Intercollegiate Debating

The following article on "Intercollegiate Debating," by Professor Baker, may be of interest. It is contained in the last number of the "Educational review,"

"There is no denying that intercollegiate debating has been of very great assistance to those of us who are interested in teaching undergraduates to present their ideas orally to the general public with clearness and force, who are interested in the forms of public discourse, for intercollegiate debating offers just that idea of tussle, wrestle and fight which appeal to a youth's imagination. The great advantage in this careful study of rebuttal is, not that a youth learns to think thoroughly and independently, though he does gain this power through it, but that be come by to realize that in almost all questions of the day the other man has nearly as good a right to his opinion as he has to his. Recognition of this facts means broad-mindedness and fairness in discussion. Just here is where intercollegiate debating may prove something of a nuisance. It exists for the purpose of winning something, and therefore the undergraduate--not the coaches--wonders whether he may not contrive "trick plays" in his argument, whether he, too, cannot snap the ball back with double passes, and in his course work he comes to you with a brief in which he has tried carefully to conceal the large part of his case. When you object that the plan is, as a brief, inadequate, that you see his little game, and that you have already seen it many times among his predecessors in your course, he looks a bit sheepish, but you still have to struggle with him week by week to make him give you a thorough presentation of the whole case, so that you may judge his work on its real merits. The graduate coaches complain of this as heartily as you or 1. The fact means simply that intense competition with victory ahead requires constant vigilance if some of the past evils of athletics are not to creep into this intellectual sport. It is, then, I believe, not to course which exist mainly to train intercollegiate debaters, but in courses which train youths to think seriously on questions of the day, striving to get at the heart of them, and to present the results of their thinking clearly and persuasively, that colleges should give their hearty support. That is, I should like to see my men trained in discussion for the sake of truth, not in discussion for the sake of winning an intercollegiate debate."