When this writer first competed in academic debate, the end of the activity lay beyond it. Kansas high school debate in 1977 was a prelude to life. We saw ourselves as proto-lawyers, or other actors in the world, and we competed on that basis. The coaches, all formally dressed, set a gracious if strenuous tone, and we were expected to match their standard. It was fun to fight for place under expectations we knew to be applied later in life. None of this is still true.
Kansas high school debate in 2026 has little end beyond itself. The activity is self-contained and inward-looking with a peculiar form, philosophy, and manner. This writer coached at the recent state debate championships for the largest Kansas high schools, and he was nearly the only adult in formal dress. Some debaters still dress up, but most do not. Speeches are usually read from a computer screen, not extemporized, and are delivered at a high rate of speed. Most debaters and judges do not listen but read speeches after they are uploaded to a cloud and then downloaded for viewing. The activity is really a contest of file management, framed by a specialized vocabulary and decided on esoteric logic.
Academic debate, in other words, has become a counterculture. When debate was a dominant culture activity, it looked and sounded like life after high school. But a counterculture gains adherents by purposeful opposition to the values and standards of the dominant culture, thereby giving its members a sense of identity and belonging. Why people would choose to so identify and so belong is an interesting question. But for an educator, it is not relevant. Education has as its goal the accommodation of the student to his or her duties later in life, not to an activity itself.
Despite what advocates for contemporary debate may say, no one in real life reads jargon from a computer screen at 350 words per minute while others tag along on their own computer screens. If any good comes from this, it is nothing compared to the good which came from debate when it anticipated life. Education therefore cannot be the real motive for the end of debate as a reasonable activity.
Unfortunately, this writer has spent a lot of time trying to decide the real motive. One theory would be that leading coaches understood they could not win consistently if debate remained a contest of talent. Genuine debate talent appears unpredictably, and given the small size of debate teams, it is usually decisive. Some Kansas schools did achieve remarkable success in debate under its prior form, notably Moundridge High School. But among larger schools, where competition is more stringent, one did not see much dominance until recently. The same large programs now regularly win state championships, which is possible only if debate has changed from a competition of talent to a competition of systems. The schools with the best systems win, the debaters serving as interchangeable managers of proprietary files.
This analysis nevertheless seems inadequate because support for contemporary debate is found at all levels, even among coaches who seldom win. Part of the phenomenon is the inevitability of it. If the contemporary style always wins, then one must debate in that style to win at all. And the contemporary style wins because it is enforced through judge selection. Debate is inherently subjective, so the judge in the room makes a difference. The rules for regional and state competition now require judges to post their “paradigms” on electronic media, meaning that each judge’s philosophy is known. If a judge posts a traditional view of debate, as this writer has, that person may not be trusted with crucial rounds. In the season just concluded, this writer was assigned mostly novice rounds to judge, and the few varsity rounds were always between teams not in the hunt.
But still, why would leading coaches continue to move debate away from common-sense, real-life forms when the activity is dying? Participation is in continuous decline. Fewer schools sponsor debate each year, and fewer students are found on most squads. The type of students who participate also may not match the academic standards found amongst competitors years ago. In two of this writer’s four years as a high school debater, the valedictorian had been on the squad. So far as he can tell, this writer’s alma mater has not had a valedictorian on the debate squad for a couple decades now.
Debate coaches’ inflexible advocacy for dysfunctional rhetoric has led this writer to suppose their motive may be political. The coaches, especially those who work at large public schools, are a left-wing group.[1] And the left is notorious for instrumentalizing every part of society to achieve its end. The phenomenon was well-captured by David Burge in a famous Tweet[2]:
If the goal of debate coaches is political, then the end of debate may be the point. The coaches would not want effective training in public disputation because they do not want effective public disputation. They, like all leftists, want people to do as they are told. It is impossible not to mention in this context the response of debate coaches to the Covid phenomenon. This writer watched as coaches changed their icons on the Kansas coaches’ Facebook group to masked images of themselves long before such things were required. They were early and enthusiastic advocates of forced conformity. When coaches from smaller, western Kansas schools asked on Facebook why speech tournaments were not permitted when wrestling tournaments were being held, they were immediately savaged. “Name them and shame them,” a leading Kansas debate coach barked. That is when this writer abandoned his Facebook account.
If politics is the real motive here, the debate coaches will have their wish. They can control the activity as they would control the rest. But despite any such efforts, reason will return. Academic debate is now the closest thing to the excesses of Medieval scholasticism known to this writer, an amazing irony. Hide-bound, risible, and irrelevant, debate will decide how many angels can dance on the head of a pin until a new humanism permits the activity to resume its natural form.
[1] This writer can support the assertion with numerous anecdotes, but other evidence exists. See FEC Data Reveals that Most Debate Coaches Lean Heavily to the Left
[2] David Burge on X: “1. Identify a respected institution. 2. kill it. 3. gut it. 4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect. #lefties” / X