There’s wildly anti-conservative bias in high
school debate leagues. So we built our own more objective competition that can
better serve students.
Debate plays a critical role in American politics. The theory is a
very democratic one: given all the options, evidence, and arguments, people
will be equipped to make sound judgements. In a society where all adults have
the franchise, such judgements have immense implications. For this reason, the
American presidential election typically includes some form of public debate.
While such debate is far from the academic rigors of collegiate
debate, it follows the assumption that the people should have a chance to hear
the major positions candidates embrace and the reasons they hold them. Such
debate was at the heart of the constitutional ratification process: The
Federalist Papers affirmed the Constitution, while the Anti-Federalist Papers
argued against ratification. Debate recognizes the inherent rationality of
educated human beings and remains an essential part of our polity.
It should, therefore, be quite disturbing for the wider world to
learn of how badly competitive collegiate debate has strayed from rational,
common sense understandings of truth. As many have argued, America’s colleges
serve as the training ground for the next generation of elites. When the
academic quest for truth is replaced by a sophistic training in critical
theory, a concerned citizenry is right to voice fear of the republic running
astray.
My goal is not to sound alarmist, but to tell a story of one
school’s attempt to turn back the tide of critical theory in debate. This story
stretches from 2011 to 2018 and is by no means finished. Something small but
exciting is growing in a set of schools in North Carolina.
My Own Debate Story
My
participation in collegiate debate is limited to one amazing semester when the
Hillsdale College Forensics and Debate team
coaches set an ambitious goal for the 2010-2011 school year. I had competed for
three years in various speech events and won plenty of trophies, but I had
stayed away from competing in debate.
The plan, as
our coaches revealed, was an ambitious one: if certain debaters competed in and
won individual speech events, and certain speech folks competed in (and won)
novice debate, there was a slim chance Hillsdale College could win the national
Pi Kappa Delta school sweepstakes category. Tiny, conservative, liberal
arts Hillsdale College could beat the behemoths of the
Ohio State University, Bradley University, the University of Kentucky, and so
on. Captured by the possibility of forensics glory, we competed all year with
this vision in mind. We won.
I learned many things from a semester of debate. Logic, liberal
learning, and articulation all helped my partner and I surpass our competition.
I discovered the intellectual high that only four rounds of debate in a row can
produce; I discovered the plasticity of my convictions when victory seemed at
stake.
This last discovery frightened me. I distinctly remember
perceiving two logical proofs: the first involving God affirming prostitution,
the second involving God condemning prostitution. Alongside these personal
discoveries, I also learned of two contradictory impulses in collegiate debate.
Collegiate
debate is about research and bringing the weight of academic intellectuals to
bear on resolutions. It is about clear articulation and logical reasoning.
These elements have a place in debate, but they do not propel a team to
victory. To win, students must embrace a strong awareness of various critical
theories, or what are essentially a set of intersectional lenses for arguments,
and the top teams in the nation
adopt a “social justice” attitude towards debate.
The Sad Role Of Critical
Theory In Debate
Critical
theory is a set of philosophical paradigms that
view the world as oppressed in various ways––usually in terms of race, gender,
and class––then seeks liberation through unveiling the oppression. An issue
like immigration, when treated in light of critical theory, can suddenly evolve
into commentary about majority oppression of a minority as opposed to a
consideration of the best policy goals.
Whatever the topic specified for the debate, it is now considered
more important to discuss the latest social justice cause. While an objective
outsider might see this as a clever tactic a poorly researched team might
employ, such a strategy is often victorious at the highest levels.
Applying a “kritik” to the resolution (the statement debaters are
supposed to be arguing about) which rejects the resolution as inherently
inhumane is a common strategy. Paired with this critical theory approach is a
speed of speech approaching 600-plus words per minute, which only a
professionally trained judge or coach can process and evaluate.
This makes debate at the highest levels a conglomeration of
liberal progressivist rejectionism expressed in an internal jargon only
semi-professional debaters can comprehend.
Racing Toward
Progressive Revisionism
In novice debate, I witnessed the edge of the “inner circle” of
debate and felt a bit of it. I once took second place in a debate not for a
flawed argument but, as one judge wrote on my ballot, because “God does not
exist, therefore you lose.” Such an approach to judging pervades collegiate
debate, and it removes the heart of the game. Rather than being a contest of
arguments and reason, the side that best appeals to progressive principles wins
because the judge agrees with them. Debate moves from an unbiased contest of
arguments to a race towards the ever-moving progressive revisionism of society.
