Rethinking Debate Across the Curriculum

This article was originally published in the April 2011 edition of the Rostrum.

You walk into a classroom to observe a biology lesson on organelles, expecting to see a lecture, maybe students taking notes, or an activity involving the textbook and worksheets. As you enter, you are surprised to see students already in their seats organized into five different teams. Hurried whispers stop as the teacher announces a debate is about to begin. The first speaker stands and presents an impassioned defense of mitochondria’s status as the most important organelle in a cell, demonstrating a detailed understanding of its functions and citing specific passages from the textbook to support these claims. Representatives from the four remaining teams stand in turn, presenting equally strong and evidenced cases for ribosomes, vacuoles, and other assigned organelles. In the downtime prior to the next round of speeches, students confer frantically in their groups, flipping through their textbooks and pointing to their notes from earlier speeches. What follows is nothing short of incredible; the teams embark on a series of back-and-forth exchanges as different students in each group take turns assuming the roles of attacker, defender, questioner, and closer. Every student in the class is involved in this weaving together of content mastery with strategic thinking about what it takes to win the debate. The announcement of the winner immediately provokes a new round of discussion over the merits of each side’s arguments, only ending when the teacher, virtually silent until this point, finally succeeds in ushering the class out of the room and onto their next period, the sounds of continued debate trailing behind them.

The common theme echoed by virtually everyone who was seriously involved in high school or college debate is the formative impact their participation had on their evolution as a learner and their self-identity as an intellectual. Debate coaches who are teachers realize the transformative power of debate and wish they were able to transfer the educational experience of their debaters to the students in their traditional classrooms.

These coaches intuitively understand that debate can be a fun, engaging, and effective method for teaching any subject matter. When executed well, classroom debates target the most fundamental academic skills. Critical reading improves when students are given a concrete reason to struggle with difficult text as they find evidence to support their side and win the debate. Students’ writing skills grow, as an effective debate speech mirrors a formal essay, with a thesis supported by succinct and evidenced arguments, and a persuasive conclusion that wins over the audience. Critical thinking and speaking improves as students develop and deliver arguments that engage their peers. Moreover, the competitive nature of debate encourages otherwise disinterested students to become actively engaged in rigorous academic work. Students look forward to coming to class on debate days.

Replication Roadblocks

Despite their experience, many debate coaches struggle with replicating the competitive debate experience in their classroom. They struggle structuring a traditional two or four person debate so that all students are actively engaged. Some create tasks for the twenty or so students not directly participating in the debate, including taking notes, judging, or asking questions during or after the debate, but these students are generally not as engaged and do not learn the content or develop the skills of those debating. Some try group debates, but often a few students will take over and most will fade back. Even if teachers require all students to participate, debates can quickly become chaotic and leave skill-building and content objectives unmet. Group debates can also shortchange students who leave only understanding the content associated with their own group’s analysis and not that of the other groups.

Beyond structuring a debate, another common dilemma, often encountered by math or science teachers, is the feeling that integrating debate into their curriculum will crowd out other necessary topics which they must cover. Math teachers are told to have historical debates about mathematical figures such as Pythagoras and science teachers are told to have debates about global warming or other science themed public policy issues, almost none of which are actually in their curriculum. They view debate as an additional “thing to do” in an already overcrowded curriculum.

Furthermore, some perceive debate as unsuitable for the seemingly objective topics found in math and science. For a debate to be successful, all sides must have the potential to win- there cannot be an objectively true answer. Thus, science and math teachers may encourage their colleagues in history and English, who acknowledge and teach their students to identify subjectivity or the reality of multiple perspectives in their curriculum, but often prematurely preclude themselves from using debate in their own classrooms.

Finally, debate is an intimidating activity for both teachers and students. For teachers accustomed to lecturing, handing out worksheets, and keeping a teacher-centered classroom, it is scary to give up control of their classroom to students. It is likewise scary for students. Some react to this freedom by speaking and acting aggressively or inappropriately, while others are shy and too intimidated to speak. Many teachers find it difficult to navigate the nature of these different student responses.

