Basis: A Technique for Reasonable Debating

Hi, guys. I'm Jules. I'm the other part of the James and Jules team. James brings you youth. I bring you a wealth of ancient-ness. And today, I'm going to be talking about a basic part of debating, which is finding a reasonable starting point for basis for your debates. This video is intended for years 5 to 10, but an understanding of a reasonable basis and how to find it is important for every debater. So it's also relevant for every debating policy. And it's a method that sets up your case in the most effective way.

So the first thing we're going to look at today is exaggeration. It's always a problem in debating. Sometimes we'll see a first speaker in a debate who will start their speech with a context statement like, “There's a massive problem in our world.” This kind of rhetoric is a form of sophistry. Now, that's too big words, “rhetoric” and “sophistry”. I want to explain to you a bit. So rhetoric is the art of persuasion and sophistry is a form of exaggeration that tries to manipulate the listener into believing something that it's unlikely to be easy to prove when you're being reasonable. So it pushes something unreasonably.

Rather than trying to make that sort of big statement, it’s far better in debating to realise that all topics involve doubt about the best solution to some real-world issue. Let's look at a straightforward example of this. So I don't think anyone would argue that car crashes are a good thing. But not all car crashes are a catastrophe. While people can be seriously injured or even killed in a car crash, they may also only be shocked or the car may only suffer minor damage. So as an issue, you can have major or minor outcomes of anything. To say that it's a massive problem makes it hard for you to be reasonable in your arguments and about how to argue them. Whatever the outcome of an issue, the real important thing is that it needs to be solved or fixed. So to summarize this, exaggerated context statements at the beginning of debate lead to exaggerated arguments that are hard for you to prove.

The second thing I want to look at here is that every debate topic sets up a policy as a solution to the topic issue. The affirmative team needs to prove that this policy that they've been set is the best solution to the issue in the debate. The negative team needs to prove that that found his policy is not the best solution and will cause new or greater harms than the existing policy. They usually try to defend that existing policy. In other words, defend the way things are. You’ll probably hear the words status quo, the term status quo used here. And that's just means the way things are. The job of both teams in a debate is to compare their different policies and to prove which is better. So the debate isn't about proving what the issue is, but what is the best solution to that issue.

The third thing I want to look at this morning is the first step in any debate, therefore, should be to agree on what the issue is in the debate. In prep your team should try to quickly identify the issue in the topic. Once you've found that issue, you can then concentrate on how your policy best deals with it effectively.

Let's look at three debated topics to see how this idea works. The first one is “That we should ban fast food companies like McDonald's and KFC from Australia.” You may have met that topic. It's quite a common primary topic. First, looking at that topic, we need to ask what is the issue this policy is designed to solve? We can quickly see that it's about health issues like obesity because Australia has one of the highest obesity rates in the world.

Then the question becomes how to fix the issue. So to create a context, we might say something like, “We can all agree that Australia's high rate of obesity and serious food related health issues are serious. The question in this debate in this debate is how we can best help Australians to become healthier.”

Okay, looking at a second topic, to give you a bit more of an idea of how this is done, the topic is “That parents should pay their kids whenever they help around the house.” Again, we need to quickly identify that the issue here is kids learning to be responsible. So our context for this debate might begin, “In this debate, both teams can agree that children developing a sense of responsibility is important. It's a question of the best way to achieve this.” I hope you're getting the idea. Let's look at one more.

Let's look at the topic “That all schoolwork should be done on computers.” So we need to identify the issues that kids learning is important. Our context this time might begin, “We can all agree that children should have access to the best methods for learning. This debate is about how to do this in the best way.”

Okay, guys, that gives you an idea of how to set up that reasonable basis. Let's just look at a fourth aspect of this and let's have a look at controversy. So the reason why there is always an issue that you can identify in your debates is that the topics you're given involve some sort of controversial question. Controversy occurs when everyone in our society doesn't agree on the best solution for an issue. So it’s exactly these issues that inspire debating topics because some people think the current solution to them isn't good enough.

You may have your own view about the best solution to any problem, and that's absolutely natural and fine. We don't want to change your view. We just want you to understand that your job in any debate is to try to find the best arguments for the policy that you've been given in the topic, starting from a reasonable basis, as I'm describing in this videom gives you the best start to to finding those reasonable arguments.

Okay. The fifth thing we want to look at now is if there are any other advantages in finding a reasonable basis, by finding a reasonable basis for your case, you avoid spending unnecessary time trying to prove that there actually is an issue in the debate. Often affirmative speakers use up most of their speech explaining the massive problem that they've identified in the topic. The problem with this, the actual problem with this is that the first speaker for the negative can get up and simply agree with everything the first speaker has said, and then move on to spend their time in proving that their solution is the better one, which means that they have more time to do that than the affirmative team does. So that's an issue for affirmative’s not realising they don't need to spend time on proving the issue exists. The other advantage in finding a reasonable basis is that because it's reasonable, it helps you avoid exaggeration in making all your arguments. It sets you up to logically prove them step by step instead of exaggeration.

Okay, guys, the last thing we want to do today is go through what we've done and look at any takeaway thoughts from finding a reasonable basis.

The first thing I want to say here is that every debating topic contains an issue. The second thing I want you to take as a takeaway is that you need to identify that issue straight away in your prep. The third point is that the solution to the issue that you've been arguing about is not whether this issue exists or how big it is, it’s the solution that you're dealing with. The fourth point is to identify in your context the issue that both teams can agree on. And finally get on with trying to prove that your policy solution is better than the opposition one and compare yours with theirs if possible and show what's weak about theirs.

So guys, that's a basic introduction to finding a reasonable basis for your debates. I hope it'll help you feel confident with establishing your case in a way that you can get on with proving it. Until next time, good debating. Okay. Bye.