4 ms·

This. American high school debate format makes no sense. This is just the latest contradiction to be heightened. Debate is just not a thing that subjects itsel

• whimsicalism 3y ago
  I disagree, I think the skills taught are portable to lay persuasion, and this can be seen by the fact that debaters from the 'weirder' events will often enter a slow, lay debate format, win the tournament, and then return back to the 'weird' format.
  • shortrounddev2 3y ago
    The "lay" debate formats have the same technical rules as policy debate, theyre just shorter and dont lend themselves to spreading. Policy debaters clean up because theyre playing debate in hard mode, but the rules are still similar: present contentions, rebuttals, and anything that isn't addressed carries across the flow and is tallied up in the end as a mathematical formulation of who addressed which points when, and were those rebuttals convincing? Theres no room for the soft skills required to legitimately influence people in real life, the most important of which is listening.