In HS and college debate competitions, they may assign the teams to take a pro or con stance on controversial topics like nuclear energy, whale hunting, incarceration of drug users, etc. The teams are expected to earnestly argue their side of the debate regardless of whether they themselves believe that stance or not. How well they argue their point will determine whether they win or lose. In those kinds of competitions, were the topics of slavery or segregation ever used? Were debate teams assigned the task of being in favor of those topics? Although it seems absurd today, I could imagine people having structured debates over those topics when those practices were widespread.
My memory of HS debate competitions was that the topics were dead boring, about things like labor legislation that nobody cared about. I assumed this was on purpose, so that emotion would play less of a part in arguments and in the ability to persuade others to a position.
If I were a judge of an academic debate, I personally would find it very difficult to judge dispassionately the relative debating abilities in a controversial subject that I cared deeply about. This is a very general observation, I have no direct information about your actual question.
Well, the National Forensic League (NSDA) has only existed since 1927. A quick check of the Policy Debate database shows no topics that would be “controversial.”
Public institutions called high schools began in the early 19th century, but they weren’t much like what we know now.
The first American high school is established in Boston, Mass. Called the English Classical School and renamed the English High School in 1824, the school seeks to meet the educational needs of working-class boys who do not plan to attend college. Subjects include English, mathematics, history, science, geography, philosophy, bookkeeping and surveying.
The wealthy had schools long before that, of course, and certainly would have featured in-class debates. Rhetoric was one of the classical disciplines. Did they organize competitions between schools? I’m dubious. Would they have allowed debates on something as totally radical as abolitionism? I’m dubious. People preached about ending slavery and got attacked for it. High schoolers? Undoubtedly not.
I can show you the notebook of an early 19th century student at Tapping Reeve’s Litchfield Law School, the first independent law school in the U.S. Contained within are the student’s copies, made in 1828-1829, of lecture notes taken by a former student in 1799. Additionally and of potential relevance, the first few pages describe the moot court exercises at that school. However, I personally cannot read the antiquated and faded handwriting.
~Max
Per Wikipedia:
Unlike syllogistic disputations, the topics for forensic disputations often veered towards the hot-button issues of the time: A list of topics debated at Yale in 1832 included questions relating to Native American civil rights, universal suffrage, and capital punishment.
I wonder whether they avoided what seems to us to be the REAL hot button topic of the day because it was too controversial or because there just weren’t any abolitionists in the room (in those days students argued their actual position rather than being assigned a side).
These were informal gatherings of students at a particular university, not an organized competition between school teams; those didn’t develop until the early 20th century. High school debate wasn’t a thing until 1925.
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~Max
When my daughter was in high school she was assigned the pro side in a class debate about the Japanese internments in World War II. It so happens that my wife’s family was interned. As I recall the teacher gave her the option to opt out, but my wife and I urged her to take the pro-Internment side so she would recognize the arguments and be better able to counter them in the future.
That’s the high school league, right? Well, segregation was definitely in effect then, so I guess the answer to the OP is “nope”, at least at the HS level.
I found this page giving a list of high school debate resolutions by year since 1927. The topics are deliberately open-ended and provide a lot of leeway in the actual topics chosen. Segregation does not appear in any of the topics, but I can assure you that it was discussed in, for instance, “1934-1935 — Resolved: That the federal government should adopt the policy of equalizing educational opportunity throughout the nation by means of annual grants to the several states for public elementary and secondary education.”
Sort of relevant: how a Latin essay competition in 1784 inspired anti-slavery campaigning:
My memory may be totally mis-connecting things here, but I believe there was something similar - not about slavery - but that Laura Ingalls once participated in a town debate in which she went up against an opponent who, predictably, argued against the plight of Native Americans and Laura won the debate by defending the plight of Native Americans. I have no idea from the writing what time this debate took place, but given that Laura was born in 1867, this would have been well past the age of slavery but still well within the era of segregation and anti-Native American/anti-minority bigotry in general.
The spot at which Clarkson sat down and decided to devote his life to abolition is marked by a small monument, which most pass without a glance. Used to be the road to Cambridge, now bypassed.
This excellent “what if” video shows how the Cotton Gin changed America forever-