When my alarm went off at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, I almost regretted what I’d signed up for. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and changed into an outfit I’d borrowed from my mom: a formal black dress, business casual flats and an ill-fitting blazer. They felt awkward on my 16-year-old frame.
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Before my parents loaded up the car to spend their day off driving me to an unfamiliar high school, I made sure to grab my purple plastic folder. Inside were a quiver of arguments, ready for battle against my fellow nerds at my very first debate tournament. I didn’t know it at that moment, but it was the first of what would eventually become many.
I hadn’t had a chance to compete on a debate team before — this was the first year my school even offered one — so I was a novice in every sense of the word. Most of my classmates competed in what’s called congressional-style debate, where groups form “chambers” modeled after Congress. I preferred performing one-on-one, so I opted for Lincoln-Douglas, where two speakers deliberate a predetermined subject with carefully crafted arguments based on logic, ethics and philosophy.
The debate topics ranged from “the people’s right to know ought to be valued above the government’s need for secrecy,” to “bystanders have a moral obligation to act in the face of injustice.” It didn’t matter what my personal opinion was, because I had to write speeches both in support of and in opposition to each topic, taking turns finding the merit on every side.
Inside my purple folder that morning were two speeches, one arguing in favor of a guaranteed right to education and another arguing against it. For weeks, I had carried them with me into fluorescent-lit classrooms during 45-minute sessions, practicing each point until it was unimpeachable. The best of my pencil scratches were baptized into ink. Every word counted.
I packed the pages with as much theory as possible and rehearsed reading them aloud clearly and quickly — but not too quickly — timer in tow. I remember while practicing my debate speeches at home, my mom would secretly listen to me from a distance because she thought I sounded smart.
At the dinner table, she’d bring up how she wasn’t surprised that I got into debate because I “love to argue.” The idea of writing impassioned speeches and having a captive audience listen to my thoughts was exhilarating. But the reason I grew to love debate was the uncomfortable intellectual exercise.
Thinking, disagreeing and then thinking about it all some more left me with no choice but to look at the world wholly.
That’s why the practice of debate is correlated with stronger standardized test scores, grades, graduation rates and civic engagement.
“Teachers can tell when debaters are in their classroom. They can tell when a student has a foundation in proper research to question the facts they’re hearing,” says J. Scott Wunn, executive director of the National Speech & Debate Association, the largest speech and debate organization in the country. “Because debate engages in so many different communities — the bluest of blue, reddest of red, urban, rural, liberal, conservative … speech and debate is really about strengthening America’s future.”
Debate has been a lauded art for thousands of years. In the fifth century B.C.E., ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Socrates developed styles of debate that became the bedrock for Western law. Debate societies in England’s Age of Enlightenment helped democratize speech and spread new ideas. Televised American debates, like the infamous 1960 presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, have time and time again altered the course of politics and leadership stateside.
One-third of American adults have lost relationships with friends, family members, colleagues and romantic partners over political differences.
People have held contradicting ideas for as long as humanity has existed, and will continue to. Debate is a way to rigorously challenge those ideas and search for the strongest by analyzing evidence, finding flaws in opposing claims, and viewing issues from multiple perspectives without simply fizzling into disagreement.
Today, as many as 80% of American adults believe that we disagree not only on policy but on basic facts. Another third have lost relationships with friends, family members, colleagues and romantic partners over political differences.
“Our society is losing the ability to disagree a lot of times with civility, and that problem transcends political affiliation,” Wunn says. “Speech and debate is one of the few spaces where young people are still practicing the art of listening, engaging with perspectives that are different from their own, and making a case through logic and evidence rather than just noise.”
Set the timer
In a public school history classroom that smelled like dry-erase marker and disinfectant, I placed my purple folder on a lecturn. I looked out at my opponent, some other gangly teenager in another bad suit, and my judge, a volunteer who was likely somebody’s parent. Then, I set a timer on my iPhone for six minutes.
I was arguing the affirmation, in defense of a guaranteed right to education, and although I’d practiced this speech at home more times than I could count, I felt my heartbeat quicken as soon as I opened my mouth. My sweaty hands gripped the printed-out speech as my eyes darted back and forth from the page in my attempt to keep eye contact with the judge. The adrenaline made it almost an out-of-body experience.
I blacked out a lot of what I said as well as how I said it, but I remember discussing how a guaranteed right to education strengthens democracy, boosts the economy and bridges opportunity gaps. When the timer went off, my opponent cross-examined me for another three minutes, asking questions about research and sourcing to poke as many holes as possible in my case.
I recently learned that high schools first started offering debate as an extracurricular in the U.S. in 1925, when scientists had just discovered galaxies beyond the Milky Way. New literature like “The Great Gatsby” began critiquing society and shattering the illusion of the American dream. The Scopes trial brought national attention to a debate on the teaching of evolution in schools, marking a clash between science and religion.
The world was changing, as it always does, and discourse reflected that.
Debate teams grew in popularity through the Great Depression and World War II, with hundreds of thousands of young Americans taking to podiums.
Today, teams typically compete in one of three main leagues: the National Speech & Debate Association, National Catholic Forensic League or National Association for Urban Debate Leagues. Debate formats include Policy, Lincoln-Douglas, Congress, Public Forum and Big Questions, which all vary in group size and areas of emphasis.
