SA needs to develop a culture of critical debate

THE two most useful things I did at school were to learn to play the piano and join the debate club. Playing a musical instrument was a form of escapism. Whereas my siblings opted for less healthy reactions to our personal circumstance, I chose Chopin. I was lucky.

Mother Nature could have distributed personality traits differently. But it was joining the debating society that really was my single most useful pedagogical investment at school and university. I joined simply to learn English. (My home language was Afrikaans.) Soon, however, I was hooked on the power of constructing and deconstructing arguments. It did wonders for my confidence, improved my command of English and served as a catalyst for academic excellence.

I recalled this childhood journey recently after reflecting on SA’s pitiful state of debate. Not only do average South Africans struggle to articulate themselves concisely and confidently, few of us actually understand the criteria of a good argument. There is a desperately urgent need to understand how these weaknesses affect our public discourse and to invest in the practical interventions, such as establishing debate clubs in schools, necessary to arrest the situation.

There are many examples that illustrate the problem. Personal attack is often substituted for reasoned debate. It is easier to brand someone an “enemy of the national democratic revolution” than it is to say: “The first premise in your argument is not convincing because of A, B and C. This in turn means your conclusion about X does not follow, even if we accept the rest of your premises.” Doing the latter requires you to take an opposing view seriously rather than being annoyed by someone holding a view contrary to yours. It also requires you to have the skills to formulate and analyse an argument.

The problem is twofold. There is both an inability to argue effectively and an unwillingness to view disagreement as legitimate. This intolerance exists everywhere, not only within the ruling alliance. In wider society there is a similar habit of getting annoyed with those who disagree with us. A conservative argument challenging the dominant liberal paradigm, for example, often invites scorn way before it invites refutation or engagement. So the first step to improving the quality of public debate is for all of us to take stock of our contribution to perpetuating this culture of intolerance, which negates the core freedoms related to expression and debate we enshrined constitutionally.

The more difficult question, perhaps, is what can we do to improve our reasoning skill? First, it is very important to realise that reasoned debate is a hard skill that can and should be taught. The problem is that our education system requires us to possess this skills set, but does not explicitly teach it. This is bizarre. You cannot expect a history student to write a coherent analysis on why the African National Congress decided to embark on armed struggle, say, unless that student understands how to construct argument. Even in commerce, reasoned debate is crucial. A decision on the implications of a company’s financial data requires you to make a judgment about what is logically entailed by the evidence in front of you.

In a debate club, pupils would have the opportunity to learn what the constituent elements of an argument are and how to formulate good arguments. You would then get to practise constructing good arguments and evaluating others’ arguments against the criteria of a good argument. As with all life skills, practice is required to make you an expert. The Basic Education Ministry would do well to invest in setting up debate clubs and empowering at least one teacher per school to be able to coach debate.

As for the rest of us, no longer at school or in the university system, the challenge is to be self-critical about our reasoning skills set. Be wary of the many “critical thinking” courses offered by the myriad management and business schools that have sprung up everywhere. Do not trust the label on the can. There is an entire science to argumentation and debate as a public enterprise. Not everyone who professes to be an expert is one. It is best to rope in someone with some philosophical grounding in logic and practical experience in coaching debate and public speaking to workshop debate and public speaking.

The core skills set they should be able to impart is to develop a theory of argument, which participants could take to heart and which answers several questions. What is an argument? What are the criteria of good arguments? What are fallacious arguments, and how do I avoid making them and bust others who make them? And, most critical of all, how can I use all of this theoretical stuff to add practical value in both my career and personal life? These are some of the first steps we can all take towards creating a much- needed culture of critical debate in SA.

This article first appeared in Business Day

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=92916