So long as I’ve been following this board, I’ve been impressed by the debating skills of a lot of the Dopers, especially the American ones. Especially the techniques to debunk logical fallacies and false arguments are intriguing to me. Now, you have to learn such techniques somewhere to use them so well. I, being German, would call myself moderately well-educated, but although we did debate in our so-called “Laberfächern” (=“babble subjects”, such as politics, social sciences or religious ed), my education never covered rhetorics or debating techniques.
I have sometimes encountered something like “debate clubs” in American movies or TV shows without really knowing what that is, so I wondered if rhetorics are an obligatory or optional subject, resp., in the American educational system.
There is no “American educational system” so the best you’re going to get is anecdotes about American dopers’ educational backgrounds.
I had a broad ethics/philosophy/government class my senior year of high school which covered logical fallacies in detail, though being a rather small private school we didn’t have a formal debate club as such.
My first two years of high school were at a large suburban public school, and they did have a debate club, which competed against neighboring schools. I wasn’t in it, though, so I have no idea what it was all about.
A few generalizations are in order about America - not in basic secondary education (where the topics mostly are not even touched), but in our media-based culture, which is much more influential than said education.
The meaning of rhetoric is badly debased outside of academic circles*: it’s come to mean nothing more than spin and smoke-blowing. Debate is also somewhat debased in meaning: two talking heads yelling set phrases at each other qualifies as debate today.
*I’m currently finishing up a degree in Rhetoric and Professional Communication. A definition of rhetoric I like is here: briefly, it’s the art of persuasion, and it’s everywhere. You can’t avoid it if you want to communicate.
I took a semester of debate in college, but it had as little relation to what most people think of debate as foil fencing does to actual sword fighting.
Bull sessions in dorm or the cafeteria were at lot closer. When you are college, you are around a lot people who regard a good brisk argument as a recreation activity. Sometimes it is hard to remember that not everyone is like that after you graduate.
“Debate” is rarely a formal subject taken by American students. More commonly students with interest might join the school “debate club” (usually affiliated with the National Forensic League). Some schools also offer Model United Nations and Model Congress.
I never joined any of these activities at school–but my high school did require all students to take a public speaking course.
How true. The measure of maturity in our society is pulling one’s weight in the marketplace, not the marketplace of ideas. If that means having no opinion, or shoving it where the sun don’t shine, that’s what the mature person learns to do, and is widely admired for it.
In that line, I would say that US school debate clubs and the like are more a kind of pre-professional training than a way to foster rhetorical awareness. They’re for people who want to be able to think on their feet so they can become lawyers, politicians, etc.
In 1968, when I was on our high school debate team, the NFL had a topic for the year which all teams were supposed to debate. But debate was definitely not a standard subject, and the debate team was considered somewhat less cool than the chess club.
And real debate and what is called debate in politics are only distantly related.
Back the William F. Buckley Jr. had a show on PBS called “Firing Line,” which, if not a formal debate, was a lot closer to one than we see these days, and was done at quite a high level. Watching that and doing practice debates really helped - as did the study of formal logic and programming.
I find this very plausible, but cannot respond more within the bounds of GQ. (And the nastiness would be towards conservadom, not you, just to be clear.)
While it’s true, as freido says, that there is no “American educational system”, I think you can say very generally that the vast majority of high schools, whether private or public, require some kind of instruction in math, science, English, and probably a foreign language. I’d bet that only a small minority provide any instruction in rhetoric and logic, and of those that do, even fewer require it. You’ll find many more that offer debate and forensics as extra-curriculars, but I wouldn’t be able to hazard a guess as to how many.
I was on the (extra-curricular) debate team, but as I recall, we didn’t focus on using logic or rhetoric to win arguments so much as providing a preponderance of citations to support our side. Oh, and a more recent cite always trumped an older one, even if the newer data was flawed, or out-and-out false. It was basically about being a human database, so that for any argument your opponent put forth, you could immediately lay hands on the notecard that had a more recent cite that refuted it. That’s why I quit debate and started doing other forensic events.
What I know about logic, fallacies, and so forth, I learned later, in college - primarily in philosophy, linguistics, and computer programming.
