Public Forum Debate holds a greater education benefit for U.S. Students than Policy Debate

Thanks for a chance to debate this. Policy debate is more educational than public forum debate - Policy debaters garner more information processing skills because of the large amount of evidence/data that is presented in a single round. Because of the longer speech times (total of 52 minutes vs. 24 minutes) and the higher rate of argument delivery, policy debaters receive substantially more information in one round than public forum debaters do. This forces the debaters to filter through tons of literature and evidence to figure out which would strategically benefit them the most. The longer speech times and faster delivery rate also facilitate argument development - there is more time in the round to delve in-depth into the various arguments presented. This is vital to critical thinking - policy debaters must fully dissect arguments in-round, while public forum only scrapes at the surface of complex arguments with the 2 minutes each debater gets in the rebuttals. All the reasons why public forum is more educational that DoctorDeku presents are only reasons why policy debate is better. 1. DoctorDeku spends substantial time arguing that public forum offers more topics to debaters than policy debate. This is true. However, I will argue having a total of 36 resolutions is detrimental to a debater's education. First, having a topic per year encourages argument innovation, because it incentives in-depth research on the topic to find topic-specific arguments that other teams AREN'T expecting - reading the same arguments over and over again (like DoctorDeku suggests) only happens in public forum as the topic changes so quickly that debaters are forced to read generic arguments. He says that public forum debaters "learn more things" than policy debaters. "Learn" in this case is loosely used - policy debaters develop a firm and deep understanding of the topic, while senior public forum debaters probably can't recall many of the 9 resolutions in their freshmen year, let alone specific arguments. 2. Skills garnered from policy debate are more readily applicable. The speed at which policy debates occur might seem absurd to some at first, but it really incentives debaters to think on their feet and formulate coherent arguments rapidly, increasing critical thinking skills. These skills are applied in the lives not only of students, but of future leaders, businessmen, lawyers, etc, because all of these occupations require on-your-feet thinking and quick, rational decisions. Information processing, outlined above, is readily applied to any student's schoolwork - to find evidence for papers one must filter through mountains of articles in databases such as ProQuest. He says coaches teach their public forum kids the Toulmin Method, but this is irrelevant because it is also taught in policy debate novice year at most schools, and the structure of a claim/data/warrant is emphasized at the highest levels of policy debate, if not at much faster speeds. The fact that only experienced debate alumni judge rounds does not indicate much - it merely means that policy debaters speak at a rate too fast for lay judges to understand. It is absurd to think that policy debaters talk this fast in their daily lives - the vast majority are smart, logical people who can communicate these arguments to an audience at a conversational pace. 3. This is completely wrong - anyone can participate in policy debate. DoctorDeku says policy debaters are worried they will be "spread out" by a school who could "afford" more evidence, but the reality is any debater, given an Internet connection, is given access to the vast expanse of evidence that every other school does. It's the work a stellar debater puts in that sets him/her apart. He says PF continues to increase in popularity, but there's a reason why there is no competitive public forum competition in college. Additionally, a quick look through past PF winners shows there are still dominant schools.