/ 
 
 n n JAN 1914 
 
 f * A. ; / 
 
 THE HIGH SCHOOL DEBATING LEAGUE. 
 
 Paper Presented at the Minnesota Educational Association January 1, 1903, 
 
 edward e. McDermott. 
 
 Debate is desirable under proper conditions because it develops fluency 
 in the use of English. It is not denied that other subjects can be so used as 
 to accomplish the same result. History—especially when the topic method 
 is freely used—English Literature, and even Geometry are so used in a few 
 schools. But these schools are exceptions. Without any intention of reflect¬ 
 ing upon methods of instruction, it is safe to assert the possibility of a child 
 passing from the primary through the university without giving any special 
 attention to oral English. During a large part of his course he is pleasantly 
 entertained by fluent teachers and lecturers. There is no doubt that they get 
 splendid practice out of it, but how about the student? He sits in the back 
 seat and is expected to listen attentively. He is allowed to answer, in frag¬ 
 mentary and ungrammatical English, an occasional question addressed to 
 him. So popular has the lecture become that, Lorenzo like, the average 
 student is in danger of forgetting the sound of his own tongue. If at the 
 end of his sixteen years of study, he has some ability to talk straight while 
 thinking and think straight while talking it has been unconsciously absorbed, 
 —it is the result of accident, not design. 
 
 It may be urged that out of school hours children are constantly talking 
 among themselves and with their parents and in this way they secure suffi¬ 
 cient pracuce Admitted. They are constantly practicing. But this con¬ 
 stant practice without criticism oi supervision only serves to fix more firmly* 
 their many mistakes. The price they pay to get rid of these mistakes later 
 is both interest and principal compounded quarterly. If this seems to be an 
 exaggeration, put the matter to a practical test. Ask the next child you 
 meet to direct you to some place, on the opposite side of the city. Never 
 mind about the place, but notice carefully his clearness, fluency, sentence 
 structure and grammar. 
 
 In this connection it should not be forgotten that there is no time quite 
 so opportune for securing an easy and accurate use of English as the years 
 spent in high school. Psychologists tell us that the correct and fluent use 
 of our native tongue is largely a mental habit, and the easiest time to form 
 this habit is under the age of twenty. Few people become good extempore 
 speakers after twenty-five — none after thirty. 
 
 The question for every educator to ask is just this—Is it worth while, is 
 it worth the extra time and labor it costs, to be able to express one’s ideas 
 clearly and in good English? If the question is answered in the affirmative, 
 then it must be admitted that at the proper, time and under the proper con¬ 
 ditions. debate is desirable, because there is no other subject in our course 
 of study that is so specifically aimed at the fluent use of mother tongue as 
 debate. 
 
 Debate develops ability to think before an audience. This ability does 
 not come by theorizing nor by chance. It comes by practice. It is not 
 denied that it can be acquired out of school and before the public, but in 
 most such cases, both the speaker and the public are to be pitied. The 
 school is the workshop for all such efforts; there, blunders are expected, 
 excused and corrected. Before the public, they are not, and every speaker 
 who practices on the public pays in the loss of reputation a high price for 
 a painful experience. 
 
 1 
 
1 
 
 Debate develops skill to sift material,—a sense of proportion. In other 
 words, it develops judgment. The student who is prep^aing for debate 
 cannot read with his brain in a stupor. It is not sufficient .or him merely 
 to understand what he reads as it is in other studies. He must weigh, com¬ 
 pare, discriminate, retain the important and discard the uniniportant. Thus 
 his judgment is constantly called to pass upon material, all of which may be 
 truthful but which differs in weight. 
 
 Closely allied to this point is skill in the arrangement of the material. 
 It is not sufficient to sift the matter read and secure a number of important 
 points. These points must be arranged logically. Link by link, they must 
 be welded into a perfect chain. Step by step, they must carry the judges on 
 to conviction. 
 
