Resolved: School Debates Don’t Harm Political Dialogue

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/opinion/letters/school-debates-genetic-data.html

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To the Editor:

Re “A Threat to Political Discourse?” (Sunday Review, Oct. 13):

Prof. Jonathan Ellis and Francesca Hovagimian, a law student, argue that “school debate ultimately strengthens and rewards biased reasoning” and might contribute to today’s close-minded political discourse.

As a former debater whose life and entire way of thinking were changed through debate, I want to offer a rebuttal. In most formats, debaters approach each round not knowing which side they’re going to defend. As a result, they need to research and find evidence to support both sides. From a critical thinking perspective, this exposes debaters to a variety of perspectives and teaches them that there can be multiple valid sides to an issue, a value that is sorely lacking in much of the ad hominem political discourse seen today.

Within a round, debaters also learn how to engage an issue at the intellectual and evidentiary levels. They cannot win by resorting to personal attacks or merely dismissing an issue, an unfortunate trend that has become commonplace.

Finally, debaters learn how to persuade a wide audience of people, from professional debate judges to community members.

These ingredients make the world of competitive debate an exciting and proven ground to foster thoughtful and capable leaders. It’s no secret that many titans of industry, politicians and advocates for change learned the skills they apply in their daily lives on school debate teams.

Aditya ShekharMinneapolis

To the Editor:

The authors argue that a) school debate “may contribute to the closed-minded, partisan and self-interested nature of so much of today’s public and political dialogue” and b) an Ethics Bowl offers a better form of debate as it poses a question and lets groups of students form and present their own views.

Both claims are problematic. The authors argue without evidence that dogmatism in a debate setting will then be applied to the real world. This is no more plausible on its face than the proposition that football players will tackle random people in the street because they tackle people in games.

Second, an Ethics Bowl involves teams of students, and if there is someone on the team who doesn’t agree with the view of the rest of the team, that person may be forced to argue against his or her own view, which is exactly what the authors disliked about school debate.

There are many things harming our democratic discourse, but I doubt that school debate competitions are one of them.

Nathan SepinwallSwarthmore, Pa.The writer is an eighth grader.

To the Editor:

Re “Your Health Data Helps Everyone” (The Privacy Project, Op-Ed, Oct. 3):

Oren Frank argues that “the right thing to do with your data is not to guard it, but to share it,” and he correctly describes how sharing it could foster beneficial discoveries. But he ignores the significant challenges and potential pitfalls involved.

Though he calls for “an extensive de-identification process to irreversibly anonymize our personal data,” genetic information — increasingly recognized as critical in understanding disease and responses to treatment, and included in our health records — is inherently identifiable. It cannot be de-identified.

Seemingly innocuous information can also be used to re-identify individuals. For countless Americans with disease-associated mutations, genetic discrimination remains a major concern.

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act covers most but not all health insurance, and fails to cover life, disability and long-term care insurance. Insurers can thus legally deny coverage based on someone’s genes, or charge much higher rates.

Weneed to develop ways to both share and guard data, and be brutally realistic about the delicate and complex trade-offs involved.

Robert KlitzmanNew YorkThe writer, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, is the author of “Designing Babies: How Technology Is Changing the Ways We Create Children.”