Parliamentary Debate as Public Debate

Abstract

My personal statement of the goals of the National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA), along with all of the other personal statements in this issue, should be read as that: my personal statement. The association has not formalized a statement of goals; students and faculty of participating schools may vary widely not only in their goals but in their pursuit of those goals. This essay representing my personal views may or not coincide with those of other members of this association and certainly should not be considered more valid or important than the individual goals of any participants. From my perspective, the goals of the NPDA should be to create parliamentary debating as a form of good public debating. In this essay I will explain the characteristics of good public debating that I think ought to be captured in good parliamentary debating. Before I begin that explanation, I should say a few words to describe parliamentary debating to those for whom the event may be unfamiliar. While most forms of scholastic debate common in the United States involve topics which debaters research well in advance of the actual debate, parliamentary debate is extemporaneous. Parliamentary debaters are informed of the topic only a few minutes (usually about 15 minutes) prior to the start of the debate. Unlike other forms of scholastic debate, parliamentary debaters are not allowed to use published materials during the debate. They must depend on their command of knowledge for evidence and premises from which to construct arguments. The unique character of parliamentary debate emerges from the extemporaneous nature of the debates and from the exclusion during the debate of published resources. NPDA encourages genuine, engaging debates among participants who may draw only from their own knowledge and personal resources. In my view, the NPDA is dedicated to the promotion of reasoned and informed public debating. This simple description of the goals of parliamentary debating may become more clear, and perhaps more controversial, if we take three different but complementary perspectives on it. REASONED AND INFORMED PUBLIC DEBATING Good public debating - in fact good debating of any kind - focuses on the reasons that underlie the acceptance or rejection of propositions. Parliamentary debating is no exception. Reasoned argument involves both the construction of one's own arguments and the refutation of opposing ones. When constructing arguments, parliamentary debaters must reason their way from a premise (evidence, accepted facts, common values, etc.) to claims which in turn must support the proposition. Perhaps one of the contrasts to other forms of debate is that parliamentary debaters (as well as all public debaters) are expected to develop fully and articulate the positions they choose to defend. To simply state a position and name the authority associated with the position is not sufficient. The focus is not on argument by authority but on how well the debater constructs a logically reasoned argument. Part of the development of a reasoned argument involves the refutation of opposing arguments. In some forms of scholastic debate, refutation has become the most important, perhaps the only important element of argument. In those forms of debate, an unrefuted argument is accepted regardless of its inherent quality. In public debating, including parliamentary debate, the necessity of refutation is determined by the quality of the argument. …