As far as debate quality in the Northeast region, this is clearly a rebuilding year. The debates I saw in elimination rounds reminded me of 2008 vintage. Here’s a good example, from quarterfinals.
Debate: Media Time Spent on Gun Violence – Binghamton 2012 from Steve Llano on Vimeo.
In this debate, you will see how everything becomes very muddled and very unclear very quickly because all of the speakers are showing off how “American” they can be in debate style. Not one speaker takes a step back and analyzes the question of principle – “why we do what we do.” They are all talking about consequences, impacts, and causation. If anything signals to a judge that you are from an American debate tradition, it is that style of argument.
I do think that there are a couple of debaters in this round who are novices, and I think they are closing opposition (who had the hottest argument in this debate, in the extension speech, but sort of miss developing it fully) and I don’t want you to think I am saying they are responsible for not being good. The question is regionally, community wise, how do we ensure that the tide does not go out so far from year to year?
The other criticism, and it’s a fair one, of what I am saying here is that this is a pretty good debate by debate’s standards, and I am way out of the normal way of evaluating debates. It’s true – I have very little interest in debate. I am interested in rhetoric and argument. On that metric, this debate is really bad. As a debate, I think there are enough tiny causal weird “turn your argument around” strategies to make any debate junky smile. We seek to avoid an inward looking game and seek to offer this game as an examination, a laboratory, an event that causes us to reflect on our discursive practice in our other roles in life.
I want us to live up to our ostensible standard – that we are debating for reasonable, general people – and try to hit that mark. It is the only legitimate, ethical mark to hit if we are going to keep spending this amount of money and professional, scholarly time watching and evaluating these contests. If we are not working to hit the Universal Audience with our discourse, what exactly are we aiming at?
Growing up in the south I was taught never to point a gun, loaded or unloaded, toy or real, at something you didn’t intend to shoot. Where is that standard in our argumentation practice?
Or perhaps all of these people are new. But they aren’t, not all of them. And even if they were, someone is teaching them what to do. I hope that someone reads this.
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4 responses to “Binghamton tournament reflections”
Interesting points, Steve. I wasn’t there, but I agree with most of what you are saying. I am very concerned with making my debaters sound less “American” in the way you identify (impact, causation, body count) because this stops them from doing well at international tournaments. I think this hurt my team out at Air Force, but we talked about it and we are concerned with the big dance, and that means international. Jargon and “shouting delivery” need to be avoided. Changing our mindset is always the most difficult assignment. That is why I actually like getting new debaters who have never debated before.
I’ve had a degree of success with getting my debaters to think about principled argument by making them read Justice: What’s the right thing to do? by Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel. Sandel has also posted his entire course as a series of video lectures online to accommodate those less prone to reading.
The book is very accessible, focuses on numerous case studies and lays out a series of challenges to those wondering about how to argue moral issues. Highly recommended.
As to the question of how to best instill a more “international” style of debating, I think that exposure to judges who emphasize the importance of this style is absolutely key. When I think back to 2008 (when, as you alluded to, debate in the northeast was nothing impressive) the way that we got better was by going to tournaments like Hart House, Worlds and to a lesser extent Yale and getting destroyed. While the quality of competition drives some of the improvement, most of it seems to me to be the result of judges who look first and foremost more persuasive principles.
Thus, the true solution seems to be focusing judge briefings (and in-house judge training efforts) on getting judges to value the type of debate that we seek to see.
Shorter Version: In at least some sense, the ones who are teaching people how to debate are judges. Judges need to be better taught what to look for, or they need to be better at explaining why it isn’t there in the debates that they see (probably both).
For both Buzz and Tuna –
I agree. How does one shift the judging toward such a strange style, something that most judges may not consider debate at all based on what they know?
How does one teach students how to persuade in both the American assumption of what wins, and the European at once? Or is this question a petitio?