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

It is possible to teach debate in such a way that it increases general learning skills, and that's what my opponent wanted to do. It is also possible, even if this is not the norm in America, to teach language or math the same way. It is also possible to teach debating in such a way that it only scratches the surface as much as needed.I cannot believe the premise, however, that math (for example) in American education only scratches the surface of things like problem solving. Math is inherently a problem based subject, so what pro is essentially saying is that American students only scratch the surface of mathematics. Reading and writing both require the understanding of extremely complex relationships because English is an extremely complex language.I did accept pro's premise that Americans are a little stupid, but Americans are not THAT stupid. Nevertheless I thank pro for concluding their case.1. No exclusive benefitIn this debate, pro spent a lot of time asserting that debate somehow focuses on raising IQ more than other subjects. He did not show how or why this would be the case. He simply said that it does, and that's not good enough.Furthermore, he did not show why other subjects don't focus on areas that IQ measures. He simply asserted that they don't, and again, that's not good enough. I've made the claim that even if current classes don't teach their students well, they still have the same incentives as a debate class would to teach their students well. It's simply that they don't. If the classes in the status quo have exactly the same incentives to teach the things pro says will raise the IQ students, and they don't focus on those things, I wonder why pro thinks debate will focus on those things?Oh right, because pro thinks that's "the nature of debate". But - in science class (I assume there's such a thing in America) you'll probably learn something about the scientific method, which is the basis for all science. That requires the ability to store and retrieve information (both the method itself and remembering the method), an understanding of relationships (between input and output variables), and reasoning/problem solving (in determining a method and conclusion based on the results of the experiment). So it's the nature of science too - it underpins everything that science ever does. I could do exactly the same for literature or economics or anything else.So when pro claims "nothing exercises these [IQ measures] better", he actually needs to justify that. That's the whole point of this argument, and pro missed it.While I appreciate the system probably wouldn't be structured in such a way that really important facts would be missed by students, giving up an elective does reduce the student's learning somewhere, just as debate increases it somewhere else. The point was, however, that the learning you're giving up or gaining wouldn't be in IQ, because both classes taught the skills that IQ measures.My opponent's study proved a correlation between high IQ and debating. My opponent talked about it as if it proved causation. It didn't. It simply measured the IQ of debaters and compared it to the average IQ. My explanation from last round of data like this is simple - that even though you do not need a high IQ to be a top-performing debater, a combination of elitism and the fact that high IQ is an advantage has meant that high-IQ people are more likely to debate, not that debate has made people have higher IQs.To go over the specific list pro gave in the last round:- Unguided research should probably be done in other classes if it isn't already. I can't believe all American schools never expect students to read any books outside of class. Last I checked that's unguided literature study. The same is true of most other classes. The benefits of such research to a student's understanding of literature as a whole are clear and, I suspect, not in contention, so other classes have exactly the same incentives to teach this.- Debate is not a conversation, so applying rhetoric to conversation is not really applicable. Rhetoric is a specific study within language, which if it isn't covered, probably should be as part of standard language classes. Actually putting it into practice language has the same incentive, and again I might reiterate that debate is one tool a teacher might use to help accomplish this.- Let's assume the economy is important. Therefore, so long as discussions happen in economics classes, the study of economics qualifies as "encouraging public discussion on important issues". An average economics class is considerably more public than an average debate room. If discussions do not happen in economics, then that shows economics is not acting on that incentive, since such discussions would involve students in the learning process and thus help them improve. The same would go for any other matter you consider "important" that's taught in school.- My opponent said he'll explain what he means by politics "later", and then doesn't. Even if civics is in no way an option in America's education, plenty of other classes, especially social studies, have strong incentives to talk about it.- On having views opposed, imagine if I was to say in geography class the world revolves around me, given that we've established geography, as will all classes, has strong incentives to promote discussion, rather than some sort of rote-learning model. If I'm not corrected, I'll do worse on my tests. So any discussion that's one-sided in education has incentives to become balanced. - A similar point must be made for fallacies - because using fallacies makes people do worse on tests, understanding how to overcome those fallacies makes people do better, therefore the incentives to teach this already exist.- I have no idea what pro means by "proper forms of argumentation." Honestly, I don't. It sounds like a rehash of all of the above just to draw out the list.So if these things aren't practiced, and I'm just misunderstanding American schools, then that means teachers in America are simply failing to give their students a complete, holistic and involved education. It's not that there's a missing subject, it's that the subjects which are being taught are taught poorly.2. Smart in different waysAgain, my opponent frames debate like math - if you learn a few facts, you can be a good debater. This is not true. Debate is rather a learning tool - a way to put learning into action.Here's what happens in every single team debate in history: a bunch of folks get together, talk about a topic for a bit, listen to some speeches, and deliver one or two speeches themselves.That's ONE way on how to learn. But there are others. Debate isn't necessarily the best way to learn something objectively speaking, and it sure isn't only way. So the confusion pro has is that debate isn't something you learn differently, but a different way of learning. There's not a lot to learn in debate - the rules and perhaps one or two ways to exploit those rules - the real learning happens when you apply debate to a resolution which you then think about and produce some actual arguments from.So for the US to force students to learn with this specific process is to undermine what pro said was so great about US education, that it caters to all kinds of intelligence and learning styles appropriately.Pro claims a class on learning & logic cannot be broad like a debate. First of all, most if not all debates, particularly among developing debaters, are highly unlikely to be very broad in scope. Second, learning and logic are both equally interdisciplinary, so I fail to see why debate better links important topics.Again, encouraging conversation in class is a good idea for all classes, not least because it involves students in the learning process. It doesn't justify a special class just for conversations, let alone debate which is quite different from a conversation.As for the idea that modes of learning become a source of elitism, pro's argument that this could be applied to any class is contradictory because he agrees with me that the US does not currently endorse any modes of learning above others (I suspect my opponent is confusing how to learn with what to learn again). Being able to learn in the way the government supports should not be taken as an advantage in education. It's akin to teaching a class on flash cards and testing students' use of them.3. No qualified teachersAll my opponent could point to is one honors paper at the University of Houston, which isn't even among the top 500 universities in terms of debating results (http://idebate.org...). The program director has been controversial at best in debating circles (http://resistanceanddebate.wordpress.com...) and who has only 4 years of debating experience, or only 2 years coaching experience (http://judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com...).It may well be that the course is nonetheless great. But to me, that sends out all kinds of scary red flags. But the point is con could only find one university teaching debate, and their program is debateable at best. Having a minor in debate from a university with questionable standards is not quite the same as having, say, a batchelor's degree in science or maths.The other university had no debate courses - only a list of courses with interesting things to debate about with particular reference to politics.Judging a debate is very different from coaching a debate. Nevertheless, the guidelines in question are extremely subjective, mostly only telling people what not to do when judging, or specific things to look out for, but still allowing loads of room for interpretation. This creates the inherent problem with the subjectivity of judging that my opponent hasn't even addressed.The resolution is negated.