GETTING READY
You have been challenged to debate by the Patrol from Readville or by the
Debating Society of Berkeley. What is the next step? You should meet your
opponents as early as possible and arrange the details with them.
Since the challenge set the question, that point is taken care of. The
settlement of terms and issues, which is so important that I shall
discuss it by itself in Chapter V, will provide for many things which
would otherwise bother you much in your actual debate. Your conference
with your friends the enemy will obviate so much haggling about shifting
the burden of proof and defining terms that the ground will be cleared
for real work when you actually get at your debate.
If your purpose is to get at the truth, not simply to win, you will of
course at this preliminary conference seek to find as much common ground
as possible. You want to equalize the contest. You have no desire to
equip one side with a keen sword and a splendid shield and the other with
a clumsy club. You will seek, therefore, so to formulate the point at
issue between you that it will be a comparatively equal task for each
side to find and present its evidence and its arguments.
Don’t try to trap the other side into some unfortunate position which
will prove its undoing. Note the difference: in the actual debate, be
merciless to your opponent’s _argument_, but before the debate and during
it, treat him frankly and generously. Trail down his argument, track it
to its lair, flay it, have no respect or mercy to it, but be sure you are
remorselessly pursuing the _contention_ and not the _contender_.
Don’t hold back information at this conference which may change the whole
plan agreed upon if you introduce it in the debate itself. In other words
be honest and be fair. You are under no obligation to tell the other
side how you propose to handle your case, how you propose to develop
your argument, how you expect to prove it, what you regard as essential
and what subordinate. You must be fair, however, as to what the question
really means.
You should be equally fair and frank with your colleagues. In the first
place be square with them in the division of the work. Take your full
share and do what you agree to do. Don’t leave things until the last
minute and then depend upon hasty cramming to make up the lack of real
work. Know a little something about all the case and all there is to
know about your part of it.
Arrange your time and place and then decide upon the order in which you
will speak. A very common procedure is:
First affirmative 7 minutes
First negative 7 minutes
Second affirmative 7 minutes
Second negative 7 minutes
Third affirmative 7 minutes
Third negative 7 minutes
First negative 5 minutes in rebuttal
First affirmative 5 minutes in rebuttal.
No, a seven minutes’ speech is not very long but longer bursts of
eloquence are likely to be tiresome. It is much better to have a short
snappy debate full of interest and prevented from giving weariness by the
constant change of speakers than to have ponderous proceedings. Moreover,
in the schedule given above, fifty-two minutes is consumed, and that’s
quite a while. Of course the number of contestants may vary and the time
allotted each may be varied also.
Who shall preside? Well, if you have a club of your own, your president
or in his absence, your vice-president, would naturally preside. If you
should desire to pay some person a compliment, someone else may be asked,
provided, of course, it was agreeable to the two officers who are by
the rules of society work, entitled to that honor. If you have no formal
organization, you can select anyone you choose. In doing so, you and your
opponents would select someone who is dignified yet kindly, one who will
not allow any “rough house” or boisterous conduct but who is respected by
and fond of boys and who is, of course, absolutely fair.
Of course you must select your judges, generally three. Do not think,
however, that it is an easy task to judge a debate. Choose no one as
a judge who may have a personal prejudice for or against one of the
speakers. If he is but indifferently or lazily honest, he is likely to
favor his friend. If he is conscientious, he may in his very effort to be
fair, and not lean toward his friend, lean the other way and really be
unfair to him.
Choose as a judge no one who is known to have a prejudice on the question
itself. The harassed judge must never forget that he is deciding on the
merits of the debate, not on the merits of the question. He must weigh
the arguments presented, paying no attention to other arguments, weighty
to him, but left behind in the armory by the warring debater.
Because this task is so onerous and, indeed, so valuable in its training,
it is an excellent plan to have members of your group—society, class or
patrol or whatever it may be—act as judges. The practice in so weighing
arguments and evidence will be invaluable to them when their time to
debate comes around. In formal contests, however, you will call upon
teachers, lawyers, ministers; men who are trained to think clearly and
definitely and whose decision will mean something as fairly standing for
the judgment of your community. For it is to this community judgment your
real debate in life must appeal, and you must learn as soon as possible
to aim at no less a tribunal.
So difficult is judging, that to the Appendix, beginning on page 153, I
have added a chapter designed to be helpful.