Debate Across the Curriculum in Boston

Over the last few years in Boston, the Debate Across the Curriculum Initiative (DAC) has attempted to help teachers overcome these roadblocks so they can use debate as an effective teaching tool across all academic disciplines, simultaneously engaging thirty or more students in a fun, yet academically rigorous way. The impetus for DAC came from the Boston Public Schools themselves, who came to the Boston Debate League and asked us to figure out a way for more students in our schools to gain the tremendous academic and social benefits of debate.

Funded originally by BPS and EdVestors, a prominent Boston foundation dedicated to improving urban education, DAC has achieved very impressive early success. The seventy-four teachers we have trained so far, almost none of whom were debate coaches or had any debate background, have reported that using debate in their classroom increases student understanding of class content (100%), student engagement (99%), and student reading and writing skills (98%). They further believe that if all teachers in their school used these debate techniques, the school would see an increase in overall academic expectations (95%), test scores (92%), and attendance (91%). Somewhat unexpectedly, they also indicated that the program had a substantial impact on their identity as a teacher. They reported that learning how to use debate as a teaching technique made them more effective teachers (92%), better able to connect with students (91%), and excited to use debate in the classroom (100%). Comments like these were the norm:

“The use of debate in my science classroom has increased the motivation and engagement of my most apathetic students—they love the competitive nature of debate and eagerly delve into texts that they otherwise typically avoid.”

“Students love debate. Debate fosters the students’ natural curiosity, their ability to reason from multiple points of view and taps in to the creative energy of students’ minds and hearts.”

“Debate…brings together reading, writing, critical thinking, and speaking skills in every discipline. The materials we were given are clear and lay the groundwork for intense curriculum development.”

Structuring a Debate Lesson

When designing the DAC program, our goal was to address the roadblocks that undercut teachers’ ability to effectively integrate debate into their classroom. Across all content areas, the greatest challenge standing in the way of teachers using debate is their uncertainty about structuring the debate so that 30 or more students are actively engaged in an academically rigorous fashion. While there are many ways to do this, we encouraged teachers to think about organizing their class on three levels:

The Format:

Once a teacher determines the resolution that will be debated, they must determine the format for the debate—e.g., a twosided debate where half the class argues Lenny is guilty of murder and the other half that he is innocent; a multi-perspective debate with six groups, each arguing their assigned organ is the most important organ in the body; a committee debate where different groups (the Japanese, American soldiers, Allied leaders…) argue in front of a committee of students that the US should drop a nuclear bomb on Japan; a fishbowl discussion on the best method for solving an equation; a Socratic seminar debating which animal phylum is the weirdest; a mock trial; and so on.

Group Selection:

Once the resolution and format have been determined, the second step is to decide how to divide students into groups. In a multi-perspective debate about which geometric shape makes the best house, one group could defend the rhombus while other groups defend kite, square, etc. In a two-sided debate about whether the North was justified in fighting to keep the country whole during the civil war, one group could be Southern farmers while other groups could be abolitionists, enslaved African-Americans, northern factory workers, or the English, etc.

Student Roles:

The final step is to make sure each student in each group has a substantive role. Roles can include an opener, attacker, defender, cross-examiner, closer, etc. Furthermore, in these debates all students, regardless of their specific role, are expected to be note-takers. No student is allowed to act solely as a note-taker as it is expected that all students will take notes as it will enhance the quality of the debate, increase core academic skills, and surprisingly, increase student engagement.

The Organelles Debate—An Example:

The format is that of a multi-perspective debate, with six different groups each arguing that their organelle is the most important. Each of the five students in each group is assigned a different role—the opener, attacker, defender, cross-examiner, and closer. The debate begins with a round of opening statements, with the opener in each group giving a twominute argument to prove that theirs is the most important organelle. This is followed by a round of attacks, with the attacker in each group attacking the importance of another group’s organelle, followed by a round of a defenders responding to the attacks that have just been made. The debate can end with a round of cross-examination followed by a round of closing statements. In between each round of arguments, students should be given a minute or two of preparation time to prepare for the next round. This “prep” time allows students who already spoke to give advice to the next speaker in their group, and ensure that everyone is engaged throughout the entire hour. As the debate winds down, every student has meaningfully participated, made oral arguments, engaged the positions of their peers, and used textbased evidence and their notes as the foundation for their argument.

