Teaching philosophy through Lincoln-Douglas debate

Jacob Nebel, Ryan W. Davis, Peter Van Elswyk, Ben Holguin

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper is about teaching philosophy to high school students through Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate. LD, also known as "values debate," includes topics from ethics and political philosophy. Thousands of high school students across the U.S. debate these topics in class, after school, and at weekend tournaments. We argue that LD is a particularly effective tool for teaching philosophy, but also that LD today falls short of its potential. We argue that the problems with LD are not inevitable, and we offer strategic recommendations for improving LD as a tool for teaching philosophy. Ultimately, our aim is to create a dialogue between LD and academic philosophy, with the hope that such dialogue will improve LD's capacity to teach students how to do philosophy.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)271-289
Number of pages19
JournalTeaching Philosophy
Volume36
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2013
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Education
  • Philosophy

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