 Nor is the ability which debate develops to condense material of less im¬ 
 portance than the two points just mentioned. “Boil it down” is the war-cry 
 of the debater. In one of our intercollegiate debates last year, three of our 
 University students read, by careful estimate, 15,000 pages of solid literature. 
 Any one of these students could easily have talked half a day on his divi¬ 
 sion of the subject but he must prove his case in twelve minutes or fail. 
 Again and again in these debates, students would be almost willing to sell 
 their birthright for a minute more, but twelve minutes for constructive argu¬ 
 ment, and five minutes for rebuttal, is the unalterable rule. Any one who 
 watches these students as day after day they “boil down” and discard argu¬ 
 ment after argument, which at first seemed to them to be vital, until at last 
 they have the bare skeleton of their argument, cannot doubt that they are 
 getting vigorous mental discipline. 
 
 Skill in original research and the use of the library is a necessary part of 
 the training of every educated man. Debate, more than anything else, de- 
 velopes the student along these lines. It prompts him to correspond and 
 seek interviews with those who are familiar with his proposition. It is one 
 of the first subjects in school that teaches the student the free use of the 
 jibrary. Under its stimulus, he soon learns to go everywhere and search 
 everything for material. 
 
 It is said that a good lawyer does not always know the law, but he 
 always knows where to find it. If this is so, the good debater is more than 
 the good lawyer for he not only knows where to find the law but he knows 
 the law and how to use it. . 
 
 Debate develops self-reliance and courage of conviction. The man who 
 has opinions and is not afraid to express them is likely to be a better citizen 
 than the man who has opinions and is afraid to express them, for fear he may 
 differ from some one and get into a heated discussion. The man who is in 
 the habit of expressing his opinions at the proper time and place on subjects 
 which concern him always stands somewhere and you know exactly where 
 to find him. The man who, though he has opinions, never expresses them 
 and always agrees with you, is the most tedious and uninteresting of all 
 mankind. The “yes”—“yes”—“yes” man is like a mud fort. Napoleon once 
 said he would rather turn his guns upon anything than a mud fortification. 
 He never could tell when it was reduced. 
 
 Debate develops courtesy to opponents. When the ignorant, the un¬ 
 trained man, enters into a discussion, he becomes angry and wants to fight 
 at once. Every one who differs from him is his enemy and should be 
 thrashed. It takes a great deal of training to enter into a serious argument 
 to become angry, to give and take hard blows and yet to be a gentleman. 
 The fist fights which have disgraced our United States senate—rarely, it is 
 fortunate—prove the truth of this assertion. 
 
 Debate develops the habit of studying with care both sides of a question. 
 It is true that the debater cannot always sit on the fence and play the part 
 of a judge. Sooner or later he must accept one side or the other and be¬ 
 come an advocate. But before doing so, he looks over the whole field care¬ 
 fully. He anticipates the argument which his opponent must present and 
 
 2 
 
prepares to meel it. This very habit of deliberation prevents snap shot judg¬ 
 ments, jumping to conclusions, and develops a judicial turn of mind as well 
 as power to advocate. 
 
 Cribbing is a common evil in schools. The notorious case of the An¬ 
 dover students seeking admission to Princeton University is still fresh in 
 our minds. No school is wholly exempt. No study escapes. But it is a 
 most pernicious and persistent habit in English composition and one that 
 taxes the ingenuity of the average teacher to cope with. Every principal 
 must have observed the marked tendency which some, often many of his 
 students have, to crib their composition, if not all the time, at least on 
 special and great occasions. Take a typical case. Commencement is ap¬ 
 proaching. The Senior class is small. Every one is expected to appear on 
 the program. Every one promptly begins a nervous search for a subject 
 and for material. Encyclopedias, antiquated books and dusty magazines 
 are the chief treasure houses. The more timid speakers, less experienced 
 writers and less scrupulous students will sometimes copy almost the entire 
 essay from a single article. The more experienced and more conscientious 
 will select a sentence from this source and a paragraph from that and glue 
 the whole together with an occasional sentence of their own. The result 
 is frequently startling to say the least. It looks more like a “crazy-quilt” 
 than like a composition. Who is to blame? Perhaps nobody. Certainly 
 not the poor, abused and ambitious children. They have had almost no 
 training in expression, oral or written. The occasion is a great one and 
 they are anxious to appear at their best. They recognize at once that the 
 literary style of the magazine and the encyclopedia is smoother than their 
 own and they yield to the temptation. Perhaps the teacher is not to blame. 
 Such a thing as a good course in practical English has not existed in his 
 school. The course already mapped out consumes all the time of himself 
 and his assistants and that course must be “gone through with” at all haz¬ 
 ards. The School Board expects it and the higher institutions demand it 
 for entrance. But commencement essays by the girls and orations by the 
 boys are time-honored exercises which cannot be discontinued with im¬ 
 punity. Hence, a demand is made upon the student which he is not pre¬ 
 pared to meet. 
 
