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1.4 Developments in Educational Debate
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The term, “educational debate,” refers to the process of teaching students to debate. At present, the teaching of educational debates takes approximately the same form worldwide: students learn from instruction on college campuses and also participate in intercollegiate debate tournaments usually held on some weekends at different colleges. The instruction presents information and trains students in debating and argumentation skills. The debate tournaments provide opportunities for students to practice those skills.
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Both the instruction and the debate formats have undergone significant modification in the last century, spawning multiple formats to represent the varied ways people feel most able to present their positions in fair and productive arenas. British Parliamentary debate, Canadian Parliamentary debate, Worlds-Style debate, Australasian debate, Cross-Examination debate, Public Forum debate, and Lincoln-Douglas debate are a few examples that demonstrate not only different arrangements of teams and speakers but also of differences in whether or not a speaker can be directly questioned by another speaker, whether a speaker presents more than one speech in the debate, and whether the debate is heard by a single or multiple adjudicators.
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In addition, variations among debaters and debate styles have grown. Some debate tournaments feature styles where speakers provide a tightly condensed stream of evidence, speaking in a rapid fashion for the duration of their allotted time. Some tournaments feature styles where a speaker’s character, wit, and emotional presentation play a more prominent role. Some debates call for two individuals to face each other, some for two teams, and some for four teams. Some of the more narrative-based cultures, for example, have widened the scope of presentational styles to emphasize description, metaphor, or analogy. In short, the conceptualization of what originally was the Greco-Roman debate style has been evolving during the last century as other styles of oral presentation have entered the global conversation.
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Debate tournaments in educational debate might be thought of as laboratories: places where students can experiment with their speaking styles, their argument choices, their reasoning designs, and their ethical codes. Tournaments generally include several teams from several universities who debate in a one-, two- or three-day event. Since a student might attend as many as five, six, or more tournaments a year, he or she will have ample time between tournaments to review their performances, research and plan for future debates, learn new skills, and talk with other debaters, instructors, coaches, and adjudicators about their experiences. With each tournament, then, a student can try out new ways to implement their own debate strategies. Over the duration of their college experience, debate students improve their abilities to adhere to ethical means of speaking with others, research and discuss important global topics, speak intelligently and persuasively to an audience, think quickly and effectively in question-answer sessions, design creative ways to address difficult problems, address multi-faceted problems from numerous different starting points, and respond productively to criticism.
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Although the histories of educational debate in the United States and in China differ, the present-day intercollegiate practices provide training for students from both countries to prepare them to participate in international debates all over the world. The recent proliferation of international tournaments for college-aged debaters provides students with significant opportunities to learn about global issues from individuals who, like themselves, have experienced some of the issues first hand. Educational debate in both the United States and China prepare students for “real life” argument situations, whether they be career situations such as lawyers or barristers, community situations such as serving on the city council, or individual situations such as helping the family to decide whether they should move to a new locale. The histories of educational debate in each country demonstrate their respective roads to a shared educational practice.
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1.4.1 Educational Debate in the United States
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Debate became popular in the United States and other Western societies in the first decade of the 19th century. In the United Kingdom, for instance, debate was sponsored at St. Andrews(Scotland), Cambridge University, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. Intercollegiate debating became a popular activity in United States in the middle of the 20th century and was supported by colleges and universities including Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Wisconsin, Willamette University, and others. These debate societies had a hand in the formation of the National Association of Academic Teachers of Public Speaking(now called the National Communication Association). The goal of these colleges and universities was to promote debate as a method of teaching public speaking (Wallace, 1954: 496).
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Today, debate is quite popular in Western, as well as Eastern colleges and universities, particularly in the association called the “World Universities Debating Council (WUDC).” The first WUDC tournament was held at Fordham University in New York City and subsequently has rotated through various nations including Ireland, Australia, Scotland, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Greece, Botswana, Germany and India.
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In the United States, competitive debate is sponsored by at least five organizations: the American Forensic Association, the Cross Examination Debate Association, the National Parliamentary Debate Association, the American Parliamentary Debate Association, and the U. S. Universities Debate Association. Each of these associations sponsors intercollegiate debate tournaments as well as hosts a national championship for its association.
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1.4.2 Educational Debate in China
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As debate spread in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, it also spread in Asia, including China, starting in the late 20th century. In Asia, debate was initially promoted as a means to teach spoken English. Debate organizers believed that by requiring students to debate in a non-native language, students could learn to speak and write English more fluently.
