DEBATING

Aside from the positive effect which it will exert upon House individuality and intramural activity, the organization of several House debating societies this week suggests an examination of the forensic methods now to be taught to an ever larger body of unsuspecting career men.

The American high school method of decision debate from which Harvard Varsity teams have so far only attempted to break away, and which now more than threatens to be adopted by the numerous House teams, is a simple formalization of intellectual dishonesty. Long since discarded by English Universities, the practice of handing down decisions which are based exclusively upon forensic ability, and which at the same time imply the existence of an intrinsic Right or Wrong, not only provides intensive training in the exaggeration and suppression of facts and the distortion of logic, but also operates to destroy whatever capacity for intellectual conviction a participant may once have had.

Already the half-hearted efforts of the Varsity debating team to discard the practice has resulted in several trimmings at the hands of Boston University. so much the better. And now, when emphasis in debating is being shifted to the Houses and expanded in its scope, it is time that the Oxford system without decisions displace as rapidly as is convenient the present training course for sophists and shysters.