How to run a classroom debate between historical figures

Choose a motion people really argued about

The best motions come from documented disagreements, so students can quote what each side said. Set the place and date, because the figures can only argue with what they knew then. Choose questions of policy and strategy that were open at the time. Do not set motions that ask students to argue that a group of people deserved fewer rights or no humanity; that was never a fair debate, and it should not be staged as one.

The roles

• Debaters, two or three per side, each playing a named figure or an adviser to them.
• Moderator: introduces the setting and date, calls speakers and keeps order. Can be the teacher at first.
• Timekeeper: holds up cards at one minute and thirty seconds left, and stops speakers at time.
• Fact-checkers, two: hold the source packet and may raise a point of history when a debater states a wrong fact or an anachronism.
• Judges, three: score each side with the rubric below.
• Audience: each student writes one question for the question round, and a one sentence verdict at the end.

With a class of 30, run two debates in one lesson, or give every audience member a role as a reporter for a newspaper of the period, writing a 150 word article on the debate as homework.

A 45 minute timing plan

Preparing: evidence cards

Each debater prepares six to ten evidence cards. One card holds one fact or one short quotation, with its source and date. Debaters may only use facts that are on a card, which keeps the argument tied to the record and makes the fact-checkers' job possible.

For the 1869 debate, for example, a Douglass card might say that he had supported women's suffrage since the Seneca Falls convention of 1848, citing the convention records. An Anthony card might hold her 1873 argument that the Fourteenth Amendment already made women citizens with the right to vote, citing her lecture Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote? Students who dig for cards learn the history whether they win or lose.

Rules that keep it historical

• No knowledge after the debate's date. In 1863 Lincoln does not know how the war ends.
• Quotations must be exact and on a card. Paraphrase otherwise.
• Argue as the figure would, with their reasons, even where those reasons look wrong today. Explain them; do not mock them.
• No costumes that change skin colour, and no invented dialects or mock accents.
• A point of history stops the clock. If the fact-checker is right, the side loses a point on accuracy; if wrong, the fact-checker's team loses one.

A judging rubric

Judges score both sides out of 20, then name one moment that decided their vote. The verdict is about who argued better on the day, not who history proved right.

The debrief: step out of character

End by dropping the roles. Ask what actually happened next, and how each figure's argument looks with hindsight. Douglass and Anthony, for instance, split in 1869 and the movement divided into two organisations, but they were reconciled in later life, and Douglass attended a women's rights meeting on the day he died in February 1895. Questions that work well: Which side had the stronger evidence? Which argument surprised you? What would you need to read to judge it properly?

Watching a debate first

Students who have never seen an in-character debate benefit from watching one. On Yuga you can watch two AI recreations argue a real question, such as Lincoln and Douglass at the White House in 1863, Douglass and Anthony on equal rights in 1869, Plato and Aristotle at the Academy, or Edison and his rival in the war of the currents. Show one round, then ask the fact-checkers to verify three claims against the documents. The recreations are AI and can be wrong, which makes them good practice for the fact-checkers. For more on using AI figures with a class, see AI historical figures in the classroom.