Public forum superiority.

In this round I will present an overview of my argument Overview: Policy debate is educationally superior to Public Forum for four independent reasons: Policy is twice as long and twice as fast, meaning at least 4 times as many arguments can be made. This is an educational benefit in terms of quantity of material covered, ability to engage evidence in depth. Only policy engages Kritiks and Theory. These arguments are educationally beneficial by forcing self-examination, philosophical engagement, and strategic thinking. Policy debate engages both specialized and lay judges, effectively capturing all benefits PF derives from using lay judges while retaining the benefits of hyper-technical debate. Only policy debate is useful to other debate forms – Pro concedes PF uses policy judges to enable more technical debates while policy does not rely on a PF judge pool. This means PF usefulness is derived from policy debate. Additionally, Public Forum debate fosters an attitude toward argumentation that is detrimental to both the individual and society. Argumentation is valued in PF only as a tool of manipulation; this point is demonstrated by Pro’s insistence that logic is only good if it helps you get your way. The impact to this is that work ethic and a value of education are undermined. Individuals will prefer to try and “appear” correct rather than apply argumentative rigor to come to correct conclusions, with disastrous consequences as individuals move on to real world fields where reputation is key to individual success and “appearing” correct without actually being so can result in the loss of lives and wealth. Pro has functionally conceded that education and work ethic outweigh persuasiveness in utility and that education and work ethic yield persuasiveness. Pro also concedes that utility to society should be valued first. I have demonstrated both that Policy debate gives a greater benefits of education and work ethic, while PF actively hurts education and work ethic. Framework: Pro’s only response to framework is that the debate is about “usefulness” and not “benefits;” I have no idea how to evaluate usefulness without evaluating benefits and Pro offers no explanation. Pro offers no response to the argument that the benefit of individuals is tied to society- individuals will have more opportunities in a thriving society than a struggling one; and that the subject of debate is society and public policyrather than the individual, making societal utility more relevant in evaluating the usefulness of debate. I have demonstrated that work ethic and education ought to be valued more than persuasion, as these two abilities offer the means to developing persuasive ability while persuasive ability offers no path to work ethic and education. If I have a strong work ethic, research skills, and the ability to self-evaluate, I can teach myself rhetorical ability. If I only learn that persuasion is paramount, not only will I lack the skills to foster work ethic and education in myself, but I will wind up like Pro and think that these traits are worthless as long as I can get my way. Work ethic is the foundation to all human success and is patently useful at the individual and societal level. Education is critical for societal progress- the development of new technology and refinement of law- and for individual success- i.e. the ability to become proficient in a professional field. Education: The single strongest point on this topic is the fact that a policy debate round is much longer than a PF round. Pro can claim that the evidential analysis in a PF round is on par with that in a policy round, but the simple fact is that a 4 minute PF speech does not offer the same opportunity for critical analysis that an 8 minute policy speech does. The ability to engage in critical reading and comparison is an educational skill with wide utility. Pro tries to claim that policy debate fails to achieve topic breadth by listing topics that PF covers but policy supposedly doesn’t. When I provide hard evidence that policy does in fact cover the same topics as PF, Pro back pedals and concedes policy debate achieves a breadth of topic but only through “sub-arguments.” What a “sub-argument” means I can only guess at; I will let the judges puzzle out how you have a debate about Keynesian economics ONLY in respect to transportation infrastructure without understanding Keynesianism as a concept. The simple fact is policy debate covers just as wide a range of topics as PF. Most likely the range is much wider, especially considering p=PF excludes Thoery and Kritiks. Rather than address my specific warrants to why Kritiks and Theory are uniquely valuable, Pro strawmans my argument and claims they are just ways of dodging the topic. Recall my R3 reasons why Kritiks and Theory are uniquely valuable: Kritiks are real world arguments that are well represented in US political discourse, Kritiks and Theory promote self-reflective thinking, Kritiks promote philosophical challenges to the status quo that are critical to societal progress, and Theory maintains educational quality in debate. His response that PF covers Kritik topics like Libertarian advocacy does nothing to advance his case because: At best this is just a concession of the educational value of Kritiks and a claim that PF also captures the benefit. He doesn’t capture my R3 e) argument, that Kritiks enhance the strategic aspect of debate and promote critical thinking. Finally, Pro does not address any of my arguments about the inherent utility of complex arguments. Real world professionals make use of complex arguments all the time- lawyers, scientists, and CEOs all have to take into account complex situations and come to a strong logical conclusion. This ability is uniquely fostered by the in-depth and year-long topic of policy debate, which forces debaters to get into the nitty-gritty of arguments and refine strategy throughout the year. Pro thinks debate ought to emphasize argumentation only to the point of “necessity”- but this is an artificial and vague goal post that does not account for the intrinsic utility of argumentation. Work Ethic: Longer and faster rounds, a year-long topic, and topic depth all create competitive incentives for higher quality research in policy debate. Long rounds mean weak evidence has more time to be picked apart; long topics means weak evidence is weeded out over the year and must be replaced by quality research; topic depth means that debaters must dig deep for good evidence. This all puts a greater work load on policy debaters, fostering a strong work ethic. The manipulative nature of public forum undermines work ethic, teaching individuals that what is most important is “appearing” correct, rather than seeking out the evidence that conclusively proves and argument. Persuasive Ability: Pro’s entire argument for the persuasive superiority of PF rests on the use of lay judges which force simple argumentation. Pro concedes that policy debate also uses lay judges, meaning policy debate garners all the persuasiveness advantages Pro claims for PF. Additionally, Pro concedes that PF uses policy judges as expert judges to improve the quality of PF rounds. This demonstrates that usefulness provided by PF is dependent on policy debate, meaning any unique benefits of PF are at least partly attributed to the policy debate world. Finally, cross apply my Framework arguments that education and work ethic are a prerequisite to persuasiveness. Clear and logical argumentation are required for persuasiveness, thus they should be evaluated first. Pro claims public forum teaches both argumentation and persuasiveness, yet his entire presentation demonstrates that PF does not teach argumentation as a skill but rather as tool of manipulation. Only policy debate teaches both. Moreover, the primacy of education over persuasion means that emphasis on argumentation is more important.