My short experience in high school debate

All the way back in high school, just about 5 years ago, I was a freshman looking for clubs to join. For some reason, I ended up joining the speech and debate club at my school. It was already a pretty well established and famous team, and I was dropped into a well-oiled machine turning bumbling freshman into oratory masters. It was one of best decisions I ever made in high school. So what made it so special? How can I say it was a great decision? Well, I'm here to yap about it.

At first, it seems like the opposite of fun. Do more research and write more essays outside of school? As a club? Who would want to do that? But it quickly turned out to be very rewarding. The fast pace of debate and the constant switch back and forth between speech giving and rebuttal writing during a match means that you have to stay on the tip of your toes, figuratively. During the whole 45 minutes or so of Lincoln Douglas debate you are furiously flowing (writing notes on your opponent's speech & planning your own) and pulling up evidence from your packet to assemble a convincing speech. And if you made it to the elimination rounds, you could get eliminated at any moment, and higher on the tournament chart you climbed, the greater the excitement and tension. I remember looking at the brackets and being relieved or terrified if I recognized the names of my opponents. And sometimes, at the end of a long day, if you were at the top, you would walk on to the brightly lit stage, hear your name ring out, and receive that sweet sweet plaque for first place. An exhilarating moment. So, debate wasn't some boring academic exercise - it was a sport.

I was only at that high school for two years - not even enough time to become a varsity on the team. But even that short experience, half that I wanted to get, was more than enough to serve me well through my high school career and even into university. After giving hundreds of speeches, no speech seemed intimidating again. That's not to say I never get nervous before a speech, but I'm never afraid of one. After having to make up convincing arguments on the spot, I never struggle to continue my flow if I accidentally say something in my speech out of order. After all those articles read and speeches written, I've got research essays down to a science - something I can slam out in high quality with high efficiency. This has proven to be very helpful - there's a lot of essays to be written at all levels of school. And of course, most obviously, I can fluidly and clearly deliver my speech, whether it be a formal one, just reading something out loud, or winging it on the spot. I will be forever grateful for those skills.

Specifically, I was part of our Lincoln Douglas debate team. LD debate is a flavor of debate focused on morals. While other types of debate focus on policy or modeling legislative bodies, LD debate asks the question, "what ought to be?" I found this incredibly refreshing and interesting, as it was a brand new way of looking at problems and questions in the world. If you haven't done LD debate before, it probably would be for you as well. LD debate structure is built up around the these two concepts of Value and Criterion. A solid LD speech and any rebuttals need to fit into and reinforce the value and criterion. A value is the ultimate goal you are trying to achieve on your side. If you are talking about gun control, it might be sanctity of life, but if you're talking about standardized exams, it might be equality (or equity depending on how you frame it). The criterion is the measure by which you want to demonstrate that your side upholds your value. For sanctity of life, it might be something like cost-benefit analysis and you try to show that your side empirically reduces deaths. Or for justice, you might use equal access as your criterion and show that your side maximizes equal opportunity. What made LD so dynamic was that there were so many different ways to go at your opponent. You could argue that your value was more important to maximize than your opponent. Maybe you have similar values but your criterion is a better fit to measure progress to the value and your side fits it better. Or you could demonstrate flaws in your opponents arguments and negate their conclusions. No two debate was ever the same. Even if you met the same opponent on the same sides with the same topic, your opponent might have new evidence, better responses for what you said last time, or they could have rewritten their whole speech on a new framework. I also liked that LD debate freed us a bit (not a lot) from the shackles of feasibility. Since the intention was on what "ought" to be, it was less important to show that your side was "fundable" or "convinceable". The only person you needed to convince was your judge (-es if in finals).

This isn't a major point, but there was something else I liked about LD debate. It was a solo endeavor. Not because I dislike working with a partner or group, but because when you won a debate or won a tournament, you knew that it was because of the work you put in and the results you created. The sense of satisfaction was like no other. Also you could just take the plaque home without the awkward part of figuring something out with your partner.

So, it was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun and if I were to go back in time, I would totally join it again.