Debate in classrooms is a great way for all students to learn new things. It helps students develop essential critical thinking, organization of thoughts, eloquence, oration skills, and citizenship. As part of the curriculum in school, debates are used for learning how to organize ideas, strengthen argumentation skills, beginning debate tactics and persuade classmates/adversaries towards supporting one’s point of view. The debate also helps the participants learn how to make good decisions while allowing them to discover which ideas they support most passionately. More than just arguing with each other, debating teaches the participants about proper argumentation techniques which prevents emotional responses from overpowering these important lessons. In addition, debates offer opportunities for students to challenge themselves, which helps foster analytical thinking.
Why debating is important?
One of the fundamentals of debating is that it helps students to express their thoughts in an organized manner so others can understand. Debating is about listening to themself and others so they gain a deeper understanding of their argument and gain new perspectives on things, rather than always believing what you think. Debating also aims to pick holes in their theories and point out your inconsistencies, so that they eventually develop a more coherent argument that will speak volumes. All this culminating into developing something more well-rounded than just the standard “I’m right, everyone else is wrong” sort of line!
The Benefits of Debating
The benefits of debating are as follows:
- It enhances critical thinking skills in students
- It improves speech delivery, public speaking, and poise skills
- Increased student retention of information.
- Increases self-confidence.
- Enhanced teamwork skills and collaboration.
- More confidence to stand up for the truth when a discussion is promoting falsehoods or inaccuracies.
- Learning better ways to graciously state one’s point with gentleness and manners.
- Helping students identify holes in their theories and concocting more balanced arguments.
- Help in structuring student’s thoughts.
Debating does more than help students develop an interest in a topic; it enables them to sharpen their critical thinking skills and consider new concepts and theories that they may not have encountered before. Rather than passively accepting information, students learn to refine their beliefs, distilling, and refining what makes sense and discarding what doesn’t. Their decisions and the ability to defend those decisions help them better articulate their thoughts, interests, and beliefs – skills they can carry forward into adulthood. Debating also provides students with an opportunity to build up their confidence, especially if they are not naturally adept at debating or expressing themselves verbally. They should be allowed to work at their own pace while questioning factual statements supporting arguments, but still having fun!
Compared to traditional learning, debating increases the rate at which information is retained over time. This is because it is an active-learning-based style of education that thoroughly engages students with topics. Subjects studied early on tend to stick with students for longer if they are introduced to the material in an active versus passive fashion. Therefore, debating can help people retain knowledge for a longer period of time than studying the same information passively.
In short, debating can help students retain information more efficiently. Because debates engage student’s minds to actually think about those facts from different perspectives. These factors make debating a better alternative to traditional education.
We can also see how important debate is in the education system when we notice how much it helps students in structuring their thoughts. Debating encourages students to examine old concepts and gather new knowledge. These confrontations commonly force people to further develop their points, which can then enable them to handle disagreements with ease.
Debate in education isn’t boring, in fact, it’s fun. You feel like you have each other’s backs when in a debate because this will lead to great team bonding and collaboration at its best in the long run. This is something many people overlook when debating, but it’s actually critical for success. With enough practice, debates can improve our interpersonal communication skills, allowing us to easily collaborate with others both inside school and out!