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In 1993, Fudan University in Shanghai won the championship of the first International Varsity Debate (I.V.D.) held in Singapore with a triple purpose of promoting Chinese language; enhancing the communication and friendship among contestant countries, regions, and universities; and boosting the cooperation among international counterparts (Wang and Wu, 2003). For the next twenty years, I.V.D was hosted by Singapore and China every two years alternatively. Championship debaters drew rapid and significant attention. The impact of the first I.V.D. kicked off a nationwide debate wave in China. However, with too much emphasis on polished language and a flashy speaking style, along with a lack of engagement in arguments and rigor in logic, I.V.D quickly lost its glamour (Wang, 2010: 95). Thereafter, I.V.D. has been modifying its format constantly to improve the quality of arguments and sharpen the focus of the debate on the engagement of an idea. These changes strengthened debate cultures on campuses in China.
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In recent years, intercollegiate English debating competitions have swept across China. Increasingly, on-campus English debating clubs have been established in significantly more colleges where regular debating activities are staged. National tournaments like the China Open and the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) Cup have involved hundreds of teams. In the past several years, Worlds-Style debate has been practiced nationwide. The number of Chinese debaters participating in international tournaments has increased as have their successes: among others, the championship in English as Foreign Language (EFL) at the World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) by Tsinghua University in 2007, and Championship in EFL in Asian British Parliamentary Debate by Sichuan University in 2013.
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Debate is now promoted in China for more reasons than simply to improve students’ effective use of English. Debate also is promoted as a method to improve students’critical thinking skills. Scholarly evidence confirms that participation in debate enhances students’ critical-thinking abilities (Allen, Berkowitz, Hunt, and Louden 1999: 18-30). Debaters improve those skills as they learn to use evidence and reasoning to come to critical decisions.
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1.5 From Educational Debate to Generative Debate
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The format of competitive, educational debate helps teachers, coaches, and judges teach students to debate. The format, however, embodies at least two qualities that have the potential to sidetrack debaters to become “winners” and “losers” rather than ethical, global citizens exerting their best skills and efforts toward contributing thoughtful insights or even solutions to critical, worldwide problems. The competitive nature of the activity encourages students to 1) choose a position and stick to it regardless of evidence presented by the other team and 2) debate primarily to win the decision from the adjudicator. A generative debate model does not restrict a debater in those ways.
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Generative debate is largely an ideological construct as it does not occur often between arguers. As the term implies, the goal of generative debate is to generate reasoned arguments grounded in effective evidence toward a goal of peacefully managing or resolving problems created by the disagreeing ideas. Notice the disagreement is characterized as existing between ideas rather than persons.
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Generative debate seeks to bring to bear all the excellent points of one side of the argument on the excellent points of the other side of the argument. Once these two positions and supporting constructs are exposed, effective debating can use thoughtful, creative, and intelligent means to generate an idea by effectively reconstructing the positions or constructs or discovering an idea not offered by either side. In either case, the debate generates a resolution or management schema out of the strong clash of two different positions, each well documented, each offering uncompromising evidence, each structured with firm reasoning, and each comprehensively characterizing an important perspective.
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In generative debate: 1) Each party seeks to discover and develop all the critical facets of the position they are assigned to argue or choose to argue; 2) Each party enters the debate to display those facets, clashing their position with the other position, and persuading listeners their perspective best manages or resolves differences in the ideas; 3) The intent on both sides is to best represent the critical points of disagreement using best evidence and best reasoning; 4) Rather than doggedly adhering to their original stances, parties repurpose the evidence and reasoning offered in the debate by both sides to generate a substantive, viable, and integrative resolution or management schema for the disagreement.
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Of pedagogical necessity, educational debate trains students in competitive debate rather than in generative debate. Nevertheless, excellent debaters can use competitive, educational debate to develop the skills and later use a generative debate model to accomplish the more difficult and complex “real life” decisions without adjudicators. Taking a look at some core differences between competitive and generative debate will help differentiate those skills.
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The first quality in competitive, educational debate that can sidetrack teams from generative results is that teams are expected to state a position and fundamentally remain in that position throughout the debate; little leeway is given for adjustment in response to the influx of evidence or information. For teaching purposes, that singularity of purpose is important. Teachers, judges, and coaches can assist students in constructing clear and well-organized designs for arguments because the end goal of the persuasion does not change. As a learning tool, this practice is critical—students often have trouble learning to “stay on track,” focused on their tasks of selecting appropriate and artful argumentation tools for a particular position.
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Nevertheless, generative debaters need the discipline of fitting argumentation skills to persuasive goals but also must learn the importance of using all evidence and information to inform their positions, even evidence and information provided by debaters representing the other side of the question. While competitive debaters sometimes select a starting position that most fully prepares them to “win” the debate, generative debaters select a starting position that most reflects the substance of the arguments inherent in the persuasion in favor of or opposing the question. Generative debaters adjust their positions to fit all relevant and vital evidence presented in the debate. Generative debaters advocate for the best solution or best answer in the face of all information presented, even introducing new choices if appropriate, rather than limiting their thinking to one perspective throughout the debate.
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