Debate

When I was in high school we had a good debate coach, and our teams were always winning awards.

I was told taking debate was good training in clear thinking. What I didn't understand was if you were supposed to prepare a case for and against whatever topic was selected for the year, and drew lots to determine which side you debated in a contest, exactly what that taught you.

When I see people making the rounds of talk shows, acting as experts on whatever the current topic of public interest, I'm reminded both of trained dogs and of those high school debate matches where the point was your eloquence not your belief.

We were also told in high school the best rationale for taking geometry was that it taught logic. That at least must have been true, because, while I remember little I learned there about the nature of triangles, I do remember something about the nature of proof. Of course, geometry was less ambiguous than debate: there was only one answer to a problem, you couldn't argue both for and against two angles and a connecting line defining a triangle.

It happens the one course was required for graduation and the other was not. It was also happens I disliked the debate coach and was neutral to the geometry teacher. If one were to construct an argument for why I learned to think logically, it would resemble the more advanced forms of mathematics that try to factor in the role of chance than either class I was offered in school.

The truth would be much more complex, but there might still be something to tell with the mathematical formula. Debate was only so much talk.