Practices of navigation: does debate teach skills?

Abstract

Too often we read defenses of debate as the ultimate exercise in teaching skills for the future. Seeing the future as one of dissimilar problems to the skills we have today, I argue that debate could be seen as a practice that allows for relational articulation: The ability to look around one’s immediate surroundings and find relationships that allow one to navigate the world. Opposed to skills, which assume an extant, knowable problem and the steps to solve it, debate encourages seeing oneself surrounded by indicators that could be read in different ways - arguments - that can be used to address movement through the world, political or otherwise. I use the metaphor of the Polynesian navigator Tuapia and the squiggle game, developed by D. W. Winnicott to ground the vision of debate that can help students address the coming Anthropocene, where contemporary skills may no longer be relevant.