IS DEBATING PERNICIOUS?

"A devitalizing and pernicious influence,"--this is the epithet applied to intercollegiate debating by a writer in a recent number of the Nation. The correspondent charges that debating breeds insincerity, logical trickery, emotional dishonesty. It is, he asserts, "The worst possible training for public life . . . I do not believe any American with the forensic training of an American University ever achieved honorable success in public life without consciously rejecting all that he ever learned in these debating teams.'"

Exactly on this principle the Faculty of Yale forbade men to play feminine parts in dramatic performances for two successive years. It was feared they would grow effeminate! This is over-estimating the influence or importance of an institution which is not so over-estimated by the participators in it. The college debater is supposed to carry away the firm idea that the methods of point-debating are the methods of public life; he is supposed to assume that his proof by statistics and juggling with masses of facts forms the basis for all conviction. Far from it. He knows and everyone knows who hears him that he is taking part in a beneficial mental exercise. He is developing speaking ability and the power of logical analysis. The debater certainly receives no bad influence from being trained to find at once the flaw in an opponent's argument, or to collect diligently the facts upon a subject before he attempts to speak upon it.

"College debating is the worst possible training for public life." Certainly, if it is supposed to be an adequate training for public life at all. But, in spite of an occasional disagreeable debating mind and manner to be found, there is no evidence that debaters consider it as anything more than good preliminary practice in the logical analysis and forcible presentation of arguments. A striking instance of intellectual sincerity was afforded by the recent triangular debate on suffrage, in which nearly all the members of the Harvard team were converted to the affirmative, although it was the three negative teams which won. It may be recalled too, that President Wilson,--successful in public life,--was a leading debater at Princeton.

The Forum and the special interest clubs offer opportunity for the expression of conviction. Literature, economics, history, and the like train for public life. Why over-emphasize and damn debating? It is excellent as far as it goes, but no further.