SSD allows for good-faith debate, while the aff model traps us in an echo chamber that makes us worse advocators. Debate reduces extremism and promotes racial justice --- it exposes students to perspectives that are foreign to them and increases critical thinking skills

This is perhaps the most contentious argument in favor of debate. Academic articles have been written criticizing switch side debate as a project of liberalism that contributes to the ideological maintenance of American exceptionalism by creating subjects whose public statements are separated from their convictions. The New York Times has even published an op-ed criticizing school debate competitions as creating closed-minded partisans because it teaches a “win at any cost” mindset. These views have merit. They should caution us from becoming devil’s advocates, especially in sensitive conversations. And the debate leagues around the country have created strong social norms against debating issues that are patently unethical like whether racism is good.

But they should not be taken as reasons against the process of debating both sides. Rusk and Razzak, writing in the Oxford Political Review, suggest that any alternative that does not force students to consider both sides of an issue only reinforces echo chambers. Switch side debate, meanwhile, increases the chance for good faith debates to emerge and helps strengthen your existing beliefs by helping you find weaknesses in them, both desperately needed in an age where partisanship has made good faith debate difficult if not impossible. This process of switching sides forces students who may never have been exposed to more leftist or radical views to evaluate them on their merits. It forces students to think about how to offer a defense of views they may disagree with, challenging previous strawmen they may have previously believed. Debate, then, provides an obvious mechanism for penetrating filter bubbles by exposing students to a range of views they have previously not considered. Finally, there is a worry about demarcating what counts as “debatable.” Some conservative debate leagues have deemed issues like critical race theory “undebatable.” Only the process of switching sides allows us to come to more robust conclusions about controversial issues that might otherwise have never been considered in the first place.

All of these benefits have led Robert E. Litan to argue for an approach he called DCI or “debate-centered instruction,” a proposal he outlines in his 2020 book Resolved. He argues that the skills of listening, persuading, and research that debate teaches is necessary to help heal the growing political divide and improve the quality of our democracy. He even goes so far as to argue that debate provides a way to moderate extremism, reduce vitriol in political discourse, and promote racial justice. I think Litan has the right approach—promoting debate as an educational model can do much for an entire generation of students by making them more resistant to right-wing propaganda. And Litan is right to focus on high school because I fear that teaching these skills in college is simply too late.