Author: Steve
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University as Intervention Institution
Just finishing up the amazing book, Organizing Enlightenment and it has surpassed my expectations which were pretty high. The book chronicles the history of the formation of the research university in Europe, and the reasons behind it. The short version is that the Ph.D. oriented research university that we all know and some of us love more…
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Simple Public Speaking Assignments
From Irvin Peckham’s excellent blog, Personal Writing in the Classroom, Here are the rules for good writing assignments: Always give writing assignments that 1. you will enjoy reading;2. students will enjoy writing;3. students will enjoy reading what others in the class have written4. you will enjoy writing. If any one of these conditions were not…
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Great Extinctions
When we think about the loss of biodiversity, it evokes the idea of loss of variety, the loss of a diversity of creatures that, in essence, share a number of common traits. They have the same genus, and from that, they specialized, adapted, and spread out into their environments. Here’s some evidence that we’ve suffered…
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Sometimes, always
Nothing is heard more frequently among young debaters than phrases like, “That argument will always beat that one,” or “That argument will never win against a team that says such-and-such.” Such phrases not only indicate the prevalence of debate students talking about strategy and peer-educating one another (something desperately missing from the modern university) but…
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Real Writing and Fake Writing
Currently I am engaged in the tenure process, a year long examination of your life to see if you are fit to hold a faculty job in perpetuity. Spoiler alert: nobody is worthy of this. Everyone is forced into the process. And graduate school teaches you that if you don’t get a job that involves…
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Opening Closing; Closing Opening
After the announcement that at USU Nationals this year rounds 7 and 8 would be closed adjudication, I received several short, snarky messages via social media about the ridiculousness of closed rounds, as if it would be clear to anyone that closed rounds are wrong. As someone who has pretty constantly argued for open…
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What I Want from a Debate Competition
It needs to start at a reasonable hour. Maybe at 3 or 4 on a Friday, run until about 8 at the latest. On Saturday, nothing before 10 in the morning. Except maybe a breakfast at 9 where everyone can talk about what happened Friday. On Sunday, one final event at noon. Or maybe nothing…
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Sorry Public Speaking. Composition is Owning You.
Nobody wants to be accused of “teaching to the test” – a trope used quite a bit in the public education policy discussion where state exams often radically overdetermine things such as campus or district funding, teacher or principal bonus pay, or the continuation of particular extra-curricular activities. The trope functions by degrading the teacher…
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Repertoire
This weekend is the King’s tournament, and it looks like the end of the 2014-15 season for us in terms of general tournaments. Of course, there’s USU, but as soon as I bought the flights and had the numbers in front of me, I was overcome with a feeling of immediate buyers remorse. I wondered…
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Connecticut Snows and Elimination Debates
I’m here to challenge a trope – well, more than a trope, something that is the nearest thing to holy writ in U.S. debating circles. That trope: More debate is good. It took a terrible surprise snowstorm in CT this February to question this assertion that masks itself as the truth. On Saturday night, we…
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