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Preface

Fiction authors are commonly advised to “write what they know.” Nonfiction authors, especially those at think tanks like the Brookings Institution, are a bit different. They write about what they research, and through the course of their careers, they often change fields to mix things up. That pretty much sums up what I have tried to do during my research career, most of it affiliated with Brookings.

In recent years, I have concentrated my research on the influence and nature of economics itself. In 2014, I authored a book The Trillion Dollar Economists, about how economics and economists have had hugely influential, though until then not widely recognized, influence on business in America. As 2016 was beginning, I was planning to follow up that book with another about economics, but focused on how much the field has changed, specifically through the mushrooming use of randomized control trials (RCTs)—of the kinds use to test new drugs—in economics and social sciences generally, and how the use of such information is increasingly being viewed as important by policymakers. The appointment in 2016 of a Commission on Evidence-Based Decision-Making, based on legislation authored by Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) and then Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, one of whose chairs was my Brookings colleague Ron Haskins, seemed to make that book timely.

I had a change of heart about writing such a book after the 2016 election results, fearing there wouldn’t be much of a market for a manuscript about evidence-based decisionmaking. Ironically, I was wrong about the market. Yale University Press (the intended publisher of the book I initially was going to write) published in 2018 an excellent book, Randomistas, on the history and utility of RCTs by noted economist and Australian politician Andrew Leigh. In the fall of 2019, three economists—Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer (with whom I had the privilege of working at Brookings two decades ago)—shared the Nobel Prize in Economics for their pioneering use of RCTs in testing various “micro-interventions” to reduce poverty.

In any event, by the time the Leigh book was available, I had mentally moved on, writing several essays for the Brookings website in 2017 and early 2018 about the fraying American political fabric, ways to help the middle class without reducing economic growth, and the worries but also the misconceptions about continued automation. All these essays were prompted by concerns I suspect bother most Americans, making them fearful or even angry. These are also the concerns I focused on after organizing and hearing comments at a conference held in June 2016 at Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) to discuss an outline for the book I had initially intended to write. I am grateful to the Smith Richardson Foundation that generously provided the financial support for this working conference and to the foundation for the patience it displayed while I decided to write a very different book (this one), and to the many well-known economists who showed up to participate at the Stanford session.

One comment at that conference by one of my lifelong friends and mentors, Stanford emeritus professor Roger Noll, struck a special chord with me, however. He suggested that instead of writing a broad-based book—the kind Leigh had written—I should focus on one or two specific public policy challenges where the empirical revolution in economics was having a real impact. That explains why I wrote the Brookings essays on the growing incivility in public life and the seemingly intractable problem of growing income inequality, topics which, not surprisingly, are related to one another.

But I didn’t yet have the desire or the “hook” to write another full book until, quite by accident, I read an article in April 2018 on my Twitter feed. The article was written by a journalist at the Christian Science Monitor who highlighted the surprising (to her) importance of competitive high school debate in my home state of Kansas.1 The article caught my eye because a little more than 50 years ago, I, too, was a competitive high school debater in Kansas (who went on to debate a little more than two years at the college level before turning to my real intellectual passion, economics, full time). Also, as I explain in the first chapter, debate fundamentally changed my life, and I instinctively felt I had something more to say about the virtues of debate, potentially for others. I didn’t realize the extent of those virtues at the outset, however—not until I began the research about to be described.

Before doing that, a remarkable coincidence is worth mention. Two months after the Christian Science Monitor article published, a high school team from Blue Valley Southwest in Johnson County, Kansas, part of the larger Kansas City metro area, won the national high school championship in “policy debate” that year. Also, in that same year, a team from Kansas University won the college policy debate championship (readers will learn about the multiple debate formats that have developed as alternatives to policy debate and the main reason why, in chapter 2). Even more remarkably, the following year, two Kansas teams from the same high school, Washburn Rural in Topeka, qualified for the championship round at the national high school tournament, only the second time that has happened in the history of the national tournament, making the second year in a row that a Kansas team won the national championship. Another Johnson County, Kansas, high school team made it to the semifinals of the 2019 tournament, as did a team from Kansas University in the college national tournament that year.

I digress (though with pride). The key for you, the reader, is that the article to which I refer somehow lit a lightbulb in my head, giving me the spark, the energy, and the enthusiasm it takes to write any book. Almost instantaneously, the article prompted the following thought experiment: “What if every high school student had debate training, and specifically the research, thinking, organizational, and speaking skills that debaters develop, and most important, the ability to take both or multiple sides of an issue in a public way before a real audience? Wouldn’t students have more fun in school and learn more while they’re there? Wouldn’t students be better prepared for the workforce? Wouldn’t our country and our democracy be in a better place?

