At any rate it is
certain that a student, whether in high school or college, if he is to
do his duty as a citizen, must begin to think out many of the questions
which are being decided in Congress, in state legislatures, and in
smaller, more local bodies. At the same time, in every school and
college questions are constantly under discussion of a nature to provide
good practice in debate. Some of these questions must be decided by
school committee, principal, faculty, or trustees, and most of them call
for some looking up of facts. They would provide admirable material for
the development of judgment and resource in debating, and in some cases
a debate on them might have effect on the actual decision.
The choice of subject is even more important for debating than for
written argument. In a written argument if you have a question which has
two defensible sides, it does not make much difference whether one is
easier to defend than the other: in a debate such a difference might
destroy the usefulness of the subject. Though to some older minds the
abolition of football is a debatable question, before an audience of
undergraduates who had to vote on the merits of the question the subject
would be useless, since the side which had to urge the abolition would
here have an almost impossible task.
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