COMMUNITY
What We're Reading by Amy Seidelman Speech and Debate as Civic Education Edited by J. Michael Hogan, Jessica A. Kurr, Michael J. Bergmaier, and Jeremy D. Johnson
“If we were to build a stone wall comprising the features of strong, participatory democracy, certainly we would include large boulders representing the importance of public debate and discussion.” — Mitchell Thomashow, Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society
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hat is the best argument in favor of speech and debate education and competitive opportunities? Often our focus settles on individual students, their 21st century skills and their academic potential. This volume, published in 2017 and touted as a “collection of the best ideas for reinventing and revitalizing the civic mission of speech and debate for a new generation of students,” advocates for a stronger framing of the activity as a public good. In his forward, David Zarefsky of Northwestern University describes his personal experience with speech and debate and how, through it, he gained a civic education without knowing it. This occurred by learning about timely and important public policy topics, being exposed to cultural differences during competition, experiencing democratic decision-making through repeated exposure to a third party arbiter, or judge, and more. Zarefsky argues, in sum, that “speech and debate would be better off if we made this realization [regarding civic education] explicit and deployed it far more prominently in our justifications of our competitive activities.”
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ROSTRUM | APRIL/MAY 2018
Although the volume more consistently references collegiate forensics, there is much a middle or secondary level educator (or an NSDA employee!) can take away. I’ll highlight two of the contributor chapters, but note I found something of value in each. In Chapter 4, The Intersection of Debate and Democracy: The Shifting Role of Forensics in the History of American Civic Education, authors Michael D. Bartanen and Robert S. Littlefield shine a spotlight on the role of education in citizenship training. They share possibilities for measuring the personal and social outcomes of civic education based on the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ (AACU) Core Commitments Initiative. Namely: • Striving for excellence, • Cultivating personal and academic integrity, • Contributing to a larger community, • Taking seriously the perspectives of others, and • Developing ethical and moral reasoning and action. Bartanen and Littlefield argue that these “dimensions of learning allow
concrete assessment but also are flexible enough to provide great latitude” in shaping curricula. They also discuss the perceived and real conflict between competition and civic preparation, starting with the introduction of the tournament format in 1924, which led to honor societies losing influence in the effort to balance competition with values like academic performance, civic engagement, and ethical behavior. They argue that the competitive model is an excellent vehicle for achieving the AACU outcomes, but advocate for a rebalance between the private and public benefits of participation, largely by reintegrating forensics into curriculum, reimagining the reward system to deemphasize competition, revising competitive standards to welcome back a more general audience, and reestablishing dialogue within the speech and debate community to find common interests and goals. In Chapter 5, Public Debate and American Democracy: Guidelines for Pedagogy, Robert C. Rowland also addresses the need to provide skills that adapt strong arguments to diverse audiences—the “universal audience.” Of particular interest in this chapter is the Transfer Challenge: how the skills of speech and debate play in the world beyond the classroom. Rowland shares techniques like coalescent argumentation and cooperative argumentation that can be modeled in the classroom to provide something closer to a real world experience. This volume’s remaining chapters cover much more! Because of its focus on civic education, there are many practical strategies and approaches shared for use in a classroom environment, in advocating for and structuring curricula, and for more dialogue in our community about the best way to ensure this activity thrives in the future.
Amy Seidelman is the Assistant Executive Director for the NSDA.