In 2011, I graduated from college and, in 2013, took a position
teaching humanities courses at Thales Academy, one of a network of private
classical schools. During my second year at Thales, I started a speech and
debate club, and in 2015, I discovered a regional organization thatoffered good
tournaments.
As my
students grew, I found this tournament was a good place for both middle and
high school students to learn debate and compete against other students. North
Carolina largely embraces Public Forum (PF) debate for high school competition.
PF was begun in an effort to combat the jargon-heavy
parliamentary debate at the college level, but as the years
have progressed, my students moved from novice to varsity PF and I discovered
that the progressive slant in debate is alive and well even in high school.
I had two
students who won second place at the largest regional tournament one year, who
worked hard, and brought hours of research to their cases. These students won
an essay contest to attend a national-level debate camp the
previous summer. They were excellent debaters, and I expected them to face a
learning curve going into varsity competition. Instead, I found that they lost
for the wrong reasons.
The November 2017 PF resolution reads: “Resolved: The
United States should require universal background checks for all gun sales and
transfers of ownership.” As worded, the resolution had ample ground for both
sides to approach it with solid evidence. I sat in on my students’ final round,
and watched them consistently rebut the opposing case, bring solid evidence to
bear, and comport themselves politely and firmly.
They did everything they should; so did the other team. I looked
through their ballot at the end of the tournament and found the judge’s logic
infuriating. He weighed the round not on evidence, logic, refutation, or
comportment, but on which side claimed to save more lives.
My debaters argued against the resolution, and read evidence
showing that strenuous background checks have zero correlation to preventing
gun violence. Because the other side said increasing background checks would
save more lives, the judge gave them the win. As I read through the ballots
from that tournament, I saw the same result repeated consistently.
This made the debates not about honest confrontation of divergent
views. Instead, the team that made the politically left argument won the round.
I left that day frustrated. My students had done everything I had taught them
to do, and well. Through no fault of their own, they had lost five of five
rounds.
A Free Market Solution:
Build Your Own Debate League
While my
rage against judge bias was mounting, other pieces were moving behind the
scenes. I work at a pretty amazing school. Robert Luddy, founder of Captiveaire and Thales Academy, has been a long-time supporter of
the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
The Coolidge Foundation was looking for a set of schools to develop a new kind
of debate league, one seeking to return debate to the realm of objective
argumentation and evidence.
On February
17 of this year, the Luddy Debate League launched
its first tournament at Thales Academy Rolesville. We hosted approximately 50
middle and high school students debating the resolution: “Resolved: The United
States should abolish the capital gains tax.” In April, Thales Academy Apex
hosted the second tournament, debating the resolution, “A significant tariff on
imported goods from Mexico is a good policy for the U.S. economy.”
At both of these events, honest debate occurred. Students
researched their positions, weighed evidence, and attempted to persuade typical
adults (not professional coaches) of their position.
This league is a collaborative effort between Thales Academy,
Franklin Academy, and the Coolidge Foundation. Each tournament involves bringing
in a content expert to educate students about the topic, instructing new
students in the art of debate, three or four rounds of competition, and an
award ceremony recognizing the top debaters in both middle school and high
school. We uphold the values of truth, critical thinking, and integrity as
guides for debate, and thus far this league has been a roaring success.
This is
the Thales way in
action. When faced with a society that increasingly embraces non-real
approaches to significant concerns, we do not respond with public condemnation
or rejection. Instead, we solve this the free market way: we make our own
league, and we produce such a high-quality event that, hopefully, the objective
value is apparent to all.
In
2018-2019, we plan to hold four tournaments; in 2019-2020, we hope to open
competition to other regional schools interested in teaching students the
time-honored methods of research, case writing, argumentation, articulation,
and persuasion while collaborating in a competitive atmosphere. Debate is a
critical part of teaching the next generation to weigh options and make wise
choices. In our own small way, Thales Academy is working to restore this part
of traditional American
values.
Josh Herring
is a humanities instructor at Thales
Academy, a graduate of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and
Hillsdale College, and a doctoral student in Faulkner University's Great Books
program. He has written for Moral
Apologetics, The
Imaginative Conservative, Think
Christian, and The Federalist; he
loves studying the intersection of history, literature, theology, and ideas
expressed in the complexities of human life.
