WHAT IS WORLD SCHOOLS?

Format and Rules

World Schools Debate is the dominant international Speech and Debate format. It is among the least competed in formats within the United States, but it is among the most common formats in nearly every single other country. It is also the format used for the World Schools Debating Championships, the premier international competition that pits the national teams of each country against each other. 

As simply as possible, World Schools is a debate between teams of 3-5 people, where three people debate in a round. The topics are known as “motions,” with Team Proposition advocating for adopting or passing the motion, while Team Opposition advocates for failing or rejecting that motion. Each of the three team members gives an 8-minute long speech, and one of the first two speakers on each team ends the round with a 4-minute reply speech. The Opposition's reply is first to give the Proposition team the last word in the debate. The timeline below is a visualization of how a round plays out:

Proposition 1

Opposition 1

Proposition 2

Opposition 2

Proposition 3

Opposition 3

Opposition Reply (the Opp 1/2 gives)

Proposition Reply (the Prop 1/2 gives)

Overview of the Event

WSD is a highly nuanced event, and it is impossible to cover every single facet of the format in just a single introductory lecture (the next lectures will expand on it). With that said, the following section will cover the “culture shocks” of joining WSD, especially if you’ve previously done another American format. 

Motions

This will be covered more in-depth in our Motions lecture, but World Schools takes the perspective of an international body, referred to in motions as “This House.” It essentially asks whether said international body would adopt a certain policy or stance (ex. “This House would increase the minimum wage” or “This House believes that riots should be used in protest”.)

Another weird part of World Schools is the existence of impromptu motions. In these types of debates, the motion is released a short time beforehand (usually an hour in American tournaments and thirty minutes in international tournaments) and then the debate starts once that preparation time is up. 

POIs

Instead of cross-examination, like in other debate formats, World Schools has Points of Information or POIs. A member of the opposing team will interrupt you in the middle of your speech and say “POI.” You have the choice to accept or reject that POI. 

Evidence

Specific pieces of evidence are rarely ever used in WSD, and when they are, they are not valued nearly as highly as they are in other debate events. So you’ll never see a line in someone’s third speech that’s “THEIR EVIDENCE IS FROM 2022 OURS IS FROM 2024 SO YOU BELIEVE US.”

Instead, good evidence is only a part of any team’s case. Specific examples are valued more than random statistics in rounds, and both of those things can be disproven by a sound line of reasoning. For example:

Motion: This House believes that celebrities should promote social movements. 

Bad: Celebrities increase the reach of social movements. This is supported by empirical evidence, as The Center for Social Media Data Collection quantifies that 70% of celebrity posts on social media about social movements get upwards of 50 million likes. 

Good: Celebrities increase the reach of social movements. This is clear as it is what they’ve done in the past—LeBron James openly advocated for Black Lives Matter messaging through press conferences, wearing BLM t-shirts while on the bench, and reposting the movement’s content on social media. 

Better: Celebrities increase the reach of the movement for several reasons. First, they have an openly available platform during TV appearances like press conferences after sports games—that looks like Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors, speaking out about gun control after the Ulvade, Texas school shooting. Second, they can change the internal workings of organizations they are a part of, such as the many actors who advocated for the Writers’ Guild of America during their strike. Thirdly, they have social media accounts with millions of followers, like LeBron James, who participated in the Blackout Tuesday trend in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. 

The idea is that your specific pieces of evidence are not the only way through which you make analysis—you need to analyze the incentives of actors, the past actions of people involved, etc. 

Joining a Team and Competing

In my opinion, one of the sole shortcomings of World Schools is the requirement to have at least 3 members of your team. This means that you cannot just get involved in World Schools so easily if you’re interested. Worse, small-to-medium-size schools rarely participate in the event or have the necessary members to compete in the event consistently. There are a few ways you can fix this. 

1. Recruit members at your school—this is the easiest way to do things. You can seek the support of your coach, ask friends that you know are interested in debate, etc. 

2. Find a debate community online—Equality in Forensics is full of interested debaters, mentors who can help you learn WSD (me!), and resources for navigating the event. 

3. Ask your national team or institutions in your country—especially in smaller countries with a lesser WSD presence, national team coaches will likely be eager to connect you with opportunities or other students. (Google up “Team <your country> World Schools”)

4. Join a debate institution—look around for coaches who offer group classes, as that will immediately connect you with a group of people you can get to know and compete with. The only drawback here is that you will have to pay a large fee in most cases.