It was a close battle, but in the end, the Edwardsville High School psychology students won, and the highly coveted trophy had to be passed back across the hall. It seemed fitting since the sociology students won it last semester, but it’s a battle that happens over and over again. It’s the EHS Nature vs. Nurture debates – a battle of words and thinking – that takes place between Kevin Paur’s sociology students and Bill Herman’s psychology students.
Every semester the psychology students and the sociology students are pitted against each other in small group debates where they debate the biological (nature) and environmental influences (nurture) of one of five different topic areas: deviance, drug abuse, sexual orientation, intelligence and personality.
Teams of about four students from each side of the hallway are given opposing views, nature vs. nurture, for one of the five topics to debate. Each group works collaboratively as they research, make a supporting display and develop their plan of attack to prove their group’s stance on their given topic on debate day.
In a traditional debate format, complete with individual and team rebuttals, the students present their side’s viewpoint while an independent judge-volunteer oversees the debate process and determines a winner for each debate. At the end of the day, whichever student group - psychology or sociology - that has the most winning debates is declared the winner. The trophy then is placed in either Paur or Herman’s classroom until the next semester’s debates.
About 180 students participated in this semester’s 23 debates which took place during a single day of school.
“Today is the last day of the project,” Paur said. “It is a fun day. They go out and debate as well as they can, and the judge decides who wins or loses.”
Paur pointed out that the semi-annual debates have been going on for about a decade and that they had usually had parent-volunteers as judges, but this year they also had some special guest judges. “Last year Dr. Nicole Cline from SIUE came in and judged because her son was in the class,” Paur said. “She said, 'You know I have some of my students who might be interested (in judging). I think it would be neat to get some of my students out here to be judges.' I said, wow, that’s great – collaboration between EHS and SIUE – that’s fantastic. So she’s going to bring her students in next semester.”
This semester, however, Cline contacted the SIUE psychology department and arranged for 23 SIUE students to travel to EHS and serve as volunteer-judges. Todd Voget, an SIUE psychology major and Psychology Club member, enjoyed the experience being a judge and was impressed that EHS did the debates. “It’s a perfect topic to do it for,” he said. “It was pretty cool. I wish they had done something like this at my high school. It seems like a good way to get into researching a topic and presenting your point. A lot of speech classes you kind of present, but it doesn’t play into the real world. I feel like this is a little bit more (applicable). They were really getting into it. It was pretty cool.”
It’s a project that challenges the high school students to use various skills. “Mr. Herman and I feel this is an important project because it requires students to research, read, write, critically think, make an argument backed by evidence, speak in public, and work well with teammates,” Paur said. “The project includes so many educational skills. Plus, the competition part of the project helps motivate them to work hard.”
Although it’s a battle that’s gone on for 10 years, it’s a battle that doesn’t appear to have a clear winner. “I think psychology is up 6-4,” Paur noted.