The Debate Club

Mateo had been at Lincoln High School in Chicago for exactly five weeks when Ms. Abernathy stopped him in the hallway. He had arrived from Quito in September with good school English, a winter coat that turned out to be useless, and a habit, in history class, of disagreeing with everybody. "You argue," Ms. Abernathy said. "You argue well, and you argue in your second language. I need a fourth speaker for the debate team. Practice is on Tuesdays." It was not, he realized, a question.

The motion for the end-of-semester showcase was announced the following week: This house believes that schools should ban phones during the school day. Mateo laughed when he read it. He of all people knew what a phone was worth to a student. In his first month, his phone had been his dictionary, his map, his way of asking his mother in Quito what on earth a sloppy joe was. Then he saw the draw. He would be proposing the motion. He would have to argue for the ban.

"That's not fair," he told Ms. Abernathy. "I don't believe it." She did not even look up from her grading. "Good," she said. "Then you'll have to understand it. Anyone can defend what they already think. It's essential that a debater be able to argue both sides, and it's even more important that you know exactly where your own side is weak." She handed him a stack of articles. "And by the way, you're up against Keisha."

Keisha Brooks was a senior, the captain of the team and, by common agreement, the best speaker the school had produced in a decade. She had won the city championship twice. She spoke without notes, never seemed to breathe, and had a way of repeating an opponent's argument back to him so precisely and so politely that it sounded ridiculous before she had even begun to take it apart.

Mateo spent three weeks preparing. He read about attention spans and sleep, about bullying that followed students home, about schools in several countries that had restricted phones and reported calmer classrooms, although he noticed, too, that the evidence was more mixed than the headlines suggested. The more he read, the more uncomfortable he became. Some of the arguments for the ban were good. That was the worst part.

On the evening of the showcase, the auditorium was half full: parents, teachers, a few students who had been promised extra credit. Mateo spoke second. He had planned to open with statistics. Instead, standing at the podium with his knees shaking, he heard himself begin with a confession. "I should tell you," he said, "that I don't agree with the side I'm arguing. When I arrived here, my phone was the only thing that made me feel less lost. So I know exactly what my opponents will say, because I would say it too."

There was a small murmur from the audience. Keisha, in the front row, raised one eyebrow. "Admittedly," Mateo went on, "phones help students like me. But let's be honest about what they mostly do in a classroom. While it's true that a phone can translate a word, it's equally true that it can interrupt a thought, and a thought, once lost, is much harder to find than a word." He proposed that phones be kept in lockers during class and that the school provide translation tools on classroom computers for any student who needed them. "My opponents would have you believe this is a choice between freedom and control," he said. "It isn't. It's a question of when."

Keisha was magnificent. She thanked him for his honesty and then used it against him, beautifully. "My opponent has told you himself that a phone was his lifeline," she said. "Were the school to take it away, it would be taking away exactly the thing that helped him belong. He suggests that the school provide alternatives. I suggest that we not solve a problem by creating a new one for the students who can least afford it." The audience applauded. Mateo, despite himself, applauded too.

In his rebuttal, Mateo did the only thing he could think of. He agreed with her, partly. "If I were the only student here, Keisha would be right," he said. "But I'm not. And the question isn't what is best for me. It's what is best for the room." He sat down feeling that he had said everything and nothing.

The judges took twenty minutes. Keisha won, two votes to one. When the result was announced, Mateo was surprised to find that he did not mind very much. Afterwards, while the parents were folding up the chairs, Keisha came over and held out her hand. "That confession at the start," she said. "Nobody does that. I had to rewrite half my speech in my head." She hesitated. "I need a partner for the state tournament in March. Unless you'd rather keep disagreeing with everybody in history class."

Mateo shook her hand. On the bus home, he took out his phone to tell his mother, and then, after a moment, put it back in his pocket and simply looked out of the window at the lights of the city, thinking about how he would argue the other side.