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

I also concur that once a curriculum is established, the ongoing costs of running a debate program would be minimal. And I might as well agree Americans are stupid. The problem with my opponent's model is that never provides any justification for why debate should be a class at all. Flash cards are also valuable tools for learning, but in and of itself that does not justify flash cards being a class. Wikipedia can be useful, but making Wikipedia a class might not be. I have three key arguments, with rebuttal integrated.1. Debate provides no useful exclusive benefitAll of the things pro listed under his topic of "the nature of debate" are also "the nature of mathematics" or "the nature of writing essays". Analysis, logic, reasoning, researching etc are all an essential part of the learning process in general, and therefore all the classes that teach you anything will be able to provide the benefits my opponent's model provides. Since classes such as math and language are taught in high schools under the status quo, this shows that America is not currently lacking education in these areas. And all those harms my opponent showed of low IQ in America etc aren't because America does not currently TRY to raise the IQ of students. It's simply that they fail. That's important because there is a demonstrated precedent in the current system for such a model failing. If you take kids out of math class and into debate class, then numeracy skills will fall, and ability to talk trash on any topic will rise, but IQ won't because both classes tried to teach the skills that IQ measures. There is this weird fallacy that many debaters hold that they are smarter than everyone else, and that therefore debate must make you smarter. This is incorrect. Like many subjects, smarter people often have an advantage in debating, therefore are more likely to succeed in it, and therefore are more likely to be seen doing it. Being able to stand behind a podium and say "The proposition in the debate is wrong" does not mean your IQ increases any more than being able to say "E=MC2". Smarter people are also more likely to win games of chess, but it doesn't follow that teaching everyone to play chess will make them all smarter. Nor does debate focus on these things more than other subjects. Debate for debate's sake is quite meaningless - you need to debate about different subjects, like politics, religion or science. It's truly cross-curricular, and that's where the logic comes in. For example, in a debate about the current crisis in Syria, debaters would probably draw conclusions on the basis of what they know about Syria, something they could have also done equally well if not better in a class that's actually about politics. All the things debating can teach you on top of that are tricks by which you can win an argument, for example, how to strawman and get away with it. Recognising strawmen is just as useful to a class on politics or social studies or economics or anything else, so those classes have exactly the same incentives to teach that material. Pro hinges his whole case on this one presumption debate class better emphasises these abilities, with reference to a lack of IQ in comparison to other countries. None of these countries has a program like what my opponent is proposing, and indeed the United States has a far more established debate program than countries like Italy where formal debating in high schools is still very much in its infancy. As a related point, anyone familiar with the politics of many of the nations ranked above the USA in IQ will probably be aware that logical fallacies and shady motives abound there as well. In a large part this is because the media and the politicians themselves become more intelligent too, and thus get better at masking their motives and fallacies, thus not solving the problem. This is particularly pernicious in the United States, where most forms of "debating" in high school have topics prepared well in advance, sometimes for a whole year. The problem with that is that particular subjects are emphasized for extended periods of time, de-emphasizing tangental curriculum objectives (to pretty much anything, but debating in particular) such as logic or research. Debate is a learning aide, not an area of study. Pro needs to demonstrate what debate class can teach that other classes don't.2. People are smart in different waysI'll let you in on a secret - I cannot use flash cards. I try, but somehow my mind just blanks out. People learn in different ways, and that's OK. It doesn't mean they can't learn or that they're stupid. Similarly, some people will learn logic skills through applying them in a debate. These people have an incentive to do debating and therefore often will. With the internet and sites like this one debating has almost no barriers to entry. There are also those people who might be incredibly logical, great researchers, and incredibly smart, but still fail in a debating setting (both as in fail to learn and fail to win). The human mind is quite varied in the ways it can become engaged. Some people get a kick out of debating, others don't. If somebody hates learning logic via debating, the class will actually probably be a detriment to their education. One might contrast this with, say, math. In and of itself math is pretty boring for me, but I can learn math in different ways. By choosing a fun way to learn, even a really boring subject can become accessible. That's important, because the primary role of education is to teach stuff - logic, research etc only being useful aides to the learning process. So some folk might enjoy learning math by challenging themselves to big equations, others might do it by playing games, or investigating how the logic of mathematics was discovered (the latter being what I did). The whole point of a debate class is to lock students in to one mode of learning - that is, learning by shouting down your opponents. Debate is also inherently competitive, which isolates anyone who isn't. There's something wrong with using a debate class to teach logic, research and learning patterns. In that case, why not have a class on "logic, research and learning patterns"? THAT would actually be directly relevant. But debate is one specific learning aide to these three subjects, one that actually has rules around how it works - rules that may not suit many people, and takes them away from classes that might have allowed more liberal approaches to accommodating different learning styles. The worst-case scenario is that the endorsement of particular modes of learning also becomes an endorsement of academic elitism for high-performing debaters. People need to recognise that just because you have won a big debate tournament does not mean that you are super-smart: it might have been the luck of the draw with the topics, or perhaps you are just really good with debate techniques such as misdirection etc. Being able to win people over and being able to get the right answer are two distinct skills. Ultimately that only leads to youth disenfranchisement and polarisation of educational oppertunity.3. No qualified teachersFor most secondary subjects, teachers complete a teaching degree and a university degree in the subject they wish to teach. The problem is that there's no degree in debating. This is because debating encompasses such a wide range of skills that measuring debating ability is incredibly hard to do objectively. Debating, unlike (for example) math, is not objective. You are convincing people, and people see things subjectively. Judges in the world of debating basically determine who else gets to accredit as a judge for various tournaments, causing the whole institution of debating to become some sort of old boys' club. Knowing the ins and outs of what debating judges are looking for and what might convince a random person is not the same. That's because in the real world, we do disagree on what is convincing and what is not. Just look around this site! Disagreements happen all the time over issues such as global warming - is the evidence strong? According to some, yes, and according to others, no. They've all made subjective evaluations based on what they've been told, although the actual facts behind it are not entirely clear. Debate itself has inconsistent standards. Just look at how every tournament ever seems to have their own weird formats. I had never heard about Lincoln-Douglas or American Parliamentary before I joined DDO. Similarly, I'll make a good bet that you had never really considered Australs. Without being qualified in debate, anyone who can be a primary school teacher can be a debate teacher. And given how primary teachers can sometimes be, I wouldn't exactly trust them as the greatest bastions of logic and intelligence. My opponent has to justify how students will learn anything of the things he talked about which youth do not already learn in their first years of schooling. ConclusionTo win this debate, my opponent needs to show why a debate class would be beneficial to all high school students. Debate is a learning aide, nothing more, and nothing less. It is preferred by some and shunned by others. It doesn't make you smarter, rather just directs you to certain topics in a competitive setting. There isn't even an agreed model for how it should be taught or done. It isn't enough to warrant taking time away from other vital areas of learning, such as language, math, science or social studies. Debate is very valuable to society, and in my view valuable to education. But it's one part of a much broader picture, and we should never lose sight of that. I'm proud to oppose the motion.