We are all familiar with the standard school debate. You get assigned to a side, for or against a topic, and you build your armoury of facts and evidence to support your argument. You look at the other side with a view to demolishing their arguments, to finding better and stronger ways to break them. It is all about winning.
Generally, staged debates are performances put on to give the audience something to think about. The two sides do the best they can to get the audience to buy their argument. The audience, for its part, looks at it as a test of wits and eloquence. Who sounds better? Who uses words more powerfully? Who is more entertaining (or engaging)?
But what really is the point of a debate? Is it to win, or to understand? Is it a competition or a route to achieving clarity about a topic? Ideally, a debate is meant to explore a question fully, and the only reason we have two sides is to share the work of exploration, so that we can arrive at a position after considering these varied points of view. It is entirely possible that after you have listened to the two sides of a debate, you are still not entirely convinced about one or the other. This is usually because there are always more than two sides, and, more importantly, the best position lies somewhere between all the different sides.
Multiple views
The culture of school debates follows us through life, and we see echoes of it everywhere, from student union elections to the shout-outs in our parliament. Those who perform follow the playbook they have learned over the years: make your point loud and strong. Those who watch look for strength of performance, pitting one view against the other. Rarely is there an effort to actually consider the different points in the argument and think about them without linking them to a particular side. And this also seeps into our everyday conversations in the classroom and outside, sometimes mirroring the polarisation we see in the world at large.
So, how can we recover the true meaning and purpose of a debate — the kind that we engage in every day, with those around us? Chris Anderson, curator of the hugely popular TED, said in a recent interview that one should approach any conversation with a healthy combination of scepticism and open-mindedness. Scepticism on all fronts, about your own ideas, your own positions, as well as others’. And open-mindedness particularly toward the (manifestly) opposing views. So, even as you work through your own ideas, you are open to the notion that there may be things or points of view you have not considered. As you listen to others, you balance a questioning attitude with the acceptance that there may be something in what they have to say. There is a mutual willingness to accept flaws in one’s reasoning and to explore different positions.
After all, debates — and conversations — are supposed to help find solutions, or to arrive at greater clarity, or to find a path to moving forward. When they become contests, they end up producing winners and losers, with the biggest loss being the possibility of understanding.
The writer teaches at the University of Hyderabad and edits Teacher Plus. usha.bpgll@gmail.com