Overcoming Additional Roadblocks

Students who participated in the organelle debate also overcame the problem that occurs in many group debates where students only understand the content associated with their group. Students in this debate didn’t just argue that their organelle was good, but that it was better. In order to make that comparison, they needed to understand the characteristics of each of the other organelles. In a debate about what method is the most expedient way to find the roots for quadratic equations, the student in the factoring group will also understand finding roots by graphing and the quadratic formula because they were forced to argue that factoring was faster than those other methods.

For most math and science teachers, the two additional roadblocks were the economy of using debate topics that are tangentially relevant to an already very full scope and sequence, and the difficulty of coming up with debatable topics in content areas that are viewed as wholly objective and often singular in their responses. The solution to both of these issues was both novel and obvious. We helped math and science teachers create relevant resolutions that offered the subjectivity and difference in opinion necessary for exciting debates. In doing this, we focused on the content or methodology that the teacher wanted students to recall, compare, contrast, analyze, and/or synthesize first and then we fit an evaluation, situation, policy, or application about a subjective topic to it that would allow for an engaging debate.

For instance, if a physics teacher wanted to have students review for a quiz on Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, instead of debating the interesting but curricularly irrelevant, “Is Sir Isaac Newton the greatest Physicist of all time” they could have three groups of students debate “the ability to violate which of Newton’s Three Laws of Motion would create the best superhero?” Not only is it more fun for most students to discuss superheroes, but also it gets the job done. Additionally, it leverages the prior knowledge of a broader range of students who would typically prefer drawing, daydreaming, or writing about superheroes than discussing the concepts of physics.

Teachers who use debate in this fashion also understand that debate is complementary, not supplementary. It does not have to be an add-on activity that crowds out other content already in their curriculum. Rather, debate is a teaching technique, like the lecture or giving a worksheet. In fact, in Boston, we specifically do not offer to write curriculum for teachers who participate in our program. Rather, we focus on training teachers to use this technique to teach the curriculum and content that they were already planning to teach. Once they understand this, teachers, in the math and sciences especially, begin to realize the potential for debate in their classroom.

The Core Elements of DAC

Another important principle of our program is that a “debate activity” can be many things, even if it is not traditionally seen as debate. Rather than try to create a list of acceptable debate activities, we instead defined the important elements of good debate. These elements are the actions that we want students to take in the classroom, actions that will help students become engaged in the lesson while learning the required content and building important academic skills. These elements include the following:

Advocacy:

The debate should be structured around a resolution (topic/ statement)—often an essential question or re-written content standard for the course. The idea is to develop a resolution that requires students to advocate for one position, while other students advocate for different positions. Instead of lecturing on the themes in Othello, students should debate about which theme was dominant. This advocacy causes students to take ownership of learning the content and substantially heightens the level of student engagement in the lesson.

Structured Argument:

DAC lessons center on teaching students how to argue and use evidence in a structured format. The debate is centered on a resolution or statement. Each side will have arguments supporting its position. Each argument needs to have textual evidence. Students need to engage their opponents’ arguments with textual evidence of their own. In the later speeches of the debate, students will need to sum up why their arguments and evidence prove their overall position, or thesis, is superior. Students’ writing skills improve as they become more skilled at debate because debate forces students to argue in a structured format. Two of the most common deficiencies teachers encounter in students’ papers are that they have very strong arguments but they are unorganized and often many are not relevant to their thesis. Repeated structured debates train students to connect their arguments to their side (thesis), and stop making arguments that do not matter. When students lose a debate because their arguments don’t prove anything (i.e., weren’t connected to a thesis) or the argument they won wasn’t relevant, students quickly learn to focus on those that are relevant and to connect them to their position. This oral skill quickly translates into a written one.

