates, Debate Is No Longer Allowed

At national tournaments, judges are making their stances clear: students who argue ‘capitalism can reduce poverty’ or ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ will lose—no questions asked.

www.thefp.com

If the author is accurate, judges are increasingly
using criteria to award wins & losses based upon
race, political affiliation, & other personal
preferences & prejudices.

How is that supposed to help? A close minded judge is worthless. I wonder how she would have reacted in her debating career is anyone with far left views was automatically "The Loser?"

 

[Revoltingest]

How is that supposed to help?

It doesn't (IMO).

 

[Esteban X]

Is this the woke Fascism that I've been hearing about? Has the pendulum swung too far?

 

[icehorse]

Well, there @Debater Slayer has a point, because one facet of human nature is that we will tend (if we're unsure) to listen to those we instinctively like. And it is true that some people are good at being liked, while others (think Ron DeSantis) are not so much.

Agreed, and I would add that being glib is also a great way to "win" debates.

 

[Revoltingest]

The website has quite a few biased articles, so I can't trust that its reporting is credible or based on evidence. The only other sources I found running the story are all highly biased ones with dubious reliability ratings per Ad Fontes Media:

Former high school debater left shocked by biased judges: 'Conform or fail'

Former high school debaters Lawence Joseph and James Fishback joined "America's Newsroom" to explain how biased judges are negatively impacting competitive student debates.

www.foxnews.com

Woke judges say there are topics high school kids CAN’T debate

A high school debate team in Broward County, Florida, taught to challenge ideas, question assumptions and think outside the box.

nypost.com

Critics say US school debate in peril as ‘woke’ judges only approve Left-wing views

Students and debating coaches say high schools are seeing ‘decline’ in debating after judges’ criteria have become riddled with ideology

www.telegraph.co.uk

That said, if it is true that some judges are judging debate methods based on the beliefs being expressed rather than the logical and rhetorical criteria of debate, I think they should be told to abide by debate standards or be replaced.

I have to say, though, that part of me wonders how common such debates were or how successful they were in teaching people critical thinking even before the current polarization considering that significant numbers of American voters fell for various kinds of disastrous, false, and highly consequential propaganda in previous decades.

The article makes it sound like there was a bygone era of debate competitions that successfully taught people critical thinking. Was that really the case, if we look at the reality of millions of voters' choices from, say, the '60s all the way to the early 2000s and even now, when emotional rhetoric, tribalism, science denial, and baseless propaganda have been heavily affecting large sections of American politics to an extent that most other developed countries are not experiencing?

Good that you recognize my questioning
& conditional statement.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

The only sensible way to really adjudicate a debate is to have an audience (of significant numbers, at least in the hundreds), and take a poll of the audience at both the beginning and end of the debate as to which side of the issue each audience member stands on. Thus, if the yeas are 301 to 409 nays at the beginning of the debate, and 305 to 405 at the end, the yeas won -- because they turned 4 audience members to their side.

Then I want to have an audience heavily stacked against me at the start. 710 nays and 0 yeses is perfect. All upside, baby!

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Well, that's part of the reason that I stipulated the audience must be large enough. When you measure the audience reaction to the question before the debate, you are essentially measuring the overall bias of the room. Not everyone, but a significant enough number, is really susceptible to rational argument, logic and reason. Thus, if one side or the other can overcome the original bias of part of the audience, we can make a reasonable presumption that they did so using their arguments, for the simple reason that most of us don't change our minds easily.

Let me propose an example -- to simplistic but it may serve as instructive. Let's take a debate about "the existence of the Abrahamic God." Let's also assume that this is at a university, somewhere in America. The audience, being mostly students and faculty we can assume, will certainly know on which side they stand before the debate begins. A passionate speaker on the Yea side (for the existence of God), is unlikely to convince atheists with emotion. But what if he actually found an argument that could convince a few (look no further than the many such debates right here on RF)? Same thing, the Nay side atheist is really unlikely, no matter how passionate his exposition, to convince a believer to give up their belief -- unless she found some really convincing argument. It's for that reason that I suggested that the "winning side" would probably win by quite a small margin.

In seriousness, I think you'd end up with a lot of charismatic preachers, in terms of approach to debate.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

The website has quite a few biased articles, so I can't trust that its reporting is credible or based on evidence. The only other sources I found running the story are all highly biased ones with dubious reliability ratings per Ad Fontes Media:

Former high school debater left shocked by biased judges: 'Conform or fail'

Former high school debaters Lawence Joseph and James Fishback joined "America's Newsroom" to explain how biased judges are negatively impacting competitive student debates.

www.foxnews.com

Woke judges say there are topics high school kids CAN’T debate

A high school debate team in Broward County, Florida, taught to challenge ideas, question assumptions and think outside the box.

nypost.com

Critics say US school debate in peril as ‘woke’ judges only approve Left-wing views

Students and debating coaches say high schools are seeing ‘decline’ in debating after judges’ criteria have become riddled with ideology

www.telegraph.co.uk

That said, if it is true that some judges are judging debate methods based on the beliefs being expressed rather than the logical and rhetorical criteria of debate, I think they should be told to abide by debate standards or be replaced.

I have to say, though, that part of me wonders how common such debates were or how successful they were in teaching people critical thinking even before the current polarization considering that significant numbers of American voters fell for various kinds of disastrous, false, and highly consequential propaganda in previous decades.

The article makes it sound like there was a bygone era of debate competitions that successfully taught people critical thinking. Was that really the case, if we look at the reality of millions of voters' choices from, say, the '60s all the way to the early 2000s and even now, when emotional rhetoric, tribalism, science denial, and baseless propaganda have been heavily affecting large sections of American politics to an extent that most other developed countries are not experiencing?

I don't think you can evaluate voting patterns across the board, and assess whether debates have a positive outcome for the individuals involved.

One thing you might find interesting though, if you're not familiar with US debates in particular, is how much they've moved away from what you might imagine a debate to be, to a much more specific and unique competitive 'sport', with terms like spreading, and kritiks which really bare no resemblance to what you might think of as a structured and reasoned attempt to explain a position in a convincing way. Much more an attempt to maximise 'scoring' and minimise risk.

Also, the aguments about bias are interesting. Whilst I am a believer that there is value in teaching debate skills to some degree, there have been arguments since the 60s (at least, maybe way before) that forcing debaters to take one side of an issue is unreasonable, and debaters should be able to argue the side of a point that they believe in, rather than needing to prepare to argue either side.

That seems fundamentally important in deciding whether debate is about learning the principles of evidence and argument, or it's about convincing an audience of the correctness of deeply held positions. The latter seems much more of a preparation to be a politician than anything else to me.