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

Rebuttal I: Debate provides no useful exclusive benefitCon's first argument misrepresents the situation. These classes benefit from those skills, and you will learn slight amounts of them, but the classes themselves do not teach them. English does not teach reasoning and research. You use research, and are taught how to use website X or Y and MLA, and not much else. These classes scratch the surface as much as needed.What Con doesn't understand is that those classes don't adequately teach those topics. Is that wrong? No. In English class, the teacher can't spend the needed amount of time to teach you the full subject of Research, Reasoning, etc... The same is for all other classes. To adequately teach students those skills, one can not rely on the scraps you get in the other classes.As for IQ, Debate practices all the important qualities that IQ tests. As my prior round stated, Debate uses and exercises multiple skills and traits that conveniently measures one's IQ. To increase IQ, one has to exercise the following skills:- Problem Solving- Understanding Relationships (and Relevance)- Reasoning- Ability to Store Information- Ability to Retrieve Information (1)Each of these are best exercised in debating, where one one is trained on, used, competitively tried throughout the school year. Nothing exercises these better.Con's logic is flawed when placed near reality. In the US, students have on average of 2 - 3 electives (free-to-choose courses) to use on extra courses each year. This is about 8-12 total. In Missouri, you must pass at least 7.5 electives.(2) This pretty much leaves open 8-12 classes that can be used for Debate Class. The idea that you have to give up another important course is unwarranted.The fallacies Con brought up is both Appeal to Authority and Appeal to Wisdom, and is based on the idea that because they are a debater, they are immediately right. The fallacy doesn't say the debater isn't smart, just that being smart doesn't make you right. Con misrepresents the case. "Being able to stand behind a podium and say "The proposition in the debate is wrong" does indeed not make you smarter... Training, excising the skills you use behind that podium, and than using them over time, however, does. However, in fact, we do know it does make you smarter. A study among high school students found those who debated to have a higher IQ. When the study was broaden to the NFA and compared to nearly 15,715 others, the Debaters had higher IQs than the average person."Nor does debate focus on these things more than other subjects."I've already addressed this... Other school subjects only skim the surface. As for the rest of his argument, Debating Class would, in fact, put heavy emphasize on these traits. Such a class builds on them. Other classes only have time to build on English, History, etc... But Debate class would better strengthen these traits more so than the other classes can. Bringing up other nations not having the class is irrelevant. What causes low IQs and what fixes them are different. Con's argument is flawed. The US has a different culture, and many issues that might lower IQ. Comparing it in those respects with the rest of the world doesn't help, as the World to too broad to measure loose variables to. The average IQ, however, is set on a global measurement, so measuring nations by it is efficient (Another example is measuring the world by Nominal GDP being bad, but by PPP GDP being good.) Con basically said that because the other nations don't have X but their IQs are higher, X doesn't work.Con should understand that Politicians are at the prime of intelligence (Media, not so much.) Making the general population smarter doesn't absolutely increase their intelligence. Con is also comparing the Debate Class I'm discussing with other Debate Classes. This is false dichotomy, that we either get [this type of debate class] or [no debate class.] Con also Generalized Debate Programs in High School, as they often have a list of options as opposed to presetting your debate for you. Not to mention the fact that nearly every class has preset lessons. The debates being preset does little to effect the learning curve. If presetting did affect your learning, than don't have the debates preset. Con fails to understand that Debate Class holds a wide range of lessons that are fully engaged in the class, as opposed to the skimmed versions in other classes. Such as:-Actual Unguided Research, which is hardly touched on in other classes, usually only enough to get the project done.-Applying Rhetoric to conversation.-Public discussion on important issues.-Politics (as having the teacher discuss politics is not okay, but Politics are too important not to be taught. I'll hit on this better later.)-Having opinions and views properly challenged and opposed. This build tolerant towards being confronted with opposing views, a major issue in the US. It also helps challenge, exercise, and build on one's views.-Learning Fallacies-Understanding proper forms of argumentation as opposed to the rogue form used in US society.The last 4-5 I gave aren't practiced in other classes, answering Con's last words: " Pro needs to demonstrate what debate class can teach that other classes don't."Many of Con's arguments come down to a misunderstanding of American Schools.1] http://tinyurl.com...2] http://tinyurl.com...3] http://tinyurl.com...Rebuttal II: People are smart in different waysThis doesn't meet the situation in the US Education System appropriately. Everyone is different in some way or another, especially when it comes to learning. In the United States, education is set up to meet different learning types with different teaching strategies (4). The set up meets the needs of unique learners, and people with different forms of intelligence. By no means is Education black and white. By Con's logic, we wouldn't have English class because everyone learns English differently. The US has a system that allows for all these differences (5). Allowing a class to be left out because not everyone will pass it, or because some will do better than others, isn't very logic. The prime purpose of school isn't that you learn X, Y, and Z... But that you learn how to learn and apply reasoning to X, Y, and Z. Everyone is leaving school knowing a lot but still not being intelligent because they can't apply logic to what they learned, or logically apply what they learned to life and current events. School shouldn't only teach us based on what we are like, but also on what the real world will be like, and the real world is full of competition and having to socialize and face others, and even a non-competitive, anti-social, child must learn how to do that. There are many types of debates to meet the diverse needs of every student, and learning more than one will do a student well (6)."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"?"Debate class provides a much broader setup that better links important topics. It applies logic in conversation among students, and includes opposing viewpoints in the class as opposed to the teacher's viewpoint, which has became an issue in most schools (7). Instead of hearing the teacher's version of logic, you hear a diverse range of logic applied. An emphasize on debate helps broaden the topic and give everyone a chance to defend their own logic in an actual conversational manor, as opposed to only practicing it as a secondary topic.Making Debate only a secondary subject of the class ignores every reason I gave for it being a prime focus."The worst-case scenario is that the endorsement of particular modes of learning also becomes an endorsement of academic elitism for high-performing debaters."This applies to literally every class in School. One could argue this with Art Class, or P.E.. P.E. being a required class to graduate.4) http://tinyurl.com...5) http://tinyurl.com...6) http://tinyurl.com...7) http://tinyurl.com...Rebuttal III: No qualified teachersAs good as that argument would have been, Con does't know that there are college/university courses for Debate (8, 9). Most Teacher's qualify by having a degree in Logic and Rhetoric.The NFA is a great place to turn for information on how to judge a debate (10). In fact, viewing that page, we already see the NFA has an online classroom, so that alone hurts Con's case against the ability to have a Debate Class. Looking through the 10 topics (4 debate types), we see each one has PDFs on how to judge the ability of a debater.The premise is that qualification (of teacher or class) isn't an issue. 8) http://tinyurl.com...9) http://tinyurl.com...10) http://tinyurl.com...Conclusion: For the Low Costs, the benefits to society are worth it to have a Debate Class. Debate Classes emphasizes on many aspects relevant to Education that other classes only have time to skim over (hint why in the US, writing teachers often have to repeat how to do research every time research is required, because students aren't truly taught it.) Debate Class also appropriately covers important topics that other classes can't touch on, including "logic, research and learning patterns." Be it called Debate Class or Logic and Rhetoric Class (as names and slight variants aren't relevant to the overall issue, so long as Debate is the major premise), at least 1 year is needed in all Schools to better exercise student's application of Research, Logic, Reasoning, Discussion, Understanding of other opinions and viewpoints, and Critical Thinking.Con's prime arguments are based off a misunderstood view of American Schools and culture. Other's are irrelevant questions that are only issues if you make them issues (example being how the class sets up debates. It's only an issue if you set it up badly.)My Arguments and Premises from R2 still stand.