Sense of Wonder in Debate

 Yesterday, I had lead the class in Gulliver's Travels in a funny debate, related to the battle between the "low heels" and "high heels". We decided to modernize it a bit and make the debate around which is better: "low heels", "high heels" or "flip flops". Although the students tended be competitive about debates, citing ways to "offend" their competing views, the students did it in a good-natured and respectful way which, in the end, promoted peacefulness to a large extent. I think one of the reasons for this, in retrospect, is that the debate is a bit off the wall, and it somehow relates to things that might seem a bit trivial in a way. But I think that Swift might also have been making the observation that in 17th century England, a lot of what was being 'debated' or even fought over were rather insubstantial things, which he satirizes by detailing a war that is fought over how an egg should be cut (top first or bottom first). In the end, I gave the kids "gummy feet" candy to celebrate their mutual participation in the process of exploring what kinds of shoes might be the best. I did not crown anyone the real "winner" or "loser" in this debate.
   I think that before students can even tackle the larger debates that are currently of importance, they need to understand the spirit of debate. Rather than being a competition to see who can "win", perhaps debating is about more generating good ideas, regardless of who says them. When I start to write the students' answers on the white board, I notice that the students start to get more into the spirit of the game. Perhaps they want to see, out of curiosity, which side will end up having the most pluses, and which will have more minuses. But it even seems that once the ideas are written down, there is a dialectical process where the students are allowed to see how their arguments appear alongside their fellow students, and how some arguments might be refined or developed in more detail. For example, one student mentioned that high heels might be better for people with flat feet. Now, I don't know how scientific this point is, but it prompted more discussion on which shoe is healthier to wear, and thus generated more creative and thought-provoking answers. The students seem to get more excited to see the way the answers develop more questions and what was once taken for granted is questioned.
   When debates are "playful" rather than reflecting a student's sense of self-worth or intelligence, there seems to be more room for improvisation, fewer "wrong" answers, and more of a sense of agreeableness among the students, if not collegiality. Answers are less inhibited, and there's more room for humor as well. I suggest that this way of teaching debate might be valuable because it does not associate debating with trying to defeat one's opponents or making self-comparisons. Perhaps this can allow students to approach debates exploratively with a sense of wonder.