Tag: debate history

  • The Presidential Debates in the Context of How Bad We Are at having Debates at Any Kind

    Monday night I gave a talk to Cornell Law School’s American Constitution Society about the history and development of Presidential Debates. I thought I had shared this already, but it looks like I forgot to post the thing I was originally writing about it. It’s a good thing too – these debates are well beyond…

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  • A Very Special Collection

    Started my work in the special collections at the University of Maryland this week and I have to say, it’s incredible what I’ve already discovered in these documents. It was well worth the trip. There are a lot of documents missing that would make things a bit clearer, but I’m already sitting at 1000% more…

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  • The Well of Debate Tropes

    Currently Playing: Loreena McKennitt – An Ancient Muse The old issues of The Journal of the American Forensic Association are some of my favorite things to leaf through to generate thinking. This journal, edited by debate teachers, was filled with the thoughts of those who immersed themselves in debating as a vocation. As the 1980s…

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  • The Lost Debate Pedagogy

    Image via Wikipedia From the 1906 version of An Introductory Course in Argumentation by Francis Perry. He’s why he arranged the textbook the way he did: In the first place, the student is practiced in the processes of argumentation without the added difficulty of research. No teacher of narration begins his work by demanding that…

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