We Should Win on Our Voices: High School Debate and the Acquisition of Cultural Capital

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Cultural Capital

Abstract

Low-income students from disadvantaged public schools are often portrayed as lacking the cultural capital needed to achieve social mobility. For example, these students are thought to struggle to have effective interactions with institutional actors such as teachers. Conversely, researchers have described the cultural tools that upper- and middle-class children use to maintain or improve their class positions, as well as the tools that certain “privileged” low-income youth gain via attendance at elite educational institutions. Despite the attention paid to the importance of cultural capital in educational settings, little work has been done to highlight opportunities for low-income youth to gain valuable cultural tools within disadvantaged school contexts. In this paper, I demonstrate how participation in competitive interscholastic debate equips students with mobility-enabling cultural tools. Specifically, I show that debaters build self-advocacy skills, demand and adapt to critical feedback, and develop rigorous strategies for analyzing complex ideas. These tools can be acquired regardless of a debater's on-paper success in the activity. Drawing on observational data from four months of debate practices and competitions with two teams in the Chicago Debate League, I argue that competitive debate should be seen as one avenue for low-income students within disadvantaged public school settings to build competencies that will allow them to thrive in educational and occupational settings.

Author

• Karlyn Gorski, University of Chicago