 But let us come to the remedy. Suppose the high school student has 
 really learned to debate by the time he reaches his senior year. He is not 
 afraid of his own ideas. He knows how to sift material and arrange it in 
 effective form. When called before his teacher, he can give an outline of 
 what he intends to write and extemporize on it for ten or fifteen minutes, 
 if desirable. Such a student will never crib. He has reached a point where 
 it is as great a pleasure for him to express thought as it is to glean it and 
 when expression becomes a pleasure, the student is always guarded against 
 the pernicious and stultifying habit of cribbing. If any teacher has had 
 trouble with cribbing-students let him try forensics and debate. If proper¬ 
 ly administered, the remedy is guaranteed. 
 
 Every man hopes to win victories, but at any rate he is sure to meet 
 with defeat. The man who thinks he can get along without contests for¬ 
 gets that the great law of the survival of the fittest is still in force—never 
 more strenuously than in this age of fierce competition. The man who hopes 
 to get out of contests had better die, and it is not at all certain that he will 
 escape even then. The man who reaches maturity and enters any occupa¬ 
 tion—teaching, law, medicine, journalism, business, the ministry or what¬ 
 not—without learning how to take a good hard knock down and benefit by 
 it is to be pitied. When he feels the first shock of actual conflict, he is in 
 great danger. He may sulk in his tent and develop into a first-class pessi¬ 
 mist, or he may sneak into the rear and sit there ready to do the bidding 
 of any inferior man who has learned to be a more ready fighter, a more 
 cheerful fighter, and a harder fighter. Life is one continuous debate. The 
 boy who has learned how to accept defeat philosophically, having done 
 
 3 
 
everything honorable to avert it, and then stands up smiling and ready for 
 the next battle, has learned one of the most valuable lessons for practical 
 life that the schools can teach. He is on his way to ultimate success. 
 
 Debate is the best —because it is the most practical—form of vocal 
 rhetoricals. Until quite recently, the only effort made to beach vocal rhe¬ 
 torical in most schools was through the declamation and the recitation. 
 It cannot be denied that the declamation is of very slight educational value. 
 It still has a place but that place is a modest one. It familiarizes the stud¬ 
 ent with bits of good literature, trains his voice, gives him stage presence, 
 and when unaccompanied by too much “agony,” is pleasant enough for his 
 relatives to listen to. But it is only a means to an end and should not be 
 made an end in itself. In so far as it paves the way for the student to ex¬ 
 press his own thoughts, it is valuable. There it should stop with all ex¬ 
 cept the very few who are fitting themselves to be professional entertainers. 
 When the services of the professional elocutionists have been employed— 
 as they have been too often in the past — to teach children the art of arti¬ 
 ficiality and egotism, the results have been pitiable and exasperating. It 
 does seem that the best teachers of the state would eagerly embrace the 
 opportunity offered by debate to make their students simple, earnest and 
 natural speakers. 
 
 If it is granted, then, that for the foregoing and other reasons, debate 
 is desirable under proper conditions, the next question which confronts 
 us is this: Do the high schools offer the proper conditions for the profita¬ 
 ble study of debate? Let us consider this question first from the stand¬ 
 point of age. It cannot be denied that there is an age under which it is 
 worse than useless to attempt debate —it is time wasted. There may be 
 an occasional precocious child who understands the full force of debate 
 while still in the upper grades, but it is safe to say that the average child 
 does not. The average child may be able to distinguish between exposition 
 and argumentation when the difference is pointed out clearly and illus¬ 
 trated by his teacher. lie may be able to select examples from literature 
 placed before him. But when left to his own resources, when asked to con¬ 
 struct an argument for himself, he cannot even discriminate between proof 
 and assertion. He constantly uses the latter for the former and it satis¬ 
 fies his mind. 
 
