In moving towards a definition, it is sometimes useful to begin with negative aspects and to distinguish discussion from those activities, processes or techniques with which it is so often confused. Thus a debate in which people are concerned with making points against each other in order to destroy the views of rivals is not discussion. Real discussion is not a process in which people seek the intellectual liquidation of their opponents. Neither is it the somewhat degenerate form of debate in which members of a class make a series of separate speeches, often in an established ‘pecking’ order and repetitive of earlier speeches, but quite unrelated to each other. This kind of ritual, seen all too often in the ‘discussion period’ of old-established adult classes, was once described as ‘an athletic contest of closed mind with closed mind’, and is not unknown in the discussions of larger assemblies. Also to be distinguished from true discussion are the various types of question and answer period, whether they are basically questions from the students to the teacher or vice versa, or a mixture of quiz methods conducted independently of the teacher. They may be valuable techniques for use in adult classed, and indeed, like debates, are considered later in this chapter, but strictly they are not discussion.