Critical Thinking
Throughout higher education critical thinking is a central tenant of most college classes. Most students must complete a “critical thinking” requirement in order to get their degree. Debate is certainly one of the best activities to teach critical thinking and is one of the reasons it is my passion to teach and share with other people. I believe that a world full of critical thinkers would be a better world and the more students that I can reach to improve their critical thinking skills the more success I will be as a teacher.
What is Critical Thinking? The Center for Critical offers a few diffferent definitions on their webpage. For me, I think it’s best summed up as the ability to think clearly and rationally. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.
A critical thinker is one who, when confronted with a stressful situation, can think through their thoughts and pause before making rash decisions. In debate, it involves not necessarily answering the argument with the most knee-jerk reaction but pausing a moment to evaluate the different options one has in responding to the argument. A good critical thinker understands the interaction of many different arguments with each other. A critical thinker will see where contradictions might happen between different arguments made at different points in the debate.
Secondly, a critical thinker is one who can think rationally during the debate – a person who makes logical arguments that appeal to the audience and offer the most persuasive case for their side. Bill Sparks, former director at Cerritos College, argued that spread debate is the antithesis of critical thinking. That when confronted with a debater using spread (by which I mean, dumping as many arguments as possible in response to position) he immediately wondered if he or she had any critical thinking skills. Rather than employing spread he taught his students to use their critical thinking skills to present the best arguments rather than all the arguments. So rather than respond to a topicality position with 30 answers – some of which may or may not apply to a particular position, choose 5 arguments that directly refute and counter the position. Explain those 5 arguments more in depth and justify the importance of each argument both in refutation of the position being made and the entire debate. That would show the judge much higher order critical thinking than just spewing out every possible answer.
It’s easy to defend the debater using spread as simply being smarter. That rather than coming up with only 5 responses to a position the debater used their critical thinking to come up with 30 arguments. That the debater making more arguments necessarily used more critical thinking to come up with more responses. However, I don’t think that’s true at all. I don’t think it’s hard to come up with 30 answers to any position. It’s deciding which of those 30 answers, in this particular debate round, with this particular judge, are the best answers, that employs the greatest level of critical thinking skills. As a judge I would much rather hear five nuanced and well explained answers to a position than 30 blipped arguments that require me, as a judge, to draw connections between the original argument and the refutation.
One example of this is the lack of signposting when responding to arguments in a debate. As a judge I detest debaters who say “on topicality, here are my 30 answers” and proceed to make all different types of responses to different parts of the topicality position. Answers 1,3,5,19,20-22 all deal with the standards debate, answers 2,4,6,8-14 all deal with the violation, and the rest deal with the voter. Strategically, the debater is likely trying to obfuscate the debate and try to ensure that the affirmative debater misses one of those answers. In the 2AR then, the debater will make the connection between dropped argument 21 and the lack of a response to the 3rd standard. For me, this is bad debating and shows a lack of critical thinking skills. It’s playing the game of debate as we’ve discussed before.
I think the same line of thinking can be applied to running topicality every single round. Sure, there are enough competing definitions of transportation infrastructure that you could probably run it against any case. However, do you need to? Is it in your strategic interest? A critical thinker will examine the situation and choose to run topicality whereas someone who defaults to running it every round is likely just following the script rather than applying their critical thinking skills to the round. Are there alternative arguments that would be a better use of the debater’s time? In front of this particular judge is topicality a losing issue anyway?
Third, critical thinking requires reflective thinking. This is the area that debate trains the best in my opinion. Because we split debates into constructives and rebuttals, debaters are forced to evaluate what is happening within the debate itself in order to give themselves the best chance of winning. You need to be able to take a step back and evaluate the round – what positions am I winning – what positions is my opponent winning? How can my positions earn me the ballot? A big component of critical thinking is the idea that you can examine the different points of view on an issue. Most novice debaters are only able to see the debate through the prism of their own perspective – hence, why so many novice debaters do not understand why they lost the debate. Reflective thinking, on the other hand, enables a debater to see the round from the other debater’s point of view and – perhaps more importantly – from the point of view of the judge. One of the best activities that you can do as a college debater to understand the different points of view would be to judge at local high school debate tournaments. As a judge you will see that the two debate teams often are seeing the round very differently from each other – and from you!
Another way that debate requires reflective thinking is that you must evaluate what is and is not working in your debate rounds. Following a tournament analyze where and how you lost each debate round. Furthermore, analyze where and how you won each debate round. This will give you a good idea where the strengths and weaknesses of your case are to help you in future rounds. If you keep losing to topicality it’s time to write out some better answers – or maybe find a new case?
Finally, critical thinking requires independent thinking. Independent thinking in debate means that you do your own research – pure and simple. When you have research and developed your own case you will be much more successful in the activity. As we’ve discussed before I’m perfectly fine with brand new students using camp/outside evidence for the first few tournaments in order to get familar with the activity and what using evidence looks like in a debate. Beyond that I think students are losing out on one of the most important benefits of the activity – research and critical thinking skills. It does not take much critical thinking to run evidence/cases that someone else has written for you. It takes incredible amounts of critical thinking to find articles, cut them into position, use those in a debate, and win debate rounds. Beyond any trophy that you may win in a tournament that skill will last you a life time and be incredibly valuable.
In sum, critical thinking is one of the most important skills in the 21st century and one that debate can teach extremely well. However, debaters, judges, and coaches must make choices to promote their critical thinking skills in debate. It’s been almost 7 years since my last competitive debate round and I can attest that the critical thinking skills I learned in debate are still valuable today.
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Comments
indeed, the tradeoff between quantity and quality only exists in slower debates.
further, the speeches that require the largest amount of critical thinking are those LOC’s that put out 7 offcase , because guess what – you don’t get the luxury of putting 30 args on a position when there are seven of them. you are forced to, as sparks SHOULD like, choose the 5-7 best args you can on a position then move on, and then do that 6 more times in 8 minutes.
fast debates foster critical thinking. that’s why faster debaters usually have no trouble adapting to a slower debate, because they are used to thinking critically at a much higher rate of speed. indeed, it often feels like child’s play.
i prefer fast debate not because it gives me a strategic advantage, not because i get to put out 30 arguments on T. i prefer it because it is harder, more substantive, and more interesting.
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It should be pointed out that speed isn’t necessarily exclusive of critical thinking. I am a ‘fast’ debater in the general sense of the term, but just because I happen to be “spreading” in a particular round doesn’t mean I’m not engaging in critical thinking. (I put “spreading” in quotes because what we see in LD is not really spreading compared to NDT/CEDA or the national circuit high school debate).
I have a very high threshold for good arguments – trust me, I hate blippyness as much as you do. All of my arguments have claims and warrants. All of them are probably strategic. On T shells, instead of having five short standards, I’ll have three well-developed standards. I always signpost and hate those who don’t. Just because I am spreading doesn’t mean I’m automatically not being critical. It just means I’m just increasing both the aggregate quantity and nuanced quality of my argumentation. The tradeoff that you perceive between quantity and quality doesn’t necessarily have to exist.