Debate Class should be mandatory for all Applicable High School Students.

Thank you for accepting.========================================Premise I: The Nature of EducationWhile the Government may have agendas regarding Education and the School System, their agendas aren't the only governing nature of the Education System. One prime nature of Education is teaching students how to analyze and break apart a situation, apply logic and knowledge, and come to a conclusion on how to best reply to the issue... Most call this Problem-Solving. We find this in Math, Science, and Personal Finance (or whatever your school calls it), etc... To break it down, One of Education's prime natures is to teach the following:- Apply logic- Apply reasoning- Break down and analyze problems- Retain and call forth relevant knowledge- The ability to learn- Form answers and conclusions.Premise II: The Nature of DebateDebating, in most forms, requires the breaking down of information, situations, and evidence to better analyze and respond to the problem with a coherent answer. Before holding a debate, one must learn those skills enough that they can apply them.Debating might be personal, or between people, either way, the idea remains the same. Analyzing a problem and applying logic and reason to your conclusion. The main aspect of debating are as follow:- Apply Reasoning- Apply Logic- Analyzing something- The ability to research complex topics- The ability to connect relevant material to a premise or conclusion- The ability to see relevance and irrelevance- Understanding Fallacies- Form an accurate or reasonable conclusionArgument I: The Nature of BothAs seen in the Premises, both Education and Debate revolve around a similar idea... Analyzing a problem (be it a situation or an argument) and apply relevant logic and reasoning to form a coherent response or conclusion to that problem.Hosting a debate class would benefit the students in other classes as the components of debate would enhance their ability to operate in other classes. While other classes do try to teach these skills, Debating best applies each one in every debate. This makes learning how to debate a necessity for learning and practicing those skills. Debate Class combines each of the traits into one class, where each trait is more effectively applied to the subject and the ability to use each trait together is emphasized on. School would accomplish it's goal more efficiently by enrolling each student in a class for Debate.Conclusion I: Debate Class wouldn't just stay coherent with the Prime Nature of Education, but would much more effectively accomplish that nature. The effect of increased Critical Thinking, Application of Logic, Learning, and Analysis would better benefit the student's ability to excel in and learn from the other classes.Argument II: Benefits to SocietyThe average IQ in the US is 98, while not extremely low, it's below average, putting the US behind at least 18 nations, 11 of which are above 100(1). Learning the skills of debating naturally increases IQ because IQ literally measures those same skills."What is this cognitive ability being measured? Simply put, IQ tests are designed to measure your general ability to solve problems and understand concepts. This includes reasoning ability, problem-solving ability, ability to perceive relationships between things and ability to store and retrieve information." - http://science.howstuffworks.com... (2)Intelligent Quotient measures:- Problem Solving- Understanding Relationships (and Relevance)- Reasoning- Ability to Store Information- Ability to Retrieve Information (2)Debating Require and Exercises:- Problem Solving- Understanding Relationships (and Relevance)- Reasoning- Ability to Store Information- Ability to Retrieve Information- Ability to AnalyzeAlthough it sounds like I keep changing what Debating is, I'm not. I'm rephrasing to best show connections. Like saying it's lighter in here one moment, then saying it's brighter. Different words, same meaning.Debating exercises the abilities that measure IQ. By putting an emphases on Debating, you help students practice those abilities, and by exercising them, they strengthen the traits that get measured. While higher IQ's do not represent higher intelligence, they do often come hand and hand. Increasing IQ early on in High School will help a student make the most of what he/she learns inside and outside school.Another benefit to society is the increased ability of the general population to properly analyze and understand Current Events. All too often people believe false opinions about current events and Government. A population that can better analyze, and apply reasoning to current events and information they are told will best be able to understand truths and call out bullsh!t. This isn't just an important trait everyone