Certainly reasons can be enumerated for the widespread use of handbooks and other "canned" materials in high school debate programs, but the quality of these resources and their actual use by debaters make them competitively negligible in value and counterproductive to the educational and competitive values that the forensic community purports to serve. Instruction in forensics is or should be primarily concerned with the development of basic communication competence. While handbooks are intended to enhance students' research, analytical, and critical thinking skills, their use ignores the pedagogical concern for original research by supplying students with evidence, cases, and briefs. It also undercuts the development of library skills and minimizes analytical and critical-thinking skills by blocking creativity. Although advocates claim that handbooks serve only as a supplement to the more traditional methods of debate instruction, this noble aim is lost in everyday practice. Forensic coaches need to crystalize the educational objectives for their programs. They may then find that the debate community is better off without handbooks, which are costly not only economically, but also educationally, as the use of handbooks extracts from life-long skills--the greatest cost of all. (HTH)