The objective of a sound education is to create people conscious, free, and autonomous, namely a person who can think for himself, able to test his reasons, able to defend them and able to assess the reasoning of the others. This is precisely the purpose of an educational training in debate. Indeed, there are good people and people good to discuss. The ideal would be to combine these two qualities in a good person able to discuss.

Fortunately, today the debate training is spreading, in different formats, but with a common goal: to teach and to learn how to interact in the unavoidable, valuable exchange of ideas in a world that is becoming more and more controversial, as the freedom of speech increases. And the controversy, in all its forms, from the virulent controversy to the quiet discussion, may be the engine of progress in every field, from the social to the scientific.

The training in the debate, which is at the same time an exercise, a procedure and a discipline, is a powerful accelerator of change processes personal and collective. "Skill" has become the magic word in our day, especially the so-called soft skills, namely the general skills, the functional one, those that help to live and work, those needed for our own and others' well-being. Combined with the disciplinary expertise they should give their best. The key skills, experts say, are the following:

1. ability to solve problems

2. ability to analyze and synthesize information

3. ability to make autonomous judgments

4. ability to communicate effectively

5. ability to learn lifelong

6. ability to work as a team

7. initiative and resourcefulness.

All these different skills can be unified under a single heading: the ability to argue.

A good debate encompasses all these skills, in the sense that it generates, stimulates all them, without necessarily presupposing them, because it improves the ability even of subjects who are not naturally predisposed.

The debate training is useful in the school and in life. In particular, the verified advantages of this type of training are the following:

1. It enhances and channels the capacities.

2. It makes more attentive against our and others’ bad reasoning, encouraging the passage from the associative and emotional process of reasoning to the logical and inferential one.

3. It forms experiential 'researchers' of knowledge, not just receivers of knowledge.

4. It, like a game, has amusing and challenging components.

5. It combines the search for reasons, the ability to express them  and the will to have these reasons recognized by the others.

6. It creates a cooperative feeling and induces to work as a team in order to achieve a common goal.

7. It determines a stable state of competition in a framework of cooperation, as in life, promoting the recognition and respect for the views of others.

Among these items, of particular importance are

1. the experiential nature of the activity,

2. the renewed pleasure of debating and

3. the severability of "being right" and "persuade-convince others to be right.”

The experiential approach

The debate tournament and the dispute, as a methodology and as a discipline, are practical experiences, very fruitful and enriching. This activity improves the quality of training through the involvement of the subject in training. The debate triggers an active role in the acquisition of knowledge and problem-solving, substituting a «package" solution with a "coaching" approach.

The pleasure of debating

We know the rules of sports and of games, but not the rules and the moves of the most important and vital game in a civil society, that is the debate.

We may well consider the debate as a sport, not a sport of fighting and strength, as is boxing and as many TV debates suggest us, but like one racket sport as table tennis.

"A Tit for tat Gym” is conforming to the saying of a wise thinker, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne in his Essays: "He who contradicts me arouses my attention not my irritation".

And  is conforming also to a beat of a court minstrel, the jester Touchstone of Shakespeare who says: "O sir, we quarrel in print by the books, as you have books for good manners” (As  You like it, V, IV, 85). These quarrels range from the Retort Courteous to the Countercheck Quarrelsome to the Lie Direct.

Competitive debate is comparable to a real sport competition: each match of the tournament involves two teams of several students and a question on which teams have to confront, for or against, in order to gain, after several matches, the "title" of Magnificent Disputant Team.

Being right vs. convince someone that we are right

We are told that truth always triumphs. Maybe that is the case. But we can help the truth to be established if we accept a debate in which the confrontation is not between two individuals but between two positions, if we accept that the winner is not the supporter but the thesis supported.

Utopian ideal? Maybe so. But this goal can be pursued even in the presence of a notorious debate of the deaf. In fact, usually when we discuss each part states and restates his position, without intent to really compare his reason with the reasons of the interlocutor, which is often seen as an adversary to be defeated.

But even if the two disputants do not recede an inch from their initial position, the audience – which is the third part, an important part, often forgotten, of the public debate – can change his mind.

The function, minimal, but realistic, of a good debate is the clarity, a double type of clarity: clarity of our thesis and clarity of the reasons in support of our thesis. The audience should leave a debate saying: "Now I see a little more light about'” rather than:  “He spoke and defended his position very well!” Or worse:" I do not know what he said but it seems to have said it very well.”

This special gym aims to instruct to express clearly our reasons, but mostly to try to have them recognized, maybe not from the counterpart, which is a very rare and difficult result, but at least by the public, by the audience, by the judges. This kind of debate is respectful of some rules, which are applied by the two parties and are evaluation criteria for the jury and the public.

Essentially, the rules can be reduced to the following four:

1 Quality of arguments

2 Quantity of arguments

3 Relevance of arguments

4 Exposure style.

This training initiative retrieves and highlights the centuries-old tradition of Latin disputatio and the so called Trivium, into its three components of Logic, Dialectic and Rhetoric. The dispute in the past times was a teaching method, a tutorial exercise and a procedure apt to discover the truth. It was a comparison strictly regulated that required to follow a strict, and therefore controllable, procedure and it was too a public event of great appeal.

Today, as in the past, this activity aims to combine the duty and the right to debate with the pleasure of debating and the pleasure of taking part in the discussion, with the firm believe that this commitment is a valuable exercise that allows to acquire the skills useful to face the most important personal and social challenges.

The participants in the tournament “Tit for Tat Gym” are asked to swear the following special oath.

Solemn Promise of the Gentle Debater

Aware

•    that on everything can exist different points of view

•    that truth and justice flow from the civil and fair debate

•    that normally there is no reason opposed to a falsity, but several reasons opposite

•    that it is always preferable to argue even without deliberate rather than to deliberate without discussion

I promise

•    to commit myself to research the best arguments in favor of my position

•    to assess, at the same time, the reasonable objections by the other party

•    to respond as firmly and calmly, identifying weaknesses and recognizing, at least in my heart, the points of force that require response, in order to come to a better understanding of things and of the others.

•    I promise to do my best in order to convince and at the same time in order to live together.

In conclusion, we know that about every problem there are opposing views. The debate is by definition the place and the method aiming to resolve the diversity of views and to ascertain the facts shared or shareable.

Consequently we need to learn and to teach the rules and moves of the debate and the criteria for assessing the outcome of a debate, in order to avoid the risk of judging preferable the argument made by those who are simply more vivacious or just more smart.

It is necessary to teach to argue and to debate with arguments 1. logically convincing, 2. rhetorically persuasive, 3. dialectically supported and compared.

In the central part of the fresco of the main entrance of the University of Athens is painted a parade of disciplines: the procession of disciplinary matters is opened by Philosophy but is closed by Rhetoric. With this same order, first philosophy and finally rhetoric, in Greece and in Rome the orator, the “man able to speak”, was educated and, because argumentation competence is crucial, we can educate today a “man able to debate”.