First published in the Owl Journal, 16th February 2005
The Oxford Union conducts Parliamentary Debating. It is a public area, where politics is played out - the great and the good come to spin out their arguments. It is fair because everyone gets their say, at length. It is good because, as we are constantly told, it is the most famous debating society in the world, and can therefore attract the leading men and women on this planet to address the students of Oxford. It is, however, greatly limited.
Countless speaker societies also attract the great and the good to Oxford. They bring together the ambitious souls of Oxford and the 'like minded'. Through them we probe the thoughts and observations of the elite, and we bring our questions to them in an attempt to further our understanding.
However, neither of these Oxford monoliths are what we should demand as intelligent, engaged students who will later shape the world we now seek to understand. Neither genuinely offers the opportunity to subject ideas to a rigorous examination. Neither encourage us to bitterly yet genuinely argue out the important issues in politics, philosophy and society. I have consequently founded a society in an attempt to address my misgivings about the way we argue in Oxford, and in this piece I intend to demonstrate what is wrong with the present systems and set out my arguments for change.
In Oxford we are too deferential to the arguments of speakers we invite to our institutions, yet paradoxically, when we do attack them we are all too often cynical and arrogant. We all on occasion disagree with speakers - we should have the confidence to argue it out with them. Moreover, we should build institutions that allow us to do this. Speaker societies are pitifully weak - if you invite someone eminent to give a general talk, the substance of which can frequently be found in their published work, it might seem that the sole reason for inviting them would be to network, with speakers and other ambitious souls, and possibly enjoy a meal at the expense of the Society. For some it is - but a talk with questions is an exercise in understanding a position, gaining insights and information, learning the dynamics and assumptions of an argument. This is good. However, I don't believe we can truly understand the meaning of an argument without testing it, without struggling with it and baring oneself in a shared forum. As Mill said, we gain "the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." There is something special about open debate, the collision of ideas, which we have not experienced as we should.
We are young, inexperienced, and have read little. We do not really know what we believe politically. We do not understand where society is going today, nor its past. Not genuinely. Hence it seems strange to me that we form societies based upon our perceived political affiliation - surely we are only going to affirm our prejudices, rather than test them. I think that before networking up the political ladder we should spend more time working out our own politics. I'm not pessimistic about our ability as students to understand and argue about the world - on the contrary, it is now that we can begin to form our judgements about the world, through reading and experience, and gain more sophisticated beliefs with an ever increasing rigour and insight. We can find out what we want to change and how we want to change it. My suggestion is that, for those of us who care about politics, university should be about helping each individual work out where they stand. Ideas should be tested, and we should test our own prejudices by arguing with those who put forward those ideas. We should aspire to debate properly.
Unfortunately, parliamentary debating in the Oxford Union does not serve these ends. True, it trains our contemporaries to be politicians, to network and please all, to talk a lot and say nothing and to know precisely how to persuade and win an argument by any means. These skills are useful and many are virtues. The demands of parliamentary debate - analytical rigour, strategy, command of an audience, deep understanding through research - are formidable. They serve a purpose in training our public speakers and equipping them with skills of persuasion. But that is not the purpose we should come to university, neglect our essays and sacrifice relationships for. We should value the development of good ideas, rigorous arguments and insightful observations. We should value institutions that help us to examine ideas, argue about politics - because politics is important - and engage with fellow students.
We should do more of the obvious things. We should attempt to follow the logic of an argument as far as we can, to understand its assumptions and the fundamental assumptions which divide people. How? Preparation - knowing what the issues are before the debate, and pursuing them. Following individual points through - debate is a messy process, but we can help clean it up by, for example, returning to someone who has just been criticised for a response, perhaps even returning again. By asking the audience respond to each other's points, and not returning to the speaker after each point. Understanding the issues and attempting to break them down so that each claim can be understood and fought over within the debate.
We should argue with each other far, far more. Oxford students sit in political meetings as if they were going to watch a film, consuming the virtues handed down from the speaker and enjoying the show, before scuttling back to the library to write an essay. I think we should be prepared to argue with each other within and beyond the event, student to student, on our beliefs and assumptions. We should debate, and fight, with each other and more importantly with speakers. No speaker has the divine right of truth - we should criticise, propose other views, demand clarifications, and make the speaker feel that they must persuade, not preach.
Ultimately, speakers come to the Oxford Union, in the context of Parliamentary Debate, to persuade, to rally the troops, build support - to win the argument in front of others. Clearly, this reflects the British Parliament the technique is built upon. Debate in this sense is in the public sphere, where, as a society, we struggle with the truth and build our ability to make political choices. It is not where we, as students, should have our main involvement. It may be a crucial way to grow to understand the world, to understand contemporary political conflicts and struggles, but unfortunately it is precisely because such debate is in the public sphere of real politics, that it is limited.
In Parliamentary Debate, as practised at the Oxford Union and elsewhere, there are few ways for the protagonists to interact. They give long explanations for their position, or more often why the opposition is wrong, but rarely can a speaker be successfully challenged, except rhetorically. Few have mastered the format. It is too easy to do badly (because it is such a challenge) and so we lose out. Parliamentary debate privileges details while core problems are lost in the flurry of fur between the two sides and it prioritises rebuttal. As Michael Gove once put it, you must "attack, attack, attack" and "seek to persuade by bankrupting the alternative view". The problem is that without the corresponding "defend, defend, defend" we never get to see the arguments developed. We do not see a clash of ideas because the formality prevents it. We miss out on the most crucial and interesting part of debate, where the arguments are further developed and defended, where a single issue or line of argument is explored in depth, defended with additional examples or modified in the light of criticism to become a stronger and more convincing point overall. We do not get the chance to see why a common criticism is irrelevant, how we might have misconceived the problem or why some issue not yet discussed is important. Finally, it often leads to cynicism in students who experience it and participants realise they can get away with glib, unprepared and ill thought out arguments. Bad arguments are not exposed, good arguments are not expanded, and we are the worse for it. The Union could do some these things- especially through the role of the librarian - and so could other societies on Oxford. More often (but not always), they should abandon the hegemony of the question and answer session and the rigidity of fixed speeches in favour of a more fluid and dialogue based form of debate.
What is the legitimacy of debate? Through debate we create and discover truth. Ultimately we cannot alter the fact that the truth is known, at best, by persuading all others that we are right. As Mill pointed out, that "complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right". Through debate we examine our assumptions and arguments, and gain a better understanding of arguments. Speakers should gain from debate because they are challenged by students. More importantly, students should learn from debate because they take part, put themselves on the line and have to deal with the criticism of others. They have to engage in the communal struggle to find Truth. Parliamentary Debate does not do this enough - often it smothers debate and those with panache and strategy drown the claims of truth with showers of rhetoric. Hence the estrangement of many from debate. My hope is that through the Hive we can institutionalise some of these grand ideals.
Tom Ogg, Oxford, December 2004
Bibliography
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, (1859); Penguin Classics 1974. First citation, Chapter 2, p 76; Second, Chapter 2, p 79.
- Michael Gove, Debate is vital for democracy, (2002). The Times, 21 November Correspondence
Tom Ogg
Nuffield College
Oxford
United Kingdom
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