FINAL SUGGESTIONS
The way to learn to debate is by actual practice in debate. The way to
learn to speak is by trying to speak. Never miss a proper opportunity of
speaking. Don’t make yourself disliked, of course, but try every chance
you get, and listen to every debate or speech you can and apply to every
argument you hear or read the tests which show whether they are real
or false. Before you really know it, you will prove every proposition
presented to you and that without any conscious effort.
One excellent form of practice is in audibly talking a thing out to
yourself. Haven’t you noticed many times you have had a thought which
seemed decidedly clear and worth while to yourself but which seemed misty
and inconclusive when you tried to tell your friend about it? You know
some say that a thought is not entitled to cataloguing as a thought until
it has been expressed in words; that until that time it may have within
it the germ of an idea but it is not really a _thought_ until it has been
clothed in an appropriate dress of language. However that may be, you
certainly want to express your thoughts clearly and directly; you wish
to convince your hearers of the soundness of your position.
Again, many boys who can write clearly and beautifully are likely to
become slangy and colloquial when they talk. If you practice clothing
your thoughts in appropriate audible language you will easily detect
this trouble and it will soon become offensive to you. So, for both of
these reasons, don’t be afraid to talk to yourself. Never mind if you are
overheard and pronounced queer—it’s all in the day’s work.
In the next place, remember that all argument is really plain
exposition—that is, you are simply setting forth the facts and “applying
to them an explanation; a theory or a policy better or more rational,
more thorough or more for your personal advantage.” The rules which I
have given you will aid you in thus setting forth the facts, and in
making your audience see your proposed solution of those facts.
But as I said before, the way to learn to debate is to debate. The rest
of this book is made up of practical suggestions which will help you
and your crowd to organize and conduct debates and debating societies.
Go to it, but go to it as a real thing, a thing worth while and not a
mere game. Take yourselves seriously and apply to your informal talks
and discussions the rules I have been outlining for formal debates. I
don’t want you to be stilted or stiff, nor yet self-conscious prigs,
but I want you to realize that your life now, in your club or society
or patrol, is but a cross-section of what your later life will be. The
same rules govern your mental discipline now as will then. The lessons
you learn now you will not have to learn then and, what is of far more
consequence, if you now look after your training a little, you won’t have
a lot of things to unlearn then. I have two suggestions, however, which
apply with equal force to both times—now and later.
If you are not successful in your argument, what shall you do? If the
judges in the debate decide against you, what next? If your opponent
instead of yourself has succeeded in rousing your hearers to the point of
action, shall you sulk in your tent like Achilles or shall you turn in
and help? By all means the latter, unless there is some moral principle
involved. In active life, men are too willing to feel absolved from
all responsibility unless their own special programme is adopted. They
will often admit that the other course of action is all right as far as
it goes, only because it does not go far enough they decline to have
anything to do with it.
Don’t make this mistake yourself. If your patrol decides to go to Mount
Washington when you wanted to go to the Thousand Islands, never mind; go
anyway. If you wanted the age limit against child labor fixed at sixteen
and your opponent is successful in making it fifteen, why remember
fifteen is better than fourteen anyway. If you wanted forest reserves of
twenty million acres established by law, and your opponent succeeded in
convincing the judges that ten millions was about right, that’s better
than no conservation at all. Or for example if you believe that nation
wide prohibition of the liquor traffic is the ultimate solution of that
problem, you should not therefore decline to have anything to do with
state prohibition or even local option. They are all steps in the right
direction, don’t you see? Take anything you can get. The step in the
right direction is the right step, whether it is a short step or a long
step.
Finally, remember that while these suggestions are designed to aid you
win your debate, in the nature of things, there can only be one correct
position on any question. One side only can be right, and if your side
is not right it should not win. But it is equally true if both sides are
careful in their analysis of the question, and in their discussion of it,
it is much more likely that the actual facts will be discovered and a
correct solution of the difficulties found. You must therefore remember
that it is your task to do the best you can so to present your side of
the case that every argument to be brought forward on your side will have
its just weight. But do not think that because you have a certain side of
an argument to present you must always thereafter take that side of the
case. In other words don’t be afraid of changing your mind. Give the best
work you are capable of in preparing and presenting your arguments and
then sit in judgment yourself upon yourself. Be your own severest critic,
and be manly enough to abide by the result.