[Music] really from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep you're always debating in some capacity the founders of this country understood that debate was vital for a peaceful Society I think that democracy is unrecognizable without debate Never back down from a duel with an opponent always Clash swords with someone when you can engaging debate at any chance you can get is good [Music] so the history debate is really interesting you can tie it back to the ancient Greeks Plato Aristotle Socrates people like that who had a tradition of public argument but in terms of competitive debate like debating to win uh that's a very British thing it comes out of the public schools and the universities particular the 19th century today there are many different formats of debate uh these can range from debate to lincol Douglas debate from public forum debate to parliamentary debate from congressional debate to impromptu debate all of them have in common the idea of uh research being articulate and being able to convince a neutral third party that you're right about something the first thing that you learn when you join a debate team is how to structure an argument an argument has three basic parts a claim a warrant and an impact a claim is what it is that you're trying to prove in the first place the warrant is the evidence for why that is true true and the impact is why it matters in the first place one thing that really differentiates a school debate from a presidential debate is something called the burden of rejoinder so what that means is if your opponent brings something up you need to respond to it because if you don't respond to it it's true so in other words if I tell you the sky is purple if you don't reply to it the sky for the intent of the debate is purple I think one of the most difficult things with new Debaters is this concept we call switch side debating in other words in one round you're going to affirm a resolution you're going to say I agree with this resolution and the next round you're going to negate it you're going to say I disagree with this resolution that strikes people as really strange because usually when you think about debating you think that you're upholding a side that is something you believe in that's actually not the case in competitive debate where's the fun in defending something that you already believe that's easy it's hard to defend something that you don't believe in and a lot of people really struggle with it debate has a lot in common with the martial arts especially Judo the philosophy of Judo in the martial arts is if someone takes punch at you you don't punch back you use the energy from that punch to flip them on their back and incapacitate them so when you're attacking your opponent conceding arguments gives you that energy you need to flip the opponent on their back so you might concede some arguments and then say but then there's one argument here that it just doesn't make much sense to me and I want to Tech that listening in a debate is just as important as speaking in a debate if you don't know what your opponent is saying you're not going to be able to respond to their arguments most people aren't listening most people are waiting for their turn to make their arguments that's a very different operation than listening to listen very carefully because everything they say they have to be held accountable for the second most important thing I think is in a short amount of time conveying a lot of things you want to say you're taught how to think 10 times faster than you normally would you have so many different arguments to deal with and you have to basically come up with a 4 to 8 minute speech within a minute and important skill that Debaters learn quickly is to read the judge Debaters learn to identify certain things about Judges either by judging a book by its cover or by finding out a little bit about who that judge is before the debate politicians do this all the time when you hear politicians adopt slightly different accents or slightly different approaches they're doing what high school Debaters do they're adapting debate can definitely translate into Real World skills very well whether you're on a job interview whether you're just trying to have a ation with someone oneon-one you're hitting on people in bars I mean just the ability to talk to people is something that very few people have and everybody covets a great skill that Debaters get is the ability to sort of read whether a source is credible or not if you turn on the television or you go on the internet opinion is sort of often presented as fact or as news so we really need to teach people to say Hey how do I find the other side here how does this argument working me over and how can I resist that I've been forced to take on so many different positions and so many different perspectives that personally I don't really believe in and now when I meet a person and they have you know a point of view that originally I would have thought wow this person's completely you know out of their mind and I think about it and I can say well I've had to defend that position so I know where they're coming from and that trait is such a useful trait in a society to have if we want to be able to get along with people whose opinions we don't share we need to be able to understand where they're coming from and to be able to walk a mile in their shoes debate allows you to do that [Music] [Music]