Serving our students: rethinking novice debate.

• Author: Hiland, Alexander
• Position: Essay

Introduction

Debate coaches in universities across the United States are increasingly called upon to defend the value of the activity. The simple reality facing debate coaches is that the vast majority of programs traveling to tournaments sponsored by the National Debate Tournament (NDT) or Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) serve a small number of students, yet the costs of fielding debate teams are remarkably high. This circumstance may not pose an existential threat to debate, or even to the unique style of debate practiced by NDT/CEDA programs. It does, however, focus renewed attention on the educational mission of debate. As Rogers (2006) has noted, funding pressures on competitive debate teams have created a climate where coaches and directors are forced to do more with less, while also being called on more often to defend the educational value of debate to university administrators and others. Toward that end, this paper argues for a shift in debate practices to serve more students and enhance the educational value of debate within the university. My argument is that more emphasis on novice debate should be part of the solution.

That novice debate faces particular difficulties in the college policy debate circuit is not to say that other forums cannot learn important lessons in novice debate pedagogy. Although the format and common practices of policy debate tend to create higher entry barriers than other formats, the problems faced by novice debate in other formats are a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind. Understanding the problems facing novice competitors in college policy debate provides a parallel case for novice competitors in other formats. This is especially true when these problems are understood as the result of institutional orientation (or lack thereof) to novice debate rather than as the product of argument practices.

Although novice debate appears to be gaining in popularity in certain areas, other regions have, for all practical purposes, no novice debate at all. I argue that this is largely due to a tendency to view novice debate as a less-than-serious form of debate--a sort of "varsity debate light." This attitude privileges varsity debate in ways that make it hard for varsity and novice debate to coexist. Alternatively, viewing novice debate as a distinctive style of debate that can not only exist alongside but complement varsity debate allows for the development of a program that can better serve the educational purposes of debate for a larger population of students.

Novice debate: for the university

College policy debate teams vary significantly in terms of size, competitive goals, funding, coaching support, and travel arrangements. This is in large part due to different funding models within universities, with some debate programs funded by communication departments, while others are funded by offices of student affairs or other administrative units. In addition to funding, variations across programs reflect decisions by debate administrators to privilege particular types of travel and competition. In recent years, these decisions have tended to privilege varsity competitions over travel to tournaments that emphasize novice debate.

That varsity competition is privileged should come as no surprise. In most cases, varsity debaters constitute the core of competitors on a team. By definition, they are competitors who have participated for an extended period of time. Because of this level of commitment, coaches have a good reason to devote the bulk of their resources to these students. The pressure to support varsity debate is compounded by institutional pressures to demonstrate competitive success at the highest levels of competition. Thus, the decision made by coaches to privilege varsity debate over novice competition is not altogether unreasonable. Yet, it is a decision that not only deprioritizes novice debate but also devalues it as a part of a team's structure. The deleterious effect of this decision is that while teams may represent the university well when they travel, they are not well represented as a part of the university at home.

Novice debate expands a team's reach by minimizing barriers to entry and spreading interscholastic competition to new members. Although recruiting high school students with debate experience is an important part of team development, these students already are well trained and know the benefits that debate provides. By contrast, novice debaters often must learn the basics of argumentation and debate, including argument construction and rebuttal, as well as specific content knowledge about particular debate topics. Moreover, many novice debaters require education in the value to debate in order for them to maintain an investment in the activity. Most debaters and coaches presume that the increased competitiveness found in varsity debate rounds inherently makes it more educational, but that presumption is faulty. By emphasizing novice debate, teams could provide a larger number of students with basic critical thinking and speaking skills--as opposed to a small number of students learning advanced skills in argumentation and debate. Indeed, if the standard for educational value in debate was tied to the proportion of a college's students participating, then varsity debate might be reduced to the junior partner in an active debate program emphasizing novice debate.

Unfortunately, debate scholars have paid relatively little attention to novice debate on the collegiate level, making evaluation of its pedagogical value difficult. Although conference presentations have focused on the topic, studies addressing the pedagogical possibilities of collegiate novice debate are altogether absent from scholarly literature, save for the occasional mention when discussing tournament practices (Edwards et al. 2010) or broader participation demographics (Stepp 1997). Since college novice policy debate has not been an object of concern for debate coaches, scholars would be hard-pressed to even develop a case study to publish in such journals. Sarah Partlow-Lefevre (2012), in an essay on assessing intercollegiate debate programs, outlines how a debate team can use assessment tools to demonstrate their educational value to university administrators. Her approach, while valuable, lacks any method for measuring the relative value of novice participation in comparison to varsity debate. Novice debaters typically are not treated as a distinct category of students with a distinct set of needs who need to be assessed differently than varsity debaters. As a...