 Indeed, until a certain stage of mental development is reached, the dis¬ 
 tinction is difficult. Abraham Lincoln, the greatest debater of his age, com¬ 
 plained of this. He said he could never tell when he had actually proved a 
 proposition until after he had studied Euclid. Even Euclid does not solve 
 the difficulty for a great many students. University students, long after 
 they have mastered Euclid, are quite frequently found who are entirely 
 satisfied that assertion is proof. It is not until well along toward their 
 senior year, and after considerable practice in debate, that they are able 
 to detect readily a weak spot in their own argument and point out one in 
 the argument of their opponents. It was probably not so much the study 
 of Euclid that brought new light to Lincoln in the matter of proof, as it 
 was his arrival at a certain stage of mental development. Consciousness 
 of proof and the study of Euclid was a mere coincidence. 
 
 The years which most students spend in the high school are from four¬ 
 teen to eighteen, and it is probable that somewhere within this period, the 
 average student who has been properly trained begins to realize the full 
 force of debate. It has come to be something definite to him then, although 
 skill and ease are not acquired without some years of practice. The best 
 testimony on this point comes from students themselves and from careful 
 teachers who have given the subject a trial and have observed the results. 
 If we can credit them, we are led to believe that debate is practicable in the 
 high school so far as age is concerned. 
 
 But it may be urged that even if all other conditions in the high schools 
 were favorable, there is no time for extra work. It is already a question of 
 
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shortening the course, rather than of lengthening it or making it more bur¬ 
 densome by adding to it. Even now it is a question how best to let go 
 
 something. 
 
 In the first place I protest against that attitude which regards every¬ 
 thing but the three r's as extra work. Moderate proficiency in spoken 
 English is as essential as arithmetic and much more essential to the average 
 man than Latin or Greek. Granting that the course is already crowded, 
 we believe that almost anything can better be sacrificed than the ability 
 to use effectively in both oral and written expression the knowledge which 
 other subjects give. At best, this knowledge is not and cannot be exhaust¬ 
 ive. A drop more or less in the cup of knowledge will scarcely be no¬ 
 ticed while the total lack of ability to use it will be keenly felt. 
 
 , If we admit that under proper conditions, debate is desirable and that 
 the high schools offer proper conditions for its study, it still remains to be 
 shown that interscholastic debate, such as is contemplated by the Minnesota 
 State League, is desirable. In the first place, it makes the schools better 
 acquainted with one another and brings them into healthy rivalry. It can¬ 
 not be denied that in a few instances, it has brought them into unhealthy 
 rivalry. But these instances are exceptional and it is believed they are 
 unnecessary. The rivalry between universities in intercollegiate debate has 
 sometimes been bitter and undesirable, but the benefits have been so marked, 
 both to students and to universities, that those in charge have struggled 
 to eliminate the objectionable features rather than to throw away both good 
 and bad together. Trouble between universities competing in debate is 
 less serious and less frequent than it was five years ago. It is believed that 
 the high schools will have the same experience and that the machinery of 
 the league, like most machinery, will work with less friction after more use. 
 