I teach high school debate, and it isn’t required in any way. We don’t do CX (Policy) (Team) debate because, as the previous poster noted, it has become counter-educational. It no longer is about debate, it’s about cites. the NFL is the blanket organization that we belong to (sort of like the NCAA is to college sports).
It’s possible I just lack understanding, but it seems to me that rhetoric and debate both take the position (if I can even say that those two words represent “taking a position”) that what a person thinks they know is accurate/correct and that further learning/understanding is not what is important to be good at rhetoric or debate.
Because of this, I’ve always thought of those two things as supporting a mindset that is completely at odds with problem solving, learning and trying to get closer to a complete understanding of anything complex. I can see why they can be useful in some situations, but I’ve never understood why people would consider those two things in a positive light.
What am I not understanding? (you seem to know about these things, that’s why I ask).
It’s not in the core classes that I, or any of my kids, or anyone I’ve known in the public education system has taken. However, there are electives. I took an elective in writing–I forget the name, some comp class that was supposed to be easy, and wasn’t, and was the single greatest class I had in high school. It went into the rhetorical devices with their lovely names, and how to use them, and also into logic and persuasion. That class was worth four years of college, actually.
One son took an elective in debate and public speaking and learned some of the same elements, but more geared toward debate.
Rhetoric and debate happens whether you like it or not. As a practical matter, it’s good to have some skills in them, or at least recognize some of the more basic “tricks” when they get used against you - spotting and countering common fallacies should be part of the skill set of any decent debater. By the way, this is one of the reasons I personally think that at least basic formal logic should be a required class in high schools (over here in the Netherlands, it’s not taught in high school at all, and most university courses don’t teach it either AFAIK).
There’s also some value in debates (and rhetoric too, I guess) in that ideally it forces the participants to explain and refine their opinions into some form that is if not convincing, then at least understandable to the opponents and the spectators. It’s all fine and well if you have an amazingly good idea, but it really helps a lot if you can explain it well and hopefully convincingly.
ETA: Debating skills are independent of opinion or even fact. Classically, you learn debating skills by getting positions assigned to you and you have to defend them even if you don’t agree.
It’s been 34 years since I was in high school, but speech and debate were optional classes (electives) in my part of the country then. We were taught debate techniques and research techniques, but not formal logical fallacies and such. Those were (are?) typically taught in logic and philosophy courses rather than debate classes, and you didn’t get in-depth training on it until college level.
Rhetoric, anyway, is much more about the ways to deliver a message as fully and effectively as one can, rather than what the message actually contains. (I haven’t had any formal debate training, so I won’t speak on that topic.)
Optimal, effective communication need not be opposed in any way to learning, understanding or problem-solving. In fact, my courses have all structured rhetoric as a steppingstone to, and a way of facilitating, those ends.
We had a speech and debate class in high school and I took it. It was taught by the drama teacher. It was mostly about presentation, not about logic.
In college I took an introductory philosophy class that introduced me to syllogisms and basic logic and what fallacies. The Teaching Company has a audio course on argumentation (rhetoric) that I really enjoy and recommend.
When I did debate (and I think this is common) you were randomly assigned a position. What you happened to believe about that position had no bearing. The skill you learn is to create a logical argument for your side, and to understand the argument for the other side, and to find weaknesses in both. You clearly have to find weaknesses in the other side to be able to attack it, and on your side to defend it.
It isn’t about problem solving per se, but problem solving is easier if you understand the problem. This training has been very helpful to me in writing papers and helping others to write papers, since it is very useful to anticipate referees’ objections to your work and address them in the paper. As a reviewer I’m likely to give a better score to a paper which is solid in this way.
After our class we were invited onto a NYC educational TV debate show. We were assigned a position opposite to what I had originally believed, but my research actually changed my mind about it. It can happen.
We had debate and speech as part of “English” credits. In other words you had to have so many credits in English and debate and speech were two courses that qualifed for that. I took both but most people were to scared to talk so the classes were small. (We had independent reading so most people took that).
I remember when I finshed debating I was so mad at the Presidental Debates in America as they are not like a real debate.
