Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Matt Goulet asks, “Being unfamiliar with how debate competitions work, is there ever a case where you’ve had to defend a subject from the side you don’t agree with? And if so, how hard is it to put aside your personal beliefs to debate the other side?”

That is an excellent question Matt.

There are several different types of debate. The type I did in high school and college, and what I coached after college, is known as policy debate. In policy debate, you debate on a team with a partner.

A typical debate tournament would have six or eight preliminary rounds to determine seeding, followed by elimination rounds to determine the champion.

In the preliminary rounds, you will have an even number of debates on the affirmative and negative of whatever the resolution is. In the elimination rounds, you would flip a coin unless you debated the team previously, in which case you would just switch sides.

So, the answer is, yes, you are debating something you don’t believe all the time, and that is one of the benefits of the activity. Being forced to debate both sides of an issue makes you take a perspective on something that you otherwise wouldn’t.