My gut answers to all these questions was yes, and those answers, fully fleshed out, form the core of this book. But still, the structure of a book wasn’t immediately apparent to me, nor was I sufficiently confident that it would have an audience. I needed, first, to get some feedback from the people I thought could give me some honest input—those with some debate or debate coaching experience themselves. So, I began emailing and talking to many such individuals. To a person, everyone also said yes to one or more of my questions.

These outreach efforts gave me the confirmation and enthusiasm I needed to make the two-year time investment of research and writing that it took to write this book. Thank goodness, I had a lot of help along the way. Michael Harris, the debate coach at Wichita East High School, and Scott Harris, the head coach at Kansas University, and his assistant coach Brett Bricker (a former national college debate champion), were all extremely useful sources in these early interviews, and highly encouraging about the project. Norman Ornstein, one of the nation’s most prominent political scientists and a long-time scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, also helped me organize my thoughts at a very early stage, while giving me excellent advice and encouragement. He later kindly reviewed and helped improve the draft manuscript.

I also am deeply indebted to the many other people who took the time to talk with me, including:

AnneMarie Baines (former debater and debate coach, founder of “Practice Space”)

Alex Berger (former champion high school and college debater, now a Hollywood screenwriter)

Bo Cutter (former high-ranking White House official during the Carter and Clinton administrations)

Jesus Caro (former debate coach at Marjorie Stoneman High School, Broward County, Florida)

Diana Carlin (former high school and college debater and debate coach and former professor of communications and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Kansas)

Francesca Haass (the ex-debater daughter of my former Brookings and Council on Foreign Relations colleague Richard Haass)

Brian Hufford (ex-debater at Wichita State and now outstanding trial attorney in Baltimore)

Jeff Jarman (former national college debate champion and now the dean of the Elliott School of Communications and head debate coach at Wichita State University)

Alexa Kemper (former high school debater from Lee’s Summit, Mo., who twice debated at the national high school championship tournament)

Megan Kowaleski (debate program coordinator, Success Academy schools, New York)

Linda Listrom (former executive director of the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues)

Joe Loveland (former champion debater at the high school and college levels, and successful litigator)

Annika Nordquist (a former high school debater and the daughter of a good friend and former Brookings colleague, D. J. Nordquist)

Gallo Pitel (a high school debater at Stuyvesant High School in New York, and Cutter’s grandson)

Nicole Wanzer-Serrano (director of development, National Speech and Debate Association)

Cy Smith (former high school and college debater, and outstanding trial attorney in Baltimore)

Bill Thompson (debate coach, NSU School, South Florida)

Eric Tucker (former deputy director of the National Urban Debate League, and co-founder, with his wife Erin Mote, of the Brooklyn Labs school in New York city)

Dave Trigaux (executive director of Washington D.C. Urban Debate League and the Matthew Ornstein Summer Debate Camp)

Brian Wannamaker (former Kansas high school debater)

Stephanie Wu (former high school debater in Australia and college debater at the University of Pennsylvania)

Scott Wunn (executive director of the National Speech and Debate Association)

Early in my research, however, I realized I was talking only to people well versed in competitive debate, which at best engages 1 percent, most likely less, of all high school students. With the help of Todd Fine, a former national high school debate champion and son of Gary Fine, a sociologist at Northwestern, whose book Golden Tongues is the best academic treatment of high school debate I have seen, I was introduced to a small cadre of education pioneers. One of these was Les Lynn in Chicago, the founding director of the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues and the first to “debatify” (his term) the high school educational curriculum in the work he does with his current organization, Argument-Centered Education. Shortly thereafter, I stumbled across Mike Wasserman, executive director of the Boston Debate League [BDL]). Lynn and Wasserman, and the BDLs’ experienced team of coaches, have been assisting schools and teachers in Chicago and Boston to use debate and argument-based instructional techniques throughout the high school curriculum, and even in pre-high school grades. You will learn much about Les, Mike, the BDL, and the schools they are assisting in chapter 3 of the book.

I cannot thank both Lynn and Wasserman enough for educating me about their work, and for also organizing my visits in the spring of 2019 to Chicago and Boston, respectively, to see in action the teachers they are mentoring. I want to thank each of these dedicated professionals and their students for opening my eyes—and through me, hopefully, yours—to their cutting-edge use of argument-based learning. At Proviso West High School outside Chicago, I want to thank these teachers for allowing me to observe their classes: Sherry Bates, Danielle English, Angda Goel, Adenike Natschke, and Stephen Ngo. In Boston, thanks go to BDL’s experienced coaches, Sarah Mayper, Marisa Suescun, and Kim Willingham, and to these teachers: Melissa Graham at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School and Patti Dennis, Doris Kane, Mike Nickerson, and Vanessa St. Leger at the Henderson School.