 One of the most serious menaces to the life and usefulness of the 
 league is the attitude assumed toward it by some superintendents, and as a 
 result, by their schools. It is the victory or death attitude. ‘‘Enter the 
 league if you have a winning team. Stay out if you have not!” “It is un¬ 
 bounded honor if you win, overwhelming disgrace if you lose!” Under 
 this impression, the whole school will become keyed up to an undesirable 
 pitch and when defeat comes, as it is almost sure to come soon or late, down 
 go the hopes and ambitions of the whole school. That action and reaction 
 are equal, is a law not of the physical world alone. Viewing the work of 
 last year kindly but critically, this mistake was made in a few cases. It 
 seems to the writer that those who assumed this attitude have entirely 
 misconceived the purpose of the state league. Its purpose is not to de¬ 
 termine what can be done by special effort on a special occasion, not to 
 concentrate the whole nervous force of the school upon one grand event 
 once a year. This has been stated so often within the past year that its 
 repetition would seem unnecessary. Spasmodic effort accomplishes but little 
 in any line. It is the systematic, steady work that counts. The true atti¬ 
 tude, the scholarly attitude is one of moderation. By this, it must not be 
 understood that indifference is counselled. Indifference is death to all 
 kinds of school work. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing 
 well, and, in debate especially, deep conviction and vigorous support are 
 essential. The successful trainer has a firm hold on his team and on his 
 school. He urges that every effort consistent with good work in other 
 studies be put forth to win. When defeat comes he urges that it be ac¬ 
 cepted manfully. Does some one answer that this is a beautiful ideal, but 
 after all a mere ideal? No, it is not. It is the attitude assumed by most 
 of our schools last year, be it said to their credit, and it is the attitude as¬ 
 sumed by most of them this year. 
 
 The interscholastic contest brings school work, not debate alone, but 
 all school work, into public notice, and it is believed tliat publicity is as good 
 for schools as it i*s for trusts. 
 
 By comparing standards, the interscholastic debates unify the work 
 
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throughout the state and tend to bring all the schools up to the same 
 high plane. It is probably true that the schools which are most anxious to 
 enter the league are least in need of its assistance. They already have 
 good practical courses in English and it is little or no extra work for 
 them to get ready for the contests. But it is hoped that heir good work 
 will stimulate the schools which are giving little or no attention to English 
 of a practical kind. 
 
 It is sometimes urged that anything which creates so much excitement 
 has a disorganizing, demoralizing effect on a school. Let us examine this 
 point for a moment. The main volume of energy in any school is easily 
 directed into the channels of regular study. It need not be taken into 
 account in a consideration of discipline. But there is always a little sur¬ 
 plus that cannot be dissipated in the regular way. Mankind—and childkind 
 —is so constituted that this surplus calls for some extraordinary outlet. The 
 successful disciplinarian knows this and consciously or unconsciously pro¬ 
 vides for its escape in the least harmful way. Take a familiar illustration. 
 When a room becomes restless from excess of nervous energy, a skillful 
 teacher will tell or read a good story, secure a hearty laugh, clear the at¬ 
 mosphere and go on. When excessive physical energy is the cause of the 
 disturbance, three minutes’ physical culture will accomplish the same result 
 and enable the work to move on again under favorable conditions. The un¬ 
 successful disciplinarian tries to suppress this disturbing element by main 
 force and fails, of course, for it can no more be suppressed than a live 
 spring can be smothered by throwing earth upon it. Suppressed energy re¬ 
 appears in the form of mischief. 
 
 The whole school is not very different from the individual room—it is 
 merely an aggregate of rooms. This surplus energy is present from the 
 primary to and through the university. President Northrup says that the 
 difficulty, of disciplining a large university has decreased fifty per cent since 
 the introduction of football and other college athletics. We have all ob¬ 
 served that hazing and other “smart” college pranks have almost entirely 
 disappeared in recent years. Fortunate, indeed, is the disciplinarian who 
 can direct this excess of energy along lines which are beneficial—who can 
 utilize waste. 
 
 It is contended in this paper that debate is sufficiently different from 
 other studies to constitute an attractive diversion. It is a rest and relief 
 from other work. The interscholastic debate is a topic of popular and 
 enthusiastic conversation for some time before and after it occurs. There is 
 not another diversion in school life except football that is more absorbing 
 than debate. Indeed, some danger lies in this very fact. It may act as a 
 disorganizing influence unless kept under control. But in the hands of a 
 skillful teacher it becomes a safety valve for the escape of surplus energy. 
 Through its influence, loyalty and pride in the local school may be stimu¬ 
 lated and unity secured. 
 
