Our Wildwood, Volume 52

FEATURE Candy Battles for Democracy

If I were to share the class my middle schoolers responded to the most so far this year, it would be the candy battles lesson designed to introduce debate skills. The KitKat team started the 8th grade debate by listing all the ways their candy bar was better than Twix. Worldwide it has hundreds of flavors, a distinct crunch advantage, and how easily it can be shared with friends. The Twix team countered that the texture of the chocolate-caramel-wafer combination is superior. They cited a survey showing Twix is twice as popular. Then the clincher: “Actually, Twix is better to share,” holding up the two separate chocolate covered bars that come in each package. “You can give it away germ free without ever touching it!” The hard candy truth in their rebuttal helped Team Twix win the debate by a vote of their peers. “The goal for students of all ages would be to have them develop their own opinions via structured arguments and listening protocols that emphasize compromise and perspective-holding. This might not be what sells on social media, but it would help stabilize a society.” — ALEX CUSSEN, MIDDLE SCHOOL HUMANITIES TEACHER

Debate that starts with lower stakes arguments, such as the Twix vs KitKat, along with acknowledging human-to-human disagreement, is increasingly rare to find in today’s society, and especially online. Classrooms, however, offer an ideal ground for this type of engagement to flourish. From the agora to the zócalo, great civic genius and innovation emerged from meaningful time spent on a healthy exchange of ideas, as budding democracies had to navigate conflict and build consensus via airing differences and hearing the voices of others. Our lives today are more technology-enabled, more

image-saturated, but not necessarily more sophisticated. A shot of dopamine from a stimulating Instagram video can keep a young mind glued to the phone for hours. Classrooms, on the other hand–being physically together in shared space–are one of the few remaining beacons for dialogue and debate. Most American students are not getting enough opportunities to practice this key part of the democratic process in grades K to 12. Preparing students for today’s universities will require developing skills much earlier in the educational chain. The simple act of moving classroom chairs and desks with students facing each other early on invites more interaction to help develop the art of persuasion. For many young people with a voracious social media diet, eye-to-eye engagement and in-person dialogue is a dying skill.

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