I don't post here much but damn lots of trashing of college cx debate. I spent 4 years doing it and yeah there are dumb arguments but in my experience a dumb argument easiest to beat. Of course if you post only 'tag lines' without the actual bits read from authors, and remove context of cross-x and future speeches, it looks dumb, poorly fleshed out, and badly explained. It might even be all that in a debate too, but that just makes teams that lose to it look even worse. And in debate as a game, this still might win some debates if the people reading the bullshit out-execute their opponents in terms of argument.

I got a lot out of my time in college debate, it exposes you to tons of interesting literature and is a great educational forum outside of the debate as a game part of it, simply because you wind up researching tons of topics. I got deeply into the literature of a number of continental philosophers, Marxism, psychoanalysis, queer theory, anti-blackness AND on top of that learned about practical government policy and procedure. Is knowing how to construct a k going to help me in life? Probably not. Is all the literature I read over those four years preparing for debates going to give me some basis of knowledge in research and critical thinking? Hell Yeah.

You may not like the particular form that CX debate takes in some cases but you have to admit, its a form that allows for limitless creativity and develops research and critical thinking skills based on a thrilling competitive forum.

-another perspective on debate