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 event is often called a “public debate” by those who work in or teach debate, to mark it as different than “debate” which apparently only takes place…

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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 – how do we get students to read more, and to read better, than they do.  I started to think that perhaps university students today are overwhelmed by…

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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, but not outside of the course. Even students who master the arts of critical thinking during a course where it is a significant part of the workload…

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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 good introduction that will make these students feel confident in their exploration and study of rhetoric for the remainder of the term without creating something too solid,…

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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 uses the same old yellowing notes for each class). There’s a bit of anxiety, and a bit of happiness, and a bit of confusion. The start of…

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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 any competitive format or organization. This is an attempt to name them, sort them, and point out some distinctions between them in order to foster discussion on…

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The university experience can be frustrating for those seeking intellectual engagement with peers and scholars. Most of the reason for this frustration can be laid at the feet of overwrought administration, ballooning credit requirements, and the separation of scholars from teachers in the hiring of adjuncts to teach the entry level (and most important) courses.…

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I write this fully aware that the media model of debate – the “joint press conference” as debate scholars have called it, is here to stay. And it’s doubly worse because most people who watched the Fox News GOP debate (either one of them) got something out of them about the candidates that helped them…

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There are a lot of smart people whose only conception of debating is that it is a game played by the controlling class – by those that C. Wright Mills might call the “power elite,” those who don’t have to worry, or struggle, or fend for things in their lives. By those who engage in a…

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For the past three years, I have come to Houston at the end of July to teach and learn at the Houston Urban Debate League summer institute. I was invited to help introduce non-American derived debating to the students and teachers here, and I accepted. I rank that decision as one of the best I’ve…

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