Or, “Team Policy Burdens–What Do I Need to Prove? Part 1–Arguing About Truth.”

Today we are taking a break from our counterplan series. This short series will discuss the burdens of the Affirmative and Negative teams in a debate round. After this short break, I’ll talk about whether counterplans should be topical or not.

In this post, we will begin to discuss the most foundational question in all of debate–and that's not an overstatement. Today we are asking the question of what you need to prove to win a TP round. But before we can dive into Team Policy Burdens proper, we first have to look at the foundation of debate itself: truth.

Team Policy debate ought to be fundamentally about the truth.

What concerns me the most in debate training is when debate is taught like it's just a game or just a sport. Any theory that boils down debate theory to “whatever works the best” “whatever is the most persuasive” “whatever the judge’s standard is” “whatever makes debate better” &etc. is concerning to me.

I regularly talk about trying to find the most persuasive way to argue (for the truth!) But if we try to build our debate theory on “what works” or “what makes the game of debate the best” we are at risk of slipping into a dangerous philosophy of pragmatism–replacing truth with what we decide is helpful/beneficial to us.

Are any of the people in homeschool debate circles arguing for these debate philosophies actually pragmatists in their normal lives? I doubt it. I’m not saying that if you don’t center debate around what is true that you therefore have a pragmatic worldview.

What I do believe is that debate ought to reflect life.

If debate is just a game we play in high school, it’s not worth pouring hours and hours into it. It’s not worth getting coaching. It’s not even worth reading this blog post! But debate is worth the effort, it is worth getting coaching in, and it might even be worth reading this blog post.

Debate is fundamentally an application of the art of Rhetoric (hence our company’s name). Rhetoric is the great subjectless subject–it combines every discipline together (history, philosophy, economics, math, science, politics, literature, writing, ethics, and even theology) together into a cohesive whole. It teaches students how to think–which is why a strong education in rhetoric might be the second most important part of a highschool education, second only to learning about God. I can’t think of a better, readily available alternative to debate at teaching students how to put together things they know from different disciplines, think about them, and share that with others.

Because of this, debate ought to focus on preparing us for life. That necessitates that our philosophy of debate be aligned with our philosophy of life.

First, as Christians, our goal ought to be to speak the truth.

This goal is far higher than winning any award. I’ve spoken about this at length here, so I won’t go into detail in this post. But it’s critical to remember that any time we are speaking to others we ought to be speaking the truth.

Second, the nature of good rhetoric demands that we focus on the truth

Plato described rhetoric as the art of leading the soul. I would argue that this can be true of any rhetorical activity we participate in. If we are seeking to learn how to lead souls well, why would we do that from a starting place of “what works”? I want my philosophy of debate, from the bottom up, to be about the truth. This is the most effective way to lead souls to the truth. Every time you stand up in a debate round, you have an opportunity for soul leading–either for good or for evil. Think about that–how does that change how you debate?

Why I coach debate

I’m here as a coach because I believe in teaching students how to better love God with all their mind through learning how to think. I’m here because I believe in teaching students how to speak the truth in love, and winsomely share the truth of Christ with the world. That's why debate needs to be about speaking the truth in love.

That’s why the foundation of debate is the truth, and why I start there in building any theory of how debate ought to work.

One final question: if, in the Christian speech and debate leagues, surrounded by people who still believe in objective truth, we can’t center our debating on what is good and true, where will we learn to do that? In secular academia which largely operates out of a pragmatic mindset? In a workplace that is becoming much less interested in the truth? Christian speech and debate is one of your greatest opportunities to learn how to defend the truth, so you can know how to do so in more difficult environments. Take that opportunity.

I’m not interested in creating sophists who have cultivated their skills, learned more about the world, and have no grounding in the truth. I’m here to train Christians grounded in the truth to go out and defend it with excellence, both in high school debate and in the rest of their lives.

In the next post, we will dive into more details of Team Policy burdens.