<p>I was wondering what section of debate in high school is the most competitive and some other info on any of them? i plan on joining this year.
- lincoln-doug (is this solo?)
- policy debate
- public forum
- congress</p>
<p>You have "sections of debate"?...My school offers one debate class and the debate team. What exactly are you talking about?</p>
<p>The debate team can be divided into different forms of debate. Some people switch it up, but most people seem to stick with one event.
Congress is completely different from the debate world so I'm not all that sure how competitive it is.
Public Forum is not considered all that prestigious. There are several theories as to why it was designed, one of them being as a preliminary event for students who don't want to start out investing too much time in debate, but it's meant for lay judges. The decision is usually based on who the better speaker is rather than who made the better arguments, so it's not terribly intellectual.
Lincoln-Douglas and Policy are both very competitive, though I wouldn't be able to say which one is more so. The national circuit can be vicious at either event.Yes, lincoln-douglas is solo while policy and public forum are done in teams of two. Policy requires you to speak extremely fast and ends up being extremely research oriented. It relies mostly on empirical evidence while LD uses philosophy based evidence. Policy is notorious for its use of crazy theories (on the LD side, our joke is that every argument in policy ends in nuke war). Depending on how well you want to do, both will take up a significant portion of your life. Actually, it could very well consume your entire life (I know it took 3 years of mine - I've decided to cut down on it all simply because I have a lot of other stuff on my plate this year). Anwyay, Good Luck!</p>
<p>policy, or cross-ex debate involves a lot of research. many debaters go to debate camp for 2-7 weeks in the summer. but--you learn tons, meet really cool/smart people. everyone is pretty competitive, but it's a lot of fun. :)</p>
<p>wow cool ladyinred, thats the kind of descrip. I was looking for. Featherz, could you tell me any really good debate camps for the summer?</p>
<p><a href="on%20the%20LD%20side,%20our%20joke%20is%20that%20every%20argument%20in%20policy%20ends%20in%20nuke%20war">quote</a>.
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Hehe, it's because it does. :)</p>
<p>Policy & LD (Highly competitive) takes up so much time to research, so if you want to do those just be informed of the time consumption. Cross ex can get pretty intense which is also fun.</p>
<p>Public Forum (Highly competitive) yeah like LadyinRed said it's not considered to be very prestigious, but if you're just beginning to do debate it's a good place to start.</p>
<p>Congress isn't all that competitive, usually people just take up on both sides of the arguement and get in as many speeches during a session as possible. Sad I know. If your arguements are logically, you'll be likely to get into the semi finals/finals. This is pretty informal actually, make jokes through-out your speech, or whatever your style is.</p>
<p>Good luck with debate :)</p>
<p>Tip: Never look opponent in the eye... horrible thing to do. I was judging a Public Forum once and a girl looked in her opponent's eyes, her opponent started screaming and yelling at her during cross-ex and made the girl cry. It was a truely terrifying experience lol.</p>
<p>I'm an L-D debater, but I've dabbled in both policy and public forum. The level of competitiveness of each type of debate really depends on where you live, though I'd say that policy is more consistently competitive than L-D. Both policy and L-D involve lots of work. As Ladyinred said, policy is heavily research-oriented--think cutting evidence cards for hours per night. L-D is more concerned with philosophical/ethical issues, so it may involve more original source reading. Debate (of any kind, really) is a lot of fun. Good luck!</p>
<p>The "top" debate camps are DDI (Dartmouth Debate Institute) and Michigan 7-week...they're very selective, like colleges =) haha. One I would recommend is SDI 4-week (Spartan Debate Institutes at MSU). I went to it this summer, and there were national champions on the college circuit as our lab leaders, and we had amazing, helpful lectures every night.</p>
<p>If you start policy debate this year w/o experience, you'll probably be in the Novice division, and then move up to JV/Varsity. You write an affirmative case and defend it when you're "aff." This year's topic is civil liberties. Yes, C-X is fun: it gives you a chance to make the other team look like fools. =P</p>
<p>If you plan on doing it this year, I would say do LD simply because it is easier and unless you prep during the summer and have an already strong team for it, policy would be too intense.</p>
<p>L-D is so much more fun than C-X! I did C-X for 2 years, then last year switched over to L-D, and I enjoyed it so much more. Although my speed talking, diction, and research ability increased tremendously in C-X, it was just too cut and dry. I get to actually argue what I want to argue in L-D, not what various pieces of research say.</p>
<p>My school isn't hardcore. We have a local policy tournament in which 12 schools in our sports conference meet every Thursday for six weeks. Then we go to a Moot Court competition at Princeton. Finally, we end the year with a small LD competition, but they have 3 people per team, so it isn't true LD.</p>
<p>Hopefully I'm changing all that next year :P.</p>
<p>Anyway, I definitely liked policy a lot more. But then again, I was just the alternate for the LD team, and I've only been to one competition. And we didn't really know what we were doing...</p>