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An assessment of the ability of policy debate to meet educational content standards concluded that policy debate exhibited significant strengths in the following content areas:
1. Perspective
- Notice multiple viewpoints within texts.
- Question critically to find perspectives missing in particular arguments
- Show respect for diverse viewpoints
2. Listening
- Practice patience
- Recognize the connections between listening and learning.
- Notice how arguments evolve through a series of linked statements.
- Recognize and practice listening as an essential part Of questioning.
3. Questioning
- Distinguish between questions and statements.
- Practice different forms of questioning, including: clarifying questions, follow-up questions, pointed questions and open-ended questions.
- Understand when and when not to ask questions.
4. Political Awareness
- Recognize public arguments in local, national and global controversies.
- Understand and identify the implicit political choices within argument positions.
5. Persuasion
- Identify obstacles to persuasion and opportunities for persuasion in a given situation.
- Identify various modes of persuasion, including credibility, logic and emotion
6. Speaking
- Recognizing how effective speaking depends on audience adaptation.
- Practice clarity in speaking
- Understand the integral role of nonverbal cues in speaking, including gestures, eye contact and body language.
- Follow notes to give a speech.
7. Note Taking
- Identify and record the main idea/s in arguments.
- Develop organized methods of recording information such as an outline., a concept web or a chart.
- Translate speeches into written text.
- Ask questions and give speeches from written notes.
8. Judgment
- Notice and evaluate points of controversy between competing arguments.
9. Evidence
- Identify assumptions, main ideas and biases within pieces of evidence.
- Recognize how evidence, including testimony, statistics, empirical example, scientific results.
- Compare the relative strength of competing evidence.
- Incorporate evidence into arguments.
- Identify how particular types of evidence are privileged or devalued within certain perspectives.
10. Argument
- Identify claims, evidence and warrants within arguments.
- Identify incomplete arguments.
- Understand and identify the differences between monological and interactive argumentation.
11. Research
- Use research technologies to locate arguments, including online search engines and library indexes.
- Appreciate research as necessary method of uncovering new ideas and assumptions.
- Follow footnotes and other references to locate additional evidence.
- Understand how research is funded and recognize bias within various research perspectives.
- Identify differences in qualitative research methodologies and how these methodologies shape conclusions.