Text-Based Evidence:

While students can debate without text or evidence, it is vitally important for teachers to use text as the primary debate evidence to maximize the skill development of students. Teachers can draw on their textbooks as well as other texts—articles from magazines, newspapers, Web sites, novels, books, handouts, and/or class notes—for each debate. Students are then expected to draw evidence from these texts to strengthen and support the claims they make during debates. For example, in a debate about which character is the most heroic in a novel, a teacher can require that students use quotes from the text to support their argument. In a science debate about which kingdom of life is the weirdest, students can be required to quote the different characteristics of their kingdom, or their opponents’ kingdom, from the textbook.

Note-Taking:

Teachers can use the existing formats and routines within their classrooms for notetaking or DAC templates, but during any debate, all students need to take notes (or flow) in order to keep up with all the arguments. At this point, teachers should stress to students that the only way to respond to all of their opponents’ arguments is to write them down. If they don’t, they might forget them and could lose the debate. Debate is one of the best activities to motivate students to take notes, as they will literally lose the debate if they do not answer their opponents’ arguments. No other activity does this.

Student Engagement:

Students must engage the arguments of their peers. The best debate lesson is one where the teacher talks as little as possible. Good debates force students to appropriately attack the view of their opponent and to defend their position against attacks from the other group. This skill is vitally important. Often students ignore what they don’t understand (whether it is something their teacher says, a piece of difficult text, or a question on a standardized test) and just focus on what they do understand. Debate teaches students to acquire the habit of engaging what is at first confusing and difficult—a very valuable skill to have.

Scaffolding Debate Activities

While the full debates described above are fantastic learning experiences for students, most teachers find that their students (and they) are not ready to jump into a full debate right away. They have found that doing a string of much shorter activities that focus on one or two of the above core elements are great activities that help build both the confidence and skills students need to appropriately engage in a full, period-long debate.

A teacher who wants to help students understand how to use evidence to support an argument can do an “Evidence Hunt” activity where they give the students a list of arguments and a list of excerpts from a text and are asked to match the evidence to the appropriate argument. A teacher who wants to focus on helping students use evidence to advocate for a position can do a “Soapbox” activity, where they require students make a 20-second argument with a piece of evidence from a text. They can ask students to argue that a character from A Tale of Two Cities is a good person or that a particular type of radiation is helpful to society. In Boston, we have developed many of these shorter activities that teachers can use to scaffold the skills that students need to develop before they can effectively and appropriately engage in debate activities. By beginning with these activities, teachers and students are able to comfortably embrace debate and develop the social norms to execute them appropriately.

Moving Forward

With the coming adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), debate has the potential to play an even larger role in the education reform movement. In fact, in Boston, we are beginning to reframe the way we think about DAC. What we have described in this article is really more than debate; it is about how to teach students to use evidence to effectively make arguments. That concept is one of the fundamental themes found throughout the CCSS. We have even begun discussions with Boston Public Schools to recognize that we are teaching more than just debate, and that there are strong connections between what we teach in debate and the CCSS. In the future, do not be surprised to read about Boston’s Evidence-Based Argumentation initiative.

Using debate in the traditional classroom is not a revolutionary idea—in fact, teachers do debate and debate activities all the time. But we have found that thinking about debate as described in this article really opens teachers up to the idea of using it more fully. One teacher reported, “Through DAC, I’ve been challenged to think more deeply about my teaching and how to engage students on relevant and important issues through debates.” Another third-year teacher e-mailed us and said, “The debate I did in class made up for every bad day of teaching I’ve ever had.” Debate is just good teaching, and as teachers become comfortable using debate as a classroom teaching tool, they become more effective at creating an engaging yet rigorous learning environment.

Hopefully the lessons learned here in Boston can act as a template as you attempt to integrate debate into your classroom, school, or district. If you would like to learn more about Boston’s use of Debate Across the Curriculum, please visit us online at www.bostondebate.org or e-mail Steve Stein at steve@bostondebate.org. The Boston Debate League will be running weeklong DAC graduate classes in the end of July/early August. Contact us to learn more.

Steve Stein, a former high school debater himself, taught high school history for ten years and was the Director of Debate at Chattahoochee High School for five. He received a Masters in Education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, consulted for numerous Urban Debate Leagues, has run more than 100 coach and student workshops and professional development seminars, and is the creator of Boston’s Debate Across the Curriculum initiative. He is currently the Executive Director of the Boston Debate League.