Bates Debate Summer Camp is Low on Evidence, High on Critical Thinking

Aspiring young high school debaters are an interesting breed. It is not hard to imagine the result of combining a teenager's incorrigible moodiness and rebelliousness with training that focuses on effectively arguing even the most absurd positions and making one feel that they are always right (no wonder so many debaters become lawyers).

However, debaters entering their sophomore or junior years are at a crossroads that some parents simply don't understand. These debaters have taken some knocks at the lower levels of competition and now find themselves caught somewhere between the desire to win and the desire to learn, between cynicism and openness to intellectual life. The debate summer camp that the student chooses is instrumental in deciding which path the impressionable youth will take in his debate and academic career.

The Bates Summer Forensics Institute in Lewiston, MA is an excellent choice for a debate camp summer experience. Not only does the camp give the prospective debater the tools to win debate rounds at the highest level of competition, but also aids in the growth of the individual in teaching one to think for his or herself.

From the get-go at my experience at Bates, I could tell that the camp would be a transformative experience. Our topic that year was WMDs, so the camp brought in college professors and Ph.D candidates to give lectures on the enormity of nuclear warfare and the daily impact of land mines. Rather than tell us from the get go "These cases are going to win," the camp wanted us to form our own ideas about what was important enough to debate about.

Bates' philosophy stressed learning and depth over a mechanical knowledge of debate tricks. We watched movies like Dr. Strangelove to give us a sense of the popular imagination of nuclear warfare. We discussed what it really meant for something to be called a weapon of mass destruction, asking "does it kill a whole lot of people at once, or does it kill thousands over time like a gun or a landmine?"