Topics are always hotly contested and timely, and have ranged over the years from mandatory AIDS testing to whether the United States is losing the war on terror. This year’s national Policy Debate topic, for example, was “the United States federal government should significantly increase its exploration and/or development of the Arctic.” The Lincoln-Douglas debaters were assigned “democracies ought to prioritize the protection of civil liberties over national security” in one league and “governments ought to consider health care to be a public good rather than a private commodity” in another.
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In that history classroom in my polyester blazer, I laid out my argument in favor of a guaranteed right to education, then waited for any signs of a straw man or a red herring. Our debate continued like a dance for some time — he gave his speech, I took notes, I cross-examined, gave my first rebuttal, he gave his, then I gave the closing rebuttal.
It was a tightly packed 45 minutes, and I was nervous the entire time. But I also felt so unbelievably proud of myself.
Debate is a way to rigorously challenge ideas and search for the strongest by analyzing evidence, finding flaws in opposing claims, and viewing issues from multiple perspectives without simply fizzling into disagreement.
When I asked my opponent a question I could tell he hadn’t accounted for, or when I answered one of his questions with an entirely improvised (but informed) response, I could hardly hold back my smirk. The experience taught me that there are endless ways to think critically about any given topic.
It also taught me that portraying confidence matters, something I reminded myself of as I applied to colleges and envisioned, for the first time, the start of my adult life.
A 2024 study found that debaters are 29% more likely to enroll in college than their counterparts. Another study reported that debate participation is associated with a 0.66 increase in GPA and increases in SAT reading and math scores of 52 and 57 points, respectively. That’s not to mention the effect it has on confidence and ambition.
“Going into high school, I was someone who just took what was on my plate. I didn’t go out to look for other opportunities,” says Kaushik Sathiyandrakumar, executive director of Outreach Debate, the world’s largest student-run debate nonprofit that creates resources to help underprivileged students around the world access the hobby. “I am a lot more extroverted now, and I owe a lot of that to debate. It pushed me to find opportunities and go deeper with my goals.”
Win or lose
After a grueling eight-hour day at the tournament, my head felt soupy, and my social battery was drained. I looked forward to going home and turning my mind off, likely via one of the many screens I pretty much always had at my disposal. But first, my team stayed behind for the awards ceremony.
I didn’t realize it at the time — mostly because I wanted to win — but the real achievement I was gaining was perspective. Debating both sides of an argument didn’t always change my mind or make me revisit my values. Many times it just confirmed my existing feelings and deepened my convictions. But it also helped me access the mental calculus of people who think or move through life differently than I do.
In the short term, that made me a better debater. In the long term, it’s made me a better sister, daughter, friend and citizen. And it affirmed my understanding that more young Americans ought to have access to this extracurricular, that more kids should find their voice.
The National Speech & Debate Association estimates that a team needs, on average, $17,800 per year to pay for travel expenses, registration fees, tournaments, membership fees and training materials. Only about $5,200 of that is typically covered by fundraisers, which leaves schools left to pay a five-figure sum every year. That’s a tall order when 40% of all high school students live in low-income communities.
“The challenge will always be access,” Wunn says. “Debate has historically been more available in well-resourced schools, and we are dedicated to creating an opportunity for every student. But that requires a sustained effort.”
The National Association for Urban Debate Leagues coordinates 20 partner leagues across the country that target students from urban, underrepresented areas — many of whom are low-income students of color. Like the Washington Urban Debate League, which was recently spotlighted in the PBS documentary “Immutable,” released in March.
When I watched the film, I felt a strange kinship with the debaters onscreen. Our circumstances looked different. We likely had little else in common than debate itself. But we were all just a group of willful geeks who took a chance, no matter how many times we misspoke or stumbled over our speech. We had things to say and thoughts to explore and we were committed to conveying them. Win or lose.
Throughout every single round of debate, my principal takeaway was that the more different I or my argument was from my opponent, the better the conversation was. Debate cannot exist without diversity — of thought, of experience, or of being.
The more we diversify our intellect, the less we need manipulation tactics like speed reading, intimidation or fallacies to put a stake in the ground.
“We are all in search of these types of tools that may exist to help us take the temperature down a little bit and actually see each other eye to eye,” says “Immutable” co-director Gabriel London. “Anybody can debate. Anybody can learn these skills to be better arguers.”
As we sat in the cafeteria, huddled together as a team, a bespectacled woman with mousy hair stood in front with a clipboard. One by one, she called out the names of debaters who had placed in their respective categories. Congress. Public Forum. Policy. So it goes.
Debate has made me a better sister, daughter, friend and citizen.
When she began announcing the novice Lincoln-Douglas debate winners, my breath hitched. I applauded the third-place and second-place winners. Then, when it came time to announce first place, there it was.
My name.
My eyes widened in surprise as I strolled upstage to get my reward: a small plastic trophy topped with a golden winged goddess of triumph. For the first time all day, I was speechless.
This story appears in the September 2026 issue of Deseret Magazine under the headline “For argument’s sake.” Learn more about how to subscribe.
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