In the fall of 2017, we launched the International Debate Magazine as a platform to collect and curate various perspectives about our global debating community from practitioners and participants around the world. We were pleased with the response we received, and happy to see that many found value in the articles submitted to that edition.
In 2019, we relaunched the platform with a slightly different take. We were privileged to present an academic paper by Christopher Doak and R. Eric Barnes, who have conducted an in-depth and rigorous analysis of the reliability of debate adjudicators at various levels (a subject which many of us have thought about but have never had conclusive answers).
This year, we are pleased to publish two more papers by R. Eric Barnes, Paul Kehle, Hugh N. McKenny and Chuan-Zheng Lee, the first of which centres around the accuracy of different systems by which tournaments can decide to break teams, and the second of which surrounds the fairness of these scoring systems. We hope that readers will find them both insightful and comprehensive.
Apart from that, this edition presents articles written by young school debaters from various countries, in which the authors reflect on the value of debate to them personally, as well as the debate scenes in their countries. We are confident that this unique perspective remains equally valuable to all, and welcome feedback on our new approach.
Our first three team articles are by the World Schools teams from India, Rwanda and Singapore.
We value all contributions from individuals and teams who are involved in debate. If you would like to submit an article for publication, please email teamsingaporedebate@gmail.com with your submission.