Analysis: March Public Forum Affirmative Constructives

Requirements of an Affirmative

Case writing is arguably the most important part of Public Forum Debate. The first constructive gives the judge a first impression of your team and sets the tone for the remainder of the debate. The first affirmative constructive often also sets the substantive parameters for the debate because the affirmative typically bears the burden of proving the resolution and therefore may also describe how they prove the resolution. Despite the importance of this speech, I see debaters make two surprisingly common mistakes: first, defending too much ground and second, defending arguments that do not prove the resolution true. In a close round, these mistakes can be the difference between a win and a loss. This post will explore how to craft strategic affirmative cases on the March 2014 topic regarding the educational impact of single-gender classrooms. Debaters often overestimate — or misestimate — the amount of work required to affirm the resolution and end up defending unstrategic ground. This matters because the amount and the type of ground defended by the affirmative alters the effectiveness of the negative constructive. When affirmatives defend overbroad advocacies, they become a larger target for negative attacks. When affirmatives defend unstrategic ground, they miss the opportunity to pre-empt common negative arguments and gain comparative advantage in the round. The optimal affirmative case is both narrowly written to avoid negative arguments and targeted to meet the resolutional mechanism or measure. I’ll explain what I mean using three possible advocacies that affirm the topic:

Exclusively single gender schools

Coeducational schools with single-gender opt-ins for all classes

Coeducational schools single-gender opt-ins for core classes

Strategic Affirmative Advocacy

Consider the relationship between each affirmative advocacy and the following four common negative arguments:

Bad Socialization — Single-gender classes prevent students from learning basic social skills fostered by interacting with the opposite sex

Cost — Single-gender classrooms, curricula development, and oversight overhead will strain and drain already scarce school resources

Gender Stereotypes — lumping male and female students into undifferentiated masses reinforces gender stereotypes by assuming all males and all females act the same

Heteronormativity — Single-gender classrooms rely on a presumption of heterosexuality that sends discriminatory, harmful messages to LGBTQ students about their sexual orientation

Advocacy 1: Single-Gender Schools

The first advocacy — single-gender schools — is clearly the broadest example of a topical advocacy. It requires substantial change to implement — new school facilities, new teachers. It is the most different from the status quo — it moves away from constant inter-sex socialization to no inter-sex socialization, it creates all-male and all-female environments only. This advocacy is most readily attacked by — or “linked” to — each common negative advocacy. Single-gender schools create no opportunity for socialization; they are extremely expensive; they create exclusively male and exclusively female environments, which reinforce stereotypes; they are most likely to signal that heterosexuality is “natural” to students. An affirmative advocating for single-gender schools must therefore be prepared to substantively engage each of these arguments in depth — an uphill battle that both increases the burden of pre-round prep and increases the likelihood that a judge will find the negative’s in-round arguments persuasive.

Advocacy 2: Voluntary Opt-In

The second advocacy — coeducational schools that offer the voluntary option for single-gender classes — is less broad than the first, and is less susceptible to the negative’s common arguments. Voluntary opt-in — rather than school-wide segregation — is less likely to send negative messages to LGBTQ students, and is also more likely to give students an opportunity to interact and socialize with members of the opposite sex. Simply by virtue of being less broad, this advocacy makes two powerful negative entirely irrelevant — and still affirms the resolution. The strength of the affirmative — and the rationale for affirming — does not suffer by making opt-in voluntary and incorporating such classes into existing coeducational facilities. Narrower affirmative advocacies are also more likely to take negative debaters by surprise, making it more likely that they will panic. Debaters who are panicked — or even simply startled — tend to be less effective in communicating and speaking, because they are also simultaneously dealing with their surprise. Narrowly tailored advocacies thus present both a substantive and tactical advantage over negative debaters. This second advocacy is not without flaw, though; creating a single-gender version of every class likely still links to the cost argument, and potentially creates negative gender stereotypes by arbitrarily creating male-exclusive and female-exclusive environments.

Advocacy 3: Targeted Voluntary Opt-In

The third advocacy — targeted voluntary opt-in classes for core classes — is both narrowly tailored and targeted to a particular literature base. Core classes like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are fields where women have been traditionally excluded, which sharpens the visibility and magnifies the prevalence of exclusionary gender dynamics. The weight of institutionalized exclusion arguably makes girls in these classes uniquely susceptible to the effects of stereotype threat — which provides a unique, purposeful justification for creating single-gender classrooms. This advocacy does not link to any of the common negative arguments. As with the previous advocacy, targeted voluntary opt-in is unlikely to reinforce heteronormativity and still provides opportunity for socialization. Because this advocacy is targeted only at a few core classes instead of entire schools, it is also unlikely to substantially increase educational costs. Core classes are also more common, which increases the number of teachers who are already trained and certified to teach them — further decreasing costs. Because this advocacy is targeted to correct for hostile classroom dynamics, it turns the tables on negatives who argue that there are no reason — or that the reasoning is sexist — for separating students into single-gender classrooms. This puts the affirmative far ahead of the negative — this case essentially pre-empts the best negative positions and embeds rebuttal in the first speech, while simultaneously justifying an affirmative ballot. Communication scholars agree that audiences are more likely to reject a position if they were given a reason to doubt it in advance. This strategy subconsciously undermines the credibility by predisposing your judges to reject the other side’s arguments.

Debate is a game of inches, not miles.

Every single debater can think of a time where they lost a round on a split decision. The difference between being on top of a 2-1 decision and being on its bottom may be the nuance espoused by your case, and the foundation that sets for the remainder of the debate. Take advantage of that foundation and win those inches — and the debate.