What is the National Educational Debate Association all about?

This Association promotes debate as a practical educational experience and believes that performance by participants should reflect the stylistic and analytical skills that would be rewarded in typical public forums (i.e., courts, congress, the classroom, civic gatherings, etc.). To facilitate this mission, the Association will host a variety of tournament events open to undergraduate students and directors willing to abide by and enforce Association standards of ethical, responsible, humane and communicative advocacy. Association tournaments are viewed as an extension of a speech and debate classroom. Specifically, the skills that we as an organization hope to encourage emphasize effective persuasion to a public audience, which shall be rewarded at Association events. 

As an educational organization, we shall embrace a competitive learning environment, where speech and debate is centered as a developmental tool that fosters critical thinking skills and rhetorical & persuasive skills directly applicable to the real world. We prioritize maintaining a circuit that emphasizes a more “traditionalist” approach to debate, rather than embracing more technical and progressive practices seen in other debate circuits. Ideally, a debate is an exchange that, when witnessed by a member of the general public, would be viewed as comprehensible and enlightening.

A more specific description of the climate expected to prevail at Association events may be found in Jack Howe’s “CEDA’s Original Objectives–Lest We Forget” (CEDA Yearbook, 1981) and Robert Weiss’ “The Audience Standard (CEDA Yearbook, 1985).

We hope that your perusal of this site proves an informative and educational experience for you, and that in some way, you can begin to understand the basics of what debate is, how it fits into the core of education, and how you can become involved.