 If a superintendent finds from actual experience that he is not able to 
 make practical use of this surplus energy, if he finds that he cannot secure 
 desirable results except by protecting his students from all forms of excite¬ 
 ment, if he finds that he must rear them in a sort of hot-house intellectual 
 atmosphere, then he should certainly not permit his school to enter the 
 league because it is likely to produce some enthusiasm in his school. No 
 teacher is under obligation to undertake what he cannot accomplish. But 
 he must not complain if his hot-house flowers wither when they meet the 
 rude blasts of competition in after life, and he must not complain and try to 
 hold back the superintendent who can make practical use of enthusiasm 
 in the good order and discipline of his school. 
 
 It was urged when the league was organized a year ago that the ex¬ 
 pense would be too great. So far as reported there was not a single district 
 nor a single school left with a debt on its hands last year. All purchased 
 considerable material for reading and many schools were able to lay aside 
 
 w \ 
 
 A 
 
 6 
 
a fund for future i"5e. There is nothing succeeds like success and from a 
 financial standpoint the league was certainly a success last year. 
 
 It was also urged that the meagre library facilities and smaller teaching 
 force of the country high schools would act as a decided handicap and 
 give these schools but little chance to win. A large library is a decided 
 advantage in many ways. But does any one presume that the high school 
 student can make use of all that is written on a really broad debatable ques¬ 
 tion? Up to a'certain point, material is valuable; beyond that point, it con¬ 
 fuses the immature student. It snows him under, befogs him, smothers 
 him. A few leading articles that will give him a firm hold on the under¬ 
 lying principles, and facts enough so that his argument may not seem 
 thin, are sufficient. This is better than more. The student can better 
 afford to spend extra time in a thorough mastery of presentation, than in 
 going over material long after he has the main points of his debate well 
 in mind. At this stage of development, presentation is very important. Let 
 the student get a point clearly in mind. Let him present it in different 
 language every day for a week, striving each day for a clearer, simpler, 
 more concise, and more earnest presentation, and he will easily pass his op¬ 
 ponent whose mind is burdened by a mass of undigested material and who 
 from lack of practice has neither a clear nor strong delivery. So that after 
 all. the advantage of a large library—to.the high school student at least— 
 is more apparent than real. From two dollars to five dollars will generally 
 secure as much material as can be used to advantage in high school debate. 
 It is a very small school indeed that cannot afford to put $5.00 into reading 
 material for a year’s debate. 
 
 The smaller teaching force in the country high school may b e a m ore 
 serious handicap. The writer is not so well prerat^Ld-te-^e^^n This^sub- 
 j-ect, but he suspects that the-larger TUunber of students and teachers in 
 our largest schools makes it possible for the principle of division of labor 
 to be applied more successfully in the latter. But on these tw r o points, li¬ 
 brary facilities and teaching force, experience is the most convincing form 
 of argument. The smaller schools won out in the league last year. Wheth¬ 
 er this was through luck or through more careful preparation is not the pur¬ 
 pose of this paper to discuss. It is certain that if they had not won, plenty 
 of people would have been ready to say that inadequate library facilities 
 and insufficient teaching force was the cause. Under a certain age children 
 should not attempt debate at all. They are not mentally equipped for it. 
 Similarly it may be argued that under a certain size, high schools should 
 not attempt interscholastic debate. They should be satisfied because of 
 their smaller numbers and smaller teaching force to derive what benefit they 
 can from purely local contests. Just where the dividing line lies between 
 the school that is too small and the school that is large enough to under¬ 
 take interscholastic contests to advantage, must be left to the discretion 
 and good sense of the principal. No hard and fast rule can be laid down. 
 
 It has been suggested that the school winning state championship has 
 
 to enter too many contests. Last year, the winner participated in five, 
 although there were twenty-six schools in the league. If this is too many 
 contests it would be possible to so arrange the league as to reduce the num¬ 
 ber; but if the contests are begun early enough it is 1 not believed that one 
 contest a month will be burdensome, especially when the same subject is 
 used throughout the series. 
 
