Recent Exercises

  • Public Debate or Debate

    A couple of days ago, we were asked to debate the British National Team for an event held at the English Speaking Union in Manhattan. This sort of…

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    4 min read

  • #FourBookClass Challenge

    Walking across the Cornell Campus talking with a colleague of mine about teaching, our conversation turned to the question on the minds of all faculty these days –…

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  • The Critical Thinking Wall

    The wall that is always hit when teaching critical thinking is the “school assignment” wall, that limitation that says that doing these things is valuable in a classroom,…

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    4 min read

  • Strategies for Introducing Rhetoric

    Lecturing again at Cornell University on Monday. The topic is an introduction to rhetorical studies; the audience is mixed undergraduates.  The central problem is how to provide a…

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  • As the Semester Begins

    A new semester is like a new start. Things have little to no association with the course that came before (unless you are one of those teachers who…

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    4 min read

  • The Three Debate Formats

    Debate formats are uninteresting. The competitive distinctions are nearly indistinct.  But there are three formats or ideologies of debate that are very clearly distinct. They take place in…

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    4 min read