One of the greatest advantages one has as a teacher of debating is that you get to work with students at strange times in strange places and under weird conditions. You are also free of those overpowered structures of degree credits, grades, assignments, and classroom authority (which professors are way too obsessed with these days…

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Welcome to the new blog site! I thought a change was in order after not posting for so long.  I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the role and place of debate in my life. As I am assessing this, I take a lot of notes. I make a lot of lists. I think…

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It fell out from the back of the book I was flipping through, looking for a quote for a piece I am writing about conceptualizing debate as a spiritual practice. Upon seeing this paper, in a book on koans, of all things, made me realize that debating, for me, has always invoked a certain rhetoric…

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English: Bakhtin in the twenties. Español: Mijaíl Bajtín en los años ’20. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Not everything is meant to be accessible to the public. The definition of “public intellectual” these days seems to be someone associated with a university who is a professional explainer. Someone who can reduce what research they are doing into…

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This week I will be travelling to Montana for my now apparently annual debating workshop that I present there. This started a couple of years ago after meeting people in Mexico after the IDEA youth forum. At the forum, it became clear to me that it is important to create an environment of solid argumentation…

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Summer’s over folks, and that means back to the classroom for most of us. The positive spin is that debate begins to heat up with the return of the regular competitive debating season in the United States. September also means the ramp-up to WUDC as well, with the first big IVs coming along in Europe…

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This recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education tells a story as to how a professor realized that it is ok to say that she doesn’t know the answer to a question, or that she might be uncertain about something a student has said in class. My response is quite simply disappointment that this…

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This New York Times article about Robin Williams’s habits of preparation for engagement with audiences raises a lot of interesting ideas when rhetoricians talk about invention – the art of coming up with what to say, or as I like to call it “putting something together.” I often talk about argument construction in terms of…

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How do most debate coaches teach the canon of inventio? By pointing toward tournament success. By showing videos of good, successful speeches. By having students watch and learn from those who have won big tournaments. By getting them to read, or cut, or memorize the sources of the arguments that the winners have run. Well,…

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Why is there no official, or even pedagogical statement on the value of switch side debating from either the NDT, CEDA, or any other large debating organization? Perhaps it is because switch-side debating is a cover for teaching conviction and engaging in truth-seeking, something that debate can clearly be used for, but is not debate…

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