 The difficulty of securing competent and unbiased judges was one of 
 the most perplexing and unsatisfactory features of the work of the league 
 last year. Although new to the high schools it is not really a new or recent 
 difficulty. The universities have been struggling with the same problem for 
 some years and still it is only partially solved. 
 
 They have learned two important lessons, at least. First, select judges 
 with great care. Second, abide courteously by the decision, no matter how 
 
 7 
 
unfair it may seem. The “knocker” is generally regarded as a “sorehead,”^ 
 no matter how just his cause may be. 
 
 When a fair question is about equally well argued on both sides an 
 unprejudiced audience will be about equally divided between the affirmative 
 and negative. There is always room for this honest difference of opinion. 
 
 It is natural and desirable in everything—except possibly in debate when 
 the majority doesn’t happen to be on your side. What does a man gen¬ 
 erally mean when he begins to talk boisterously about an “unfair” decision? 
 
 He means simply that a fair decision must agree with his rarticular views. 
 The same reasoning carried a little further would make a fair decision 
 agree with everybody’s particular views, and this is manifestly an absurdity. 
 The moral is, select your judges with care and then don’t “jump on them” 
 and argue the question 'all over with them if you happen to. differ. It may 
 be allowable to mob the umpire and engage in a free for all at a baseball 
 game but such conduct is hardly in keeping with the dignity of debate. 
 
 After all, the decisions rendered in these debates are about ias fair as 
 those handed down from courts of law. Absolute justice is an ideal not 
 attainable in earthly matters. As Justice Lewis, of the supreme court, said 
 last year in regard to one of these debates, “All such decisions are at best 
 only approximations.” 
 
 It has been suggested that while local debate in the high school is de¬ 
 sirable, interscholastic debate is a. dangerous nervous strain to young stu¬ 
 dents; that its demands excessive time of the teacher for the benefit of a 
 few students; that it demands excessive time of these students and results 
 in the neglect of other studies. The high school presenting such an ar¬ 
 gument makes a frank confession of the weakness of its course in prac- 
 .tical English. If the school is as weak as this would indicate, it cer¬ 
 tainly ought— itot —to_jmter_the league and no one who understood the 
 situation would urge it to do'AfoT~~ft sb-OplcLbe said right here that not a 
 single school of this kind has ever been urged to enter the league. If a 
 debating team has to be worked up each year from the raw material of any 
 school, it makes no difference whether the school is large or small, all the. 
 above objections will hold good. But is this low standard of English neces¬ 
 sary or justifiable in our schools, even our smaller schools? The superin¬ 
 tendents can answer better than the writer. 
 
 The state league presumes that the high schools are willing to grant 
 a modest place to spoken English and can afford the time to do so. Sup¬ 
 pose now that such a course is installed. Suppose that the aim of this 
 course is to enable every student to stand before his class and tell in a 
 simple and straightforward way what he knows on any subject. Suppose 
 that the course is carefully graded—the simpler exercises, such as declama¬ 
 tion, story telling, oratorical analysis and forensics, preceding and paving the 
 way for the most difficult debate. Suppose that the student has had a 
 moderate amount of training in English from the time he entered the high 
 school until he is a senior; that he not only understands theoretically what 
 “exposition” and “argumentation” are, that he can not only identify good 
 specimens of these styles in the works of Webster and Phillips but that he 
 can make good specimens himself. Suppose that when a debatable propo¬ 
 sition is given him he has learned how to. draw material from every source, 
 arrange it systematically in the form of a simple brief, and stand before 
 his class and present it in reasonably good language. Let us assume this 
 —and the league does assume it—and what becomes of the objections men¬ 
 tioned above. They fall to the ground. The writer has never yet known 
 a thoroughly trained debater who has not found the study to be an exhila¬ 
 rating, delightful stimulus, not a cause for hysteria or nervous prostration. 
 Now if it is admitted that this is not an unreasonable demand to make of 
 the schools—and there are plenty who will admit it for there are plenty oi 
 schools which are accomplishing these very results—then what becomes 
 of the argument (l) that the state league demands too much time of the 
 
 8