Here’s a sneak preview of the forthcoming Ethics Bowl to the Rescue! due out early 2025. One point of the book is to advocate for Ethics Bowl’s expansion by supplanting traditional debate. This would decrease debate’s divisive negative effects and increase Ethics Bowl’s collegial positive effects. This chapter, “Can Ethics Bowl and Debate Coexist?” considers whether we might simply transform debate’s culture from within.
Would supplanting debate with Ethics Bowl deliver a utopia? Of course not. People will continue to quarrel. Factions will continue to divide. Deception and treachery will live on, both in our personal lives and politics.
However, Ethics Bowl would make fruitful discussion more commonplace. It would foster humility and model collaborative compromise. It’s not unreasonable to expect more Ethics Bowl to mean more social stability and more justice, at least insofar as justice is revealed and produced when issues are settled together, according to reason rather than power, in a spirit of mutual support rather than domination.
Ethics Bowl could even increase charitable giving and volunteer work, decrease addiction and crime. But no need to overpromise. It’s taken for granted that Ethics Bowl is a strategic, slow growth solution, not a comprehensive quick fix.
But since we’re fresh out of comprehensive quick fixes, perhaps phasing out a known corruptor and phasing in a promising rejuvenator is worth the minimal effort. And I say minimal effort because the debate framework is there. All we have to do is make a few tweaks. To implement those tweaks, we probably just need to convince a critical group of leaders in the debate community.
You can tell that I’m convinced. But many will remain skeptical, and for different reasons. Certain hardliners from both traditional political camps aren’t interested in sincere discussion because they believe they alone possess the complete, unassailable moral truth. So we have to accept that a certain percentage are too invested, jaded or damaged to entertain the possibility that their views might stand room for improvement. This is frustrating, and we might at times be tempted to join them. But 20th century American thinker and rabbi Joshua Liebman colorfully reminds us how experience confirms humility as a virtue.
“Dense, unenlightened people are notoriously confident that they have the monopoly on truth; if you need proof, feel the weight of their knuckles. But anyone with the faintest glimmerings of imagination knows that truth is broader than any individual conception of it, stronger than any fist. Recall, too, how many earnestly held opinions and emotions we have outgrown with the passage of years. Given a little luck, plus a lively sense of the world about us, we shall probably outgrow many more. Renan’s remark that our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking should be sufficient warning against premature hardening of our intellectual arteries, or too stubborn insistence that we are infallibly and invariably right.”[1]
Just as courage begets courage, vulnerability begets vulnerability. My own intellectual arteries may not flow as freely as they once did. But witnessing the variety of thoughtful perspectives, and participants’ willingness to share and adopt novel lines of reasoning via Ethics Bowl, regularly dissolves the plaque.
Others will dismiss Ethics Bowl’s benefits as superficial, challenging ethical discussion’s ability to translate into ethical action. For this camp, meet St. George of St. Petersburg. Organizer, judge, ambassador and fan, the tall professor in jeans and a brown sports coat has been a fixture in the Ethics Bowl community for as long as I can remember. And when it comes to passion and commitment, his ranks with Bob Ladenson’s.
To George, the transformative power and unique advantages of Ethics Bowl have been obvious from the start.
“I was amazed at the level of discussion and the depth of analysis… The ideas of thinking, rational analysis, and discussion seemed an unbeatable combination of skills valuable to citizenship. Most of my adult life has been focused on creating decent, responsible citizens, and the Ethics Bowl seemed to be a powerful approach to meeting my goals.”
Rather than admiring from a distance, George has volunteered his time and lent his talents like few others, growing Ethics Bowl across age groups, formats and locations. He’s served on rules committees, steering committees, case writing committees. And he shows no signs of slowing down, despite retiring from his official teaching duties.
Like other true believers, St. George has been forced to battle the naysayers, as well as his own less diplomatic instincts. And he has a simple yet effective response to those who challenge an ethics education’s practical benefits.
“It turns out that many people, even in the world of Ethics Bowls, find my idealism disturbing. When I told my committee that I think the Ethics Bowl helps to create ethical citizens, several objected, one even sending me journal references that simply learning to think ethically does not guarantee people will act ethically. I had to engage in St. George style combat with my Dragon of Sarcasm not to reply. If a person never learns to think ethically, they never will. If they never learn rational discussion, they will never engage in rational discussion. Just because we cannot hit 100% ethical behavior is not a reason not to promote ethical thinking. Sadly, this person teaches ethics! Must be fun to be in his class.”
There’s a moral principle in there somewhere. Maybe “That an action isn’t guaranteed to work isn’t reason alone to refuse to try.” Or “When an action has a reasonable chance to produce a morally praiseworthy outcome, one should try, absent substantial drawbacks, even if success is uncertain.”
Another principle we might intuitively endorse: “Leaders should encourage morally valuable activities.” I bring this up because George makes a strong case that Ethics Bowl is far better at cultivating the type of student school systems aspire to produce than many activities they fund year in, year out as a matter of course.
“Early on in my adoption of the high school Ethics Bowl, we found research that showed if a student just witnessed an ethical discussion, they thought more ethically about the issue. Putting on my best Don Quixote attitude, I tried to convince the high school principals that Ethics Bowl was a more transformative experience than their sports team. No spectator becomes a better basketball player by watching their high school team play. But that same student will become a better ethical thinker by watching the high school Ethics Bowl.”
If you’re a current Ethics Bowl advocate, either by participating, coaching, organizing, moderating, judging, sponsoring or simply sharing it with friends, thank you. Future generations thank you. This generation thanks you. Lovers of justice, harmony and mutual respect the world over thank you.
If you’re a debater, whether a participant, coach, organizer, host, judge, parent or fan, thank you. We know your intentions are pure. We know debate helps young people overcome stage fright, build confidence, learn about important issues and practice citizen advocacy. But there’s a superior alternative waiting, and the barriers to transition are virtually nonexistent.
In truth, you don’t have to choose. Just as some kids play football in the fall then baseball in the spring, many teams alternate debate and Ethics Bowl. I’d like to think most will come to prefer Ethics Bowl. But even if not, the experience will no doubt shape attitudes, and in cases where we don’t supplant debate, perhaps we can still transform it from within. Infusing debate with Ethics Bowl’s culture could covertly produce the same benefits. And as a wise person once observed, it’s amazing what you an achieve when you’re unconcerned with who gets the credit.
Plus, we currently don’t offer as many opportunities to compete as debate, so that might be reason for teams to keep a foot in both. It might also be reason for organizers to expand offerings, reason for coaches to form standing ethics clubs and plan offseason scrimmages, reason for teams to look into Zoom-based events in other countries likely available year-round. Between the traditional Australian Ethics Olympiad and the new Pan-American Ethics Olympiad, options are out there.
Ultimately, in a perfect world, Ethics Bowl would fully overtake debate. That’s the goal. But one way for the debate community to save face, and for the Ethics Bowl community to more peacefully achieve its goals, could be a peaceful coexistence where Ethics Bowl continues to grow, and debate continues to exist, but becomes so much like Ethics Bowl, there’s little reason to object to it.
[1] Peace of Mind: Insights on Human Nature That Can Change Your Life. Carol Publishing Group, 1946, page 76.
