I participated in high school debates and learned a lot from it (not the least of which was that I was pretty good at argumentation). Here's an example of a high school debate from the City Club in Cleveland. It's pretty entertaining, though I still think the debaters focus too much on pumping out points of argument rather than crafting the whole for rhetorical force. But I quibble. This article is a fascinating look into that world. Stefan Bauschard offers a summary of this year's debate topic (hyperscale data center construction) and some general observations about the debate format, then gets into a deep dive into the topics and arguments raised across some 10,000 debates on the topic, resulting in a 2,100+ page scouting document. The article (happily) summarizes that. What can we learn from all this? A lot about the topic, obviously, including the sorts of considerations people bring to the fore around the issue. But also, we get a sense of the thinking around the issue, and especially the core points of contention.
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