Learn to Argue

In the 8^th grade for history class, we had to present a formal debate to our class and teachers. The set up was U.S. history, and it was broken into three groups. There were the radicals, “whigs,” and neutrals who went with the different sides of the American Revolution and whether or not it would be a just cause to break away. Upon picking groups no one wanted to choose the  whigs, and so some of the most quiet and brightest minds of our grade decided to take on the challenge as a joke or for personal test. There was one problem with this, that left everyone else to debate against us and the neutrals to judge it and pick a winner. With all of our heavy thinkers pooled into one basket, we were left with what seemed a clear victory, but turned into a nightmare. People from the radical party took up radical behavior screaming incoherent and blatantly moronic contradictions to fair points. Any attempt to refute their arguments was screamed out and shunned like some ignorant blindness that plagues many of our political leaders and youth today. What was a very overwhelming and superior debate on the side of the whigs turned out to be a landslide victory to the radicals both through the obnoxiousness of the debaters and those going into it with their minds already made up as doubters.