I previewed the broad outlines for the arguments in this book in a blog post I wrote for Brookings in September 2018 titled “A Counterintuitive Proposal for Improving Education and Healing America: Debate-Centered Instruction,”2 which I draw on in various places, especially in chapter 1. I want to thank Jonathan Rauch, a coauthor from over twenty years ago and a close friend and Brookings colleague, for suggesting that I write that initial essay, both to get my thoughts “out there” for public view and to gain valuable feedback and information for possible readers of a future book. He was right on both counts. Numerous people, many of them former debaters, saw the essay and did precisely what Jonathan had forecasted: they gave me both positive and constructive feedback and made me aware of professionals around the country who were using debate-centered instruction in their educational systems. Indeed, this is how I met Mike Wasserman of the BDL and Scott Wunn and Nicole Wanzer-Serrano of the National Speech and Debate Association, who kindly promoted the Brookings essay through social media.

I am also grateful to Atlantic editor Jim Fallows, Jeff Finkle, president of the International Economic Development Council, and Frank Partnoy of Berkeley Law School (all former high school and college debaters, which I also didn’t know until we talked), who strongly encouraged me at the beginning of this project to see it through. Likewise, I greatly appreciate the close editing of an earlier draft of this book by my law school classmate, and former high school and college debater, Don Sloan.

Likewise, I gained much from reconnecting with my long-time friend Ken Kay, who has been a leader in education reform from his home in Arizona since leaving his Washington, D.C. law practice about two decades ago. Ken founded EdLeaders21, since absorbed by Battelle for Kids, which helps superintendents around the country to stay on the cutting edge of education pedagogy. In addition to providing valuable advice that is relevant to the last chapter of the book, Ken introduced me to the remarkable book by Ten Dintersmith, What School Could Be, which I reference and draw on at several points in pages that follow. For those who agree with Dintersmith’s emphasis that “project based learning” (PBL) is the best way to prepare students for the twenty-first century, consider this book a companion, for debate centered instruction has features akin to PBL while also offering the advantages of developing students’ oral communications skills and furthering a mindset that will make them better workers and citizens when they reach adulthood.

I also want to give a big shout out to Megan Callaghan of Bard College, who furnished me with important facts about Bard’s Prison Initiative, and the debate team inside prison it fosters, which readers will learn about in chapter 6, and to Lynn Novick, who created a documentary about these debaters, for introducing me to Megan.

As I wrote the book, I often thought of my debate partners in high school (Jan Hornberger Duffy, Gretchen Miller, and the late Marc Salle) and college (Brian Jones, Don Klawiter, and high school coach William Robinson). Without them, debate wouldn’t have changed my life in the way I describe in the book, and I certainly wouldn’t have had the faintest idea of why and how to write a book that draws on that experience. I hope they enjoy and maybe even agree with what follows.

I showed early drafts of this book to numerous people, and I thank every one of them, they know who they are, and the book would not be what it is without their help. I also thank each of the individuals who formally reviewed the book at the request of the Brookings Institution Press. Although readers won’t know where and how, I assure you that the comments I received greatly improved what you are about to read.

I benefitted greatly from the advice of William Finan, director of the Brookings Institution Press, who enthusiastically took this project on, and the careful editing of Kathi Anderson.

Finally, I am grateful to my wife, Margaret, for encouraging me not only to undertake this project but in everything else I do (and not minding the workaholic tendencies that book writing brings out in me). She has never been intimidated by my debate experience, although she sometimes will jokingly suggest during a discussion, “You must have learned that in debate.” To all future debaters, in competition or in classrooms, you will probably have similar experiences in your lives, which I hope will be one of many reasons you find debating to be such a valuable skill. And to those who don’t have a formal debate background, I hope you will find what follows to be engaging and inspiring—enough so that you, too, can help revolutionize education and help save our democracy!

In early March 2020, mayors, governors, and ultimately President Donald Trump began enforcing strict social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, whose unprecedented economic consequences will be felt for at least a few years. My heart goes out to all who have lost loved ones during this awful episode in our history.

The pandemic forced the closure of schools throughout the United States, and led me to modify some of my recommendations for universal debate-centered instruction in at least high schools to take into account remote learning, which fortunately was available for most U.S. students during the crisis and may need to be used more regularly in the future, even without another pandemic. Paradoxically, many students may find it easier to express themselves orally in the comfort of their own homes—talking through a computer—than in front of their schoolmates in a typical classroom setting.

More experimentation with debate-centered instructional techniques in remote settings should be undertaken. Hence, the recommendations outlined here may be even more relevant and important than before the outbreak of the pandemic and the need to transition to remote learning.