should have, but a necessary and fundamental trait all American's should be taught. The Ability to analyze Political moves and produce a better picture of what Government is doing, and the ability to not only break apart information someone (friend, parent, MEDIA) gave you, but be able to apply reasoning and determine whether or not they are wrong, is crucial to the population.This would also help deal with a major issue in the Nation... The Bandwagon. The Bandwagon represents ideas that most people only consider true because they appear popular. Often called argumentum ad populum. By learning about Fallacies, AND how to best determine, analyze, and counter fallacies, we can better close the number of times the following are used:- Historian's fallacy- Post hoc- Appeal to emotion- Argumentum ad lazarum (and Argumentum ad crumenam)- Appeal to AuthorityThese fallacies are far to common in today's society. They would become less common if everyone can 1) determine when they themselves are using them and avoid doing so, and 2) determine and counter other peoples usage of the fallacy. Young people, and the general population, are bad about the Bandwagon Fallacy and each other fallacy I mentioned. The path to a smarter and more reason/logic focused population is the elimination of Fallacies as a common occurrence. Since a prime objective of understanding Debate is to understand fallacies, learning Debate would absolutely curve the over-usage of them,Conclusion II: In everyday society, the following issues occur; Applying fallacy over reason, low Intelligent Quotients, and false and Fallacious information being shared by people and media. A good example of each of these is Facebook... Learning the skills applied in Debating, and generally being able to Debate the information you come in contact with, will improve this issues.1) http://www.statisticbrain.com...2) http://science.howstuffworks.com...Argument III: CostsAveraging the cost of each elective (minus foreign language), it comes down to around $425 per pupil.(3) This cost includes paychecks, equipment, and maintenance, as well as utilities. The overall cost of running a Debate Class depends on how many years of it is required. We will assume that since each student per grade is measured, that the math accounts for as many classes as required to teach each student of that grade.(4)1 Year: $1,74 billion2 Years: $3.30 billion3 Years: $4.81 billion4 Years: $6.25 billionI don't feel a full 4 years of Debate Class is needed. Two classes is enough for simple and advanced debating, learning of and repetition of what you learned is good enough. With every student taking the class twice, you would increase the National Spending on Education by 00.5%. This implies a total of $22 a year per US Taxpayer (145,370,240 as of 2011)(5) Of course that $22 number isn't relevant. Not everyone pays the same percent of the taxes. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent of all taxes as of 2007 (6). If that trend hasn't changed, we can conclude the cost of the class for two years will cost the bottom 90% of taxpayers $17.15 a year each. This, however, doesn't account for the variable of Student Displacement. A student moves from Art class to Debate class, while the student is costing money by being there, he isn't costing money for the Art class. $3.30 billion dollars isn't being added to budget, but simply displaced from one class to another. This means that Debate Classes would add very little to the cost.Some schools do not have to build new classrooms to have a Debate Class added in, but for the sake of covering all ground, we will assume every school requires a new classroom built. How many classrooms? Doing the math, 7,490,000 students (2 grades worth) divided by (18.6 per class * 7 periods) = 57,527 classes, slightly over 2 classes per school.(7) At a cost of $158.40 per suare foot for school construction as of 2013,(8) at an average classroom dimensions of 25 x 30, the cost of building new classrooms cost be estimated at $6.83 billion.If you spend the cost across half a decade, it would be $1.3 billion a year... $8 average per tax payer. This is assuming every debate class needs a new room built. Conclusion III: Debate Class would cost very little to add to every roster, and would cost little to maintain.3) http://educationnext.org...4) http://www.census.gov... (file 243)5) http://www.irs.gov... (All Returns: Adjusted Gross Income, Exemptions, Deductions, and Tax Items: 2011)6) http://tinyurl.com...7) http://tinyurl.com...8) http://tinyurl.com...Conclusion: The benefits of a mandatory Debate Class, as seen in Conclusion I and II, are easily worth the extremely low costs of such a class as seen in Conclusion III. Debate Class would better accomplish the Goals and Nature of Education, and will benefit Society as a whole.