Why Your Ability to Argue Remains in the School Playground

Is Education Responsible for the Poor Level of Debate?

I’ve debated a lot over the years. My skills have improved and I’ve learned a great deal about myself in the process. Most interesting is what I’ve learned about the people I argue and debate with. Maybe you’re one of them?

In most cases these are the casual informal disagreements you would find in your normal everyday life. For me they usually involve those who I consider to be, intelligent people.

But to be blunt: The more I take part in arguments the more obvious it becomes how people severely lack maturity and grown up skills to debate.

For example, the topic of Climate Change arose and the people I was with assumed I held the same view as their own. I asked a simple question to challenge their stance. It was met with looks of horror and shock. Their response was to shut down anything I had to say and they would use arguments in retort such as “that’s nonsense”.

When I asked “Why is it nonsense?”, they gave me this response, “It just is”.
There was no appetite to further conversation on that topic.

We are all grown adults yet this is the most common level of debate I see in conversation today. It’s…