Proving

I was on the debate team in college, and immediately upon graduation was installed as a Teaching Assistant that included the assistant debate coach’s duties at the same college for which effort I received payment for graduate studies there.  Had I known the value of forensics to the intellectual development of the student I would surely have entered the high school program, and continued involvement as far as it would take me. I did not encounter a poor student in forensics programs from the time I was a debater and through the many following years that I coached debaters.  They also launched effective lives.  I continue the coaching process in my tenth decade in working with my family generations – not now in formal debate.

A good forensic program is not first to develop debaters in competition so to win debates in contests between my school and others but in understanding issues related to human needs and relevance – born out of presuppositions with evidence to freight matters to conclusions, perhaps to action.  The whole process is strengthened if done well in the media chosen to communicate it – speech or writing.  (Art is a source when it is communicating.)  Writing or speaking ought to be in excellence so to enhance the meaning, the truth as perceived by the person communicating.  If well formed, that truth registers on the hearer who then takes the responsibility for his or her own agreement or rejection of the presentation – substance and/or style.

To learn how to debate (discuss) well, a person learns objectivity in forensics by learning how to argue both for and against a proposition.  During this hour the team argues for a proposition and that argument with evidence includes rebuttal with evidence of the points against the proposition offered by the negative team.  The next hour the first team is now the negative team and will, in the model of practice, take a position opposite to that the team espoused an hour or so ago.  The negative team is presumed to have some advantages in that it can resort to history by showing what presently pertains has worked, and will work, perhaps with amendments, better than the proposition offered by the affirmative team.  Sharp debaters know that there needs to be some fixing of the current policy so may offer amendments to the present policy making the amended situation better than the change (substantively different) policy of the affirmative.  If effective the negative debaters may shift the course of the debate so to put a burden on the affirmative team to become something of a negative team to counter the amendments affirmed by the negative.  In the course of handling ideas, evidence, logic, even emotions as they relate to presuppositions, the debater, if functioning in the ideal context of seeking truth and ethical action, learns how to manage the proper route to the betterment of mankind, or the societal group represented, or even self-interest, and resists error, prejudice, wrong, lies, distortion, distraction, and whatever else stands in the way of truth in action.  Imperfect mankind uses the process imperfectly, but there is nothing better to persuade us to improved understanding, knowledge and wisdom for living as human beings in an imperfect world. 

Even so we have a larger problem to address, and that is treated with less time and energy than with the forensic approach of conscious persons using the best logics.  We are a mystery, and we project that mystery in conflicting ways.  A major one is values, a spiritual concept.  A value in America and many other countries is freedom related to democracy.  Some countries prefer an ethical leader functioning as a national parent making decisions for the citizens.  The persuasion of the evidence and logic will differ for the two groups.  The affirmatives of the one become the negatives of the other.  The examples are legion. Just as the national concept of Lincoln was opposed by the states’ rights of Jefferson Davis became so great that two sections of a nation fought a bloody war costing hundreds of thousands of lives, so we continue competition, but at more civil levels.  Nevertheless, competition occurs even to the point of crime in lost ethics and prosperity.  We have trouble in deciding values because we don’t understand morality without God.  This matter is addressed in Christian Scripture – and that very well.  So it is that we hold out for a system of right, of concern for people in balance, freedom, peace, love, righteousness (right) and truth.