Chester Porter QC, "The gentle art of persuasion" (2005):
"At school I was quite a good debater and captained my school’s debating team against the teams of other schools. Team debating teaches valuable lessons in performing tasks and keeping to the point, and I acquired a good deal of experience in these.
Unfortunately, school team debating introduces people to advocacy too early. In advocacy, you put forward arguments in support of a proposition, regardless of whether you believe in it yourself. Team debating teaches you to do just that.
Although I gained a great deal of experience in debating at school and later at university, I soon learn that there were too many negatives in team debating. Emotion tended to be fienged rather than real, and arguments were made in order to win debating points from adjudicators, rather than to convince the audience. Young speakers and older ones too, tended to be smart show-offs and at times the distinction between wit and lack of manners became blurred.
I was a university adjudicator and saw and heard many debaters some of whom later became barristers. Team debating no doubt taught fluency, verbal skills and slick argument. But I think the real ability to persuade is a different skill altogether.
At university, I far preferred the parliamentary debates, the weekly Union Nights modeled on the Oxford Union where causes were debated by those who believed in them. My experience began there as a seventeen-year-old student among much better debaters.
When one has been a schoolboy captain of debating, there is a tendency to lose modesty as one is cheered by sympathetic audiences. My initial lack of success at Sydney University soon revived much of the modesty I had lost at school.”
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