On debate.
Sometimes I think we are doing exactly the wrong thing as far as our community is concerned. Sure, maybe it made economic sense as far as our team is concerned to cut policy. Maybe it made strategic sense.
But the effect on the high school community alone is lamentable. Thomas's statement that "Oh, we just knew policy was over in Oregon once UO stopped doing it." There is now nowhere for people to do collegiate policy debate in Oregon.
I think we're unthinkingly plunging ahead with doing the same thing with ODI. We don't offer policy or LD any more and are solely focusing on "public" at our camp. Considering that we are the ONLY debate camp in Oregon, we have to realize that what we offer turns into a legitimation of what the community "should" look like. We're sending that same kind of signal that we sent when we killed policy. Not only is Oregon a state that is so uncompetitive as to make it economically unviable to offer policy debate, it's also one where you will have to pay more money and travel outside the region to even be educated in it.
That is really important in a time("these tough economic times"- trite overused phrase of the year) when administrations are looking to cut programs and save money anyway they can.
If there's a legitimate form of debate that to outside observers looks just as educational, or even worse, what they think debate "should" look like, then they will clearly prefer that form if it's going to save them lots of money.
But what are we getting for that trade-off? What sort of change are we then affecting in what admins will offer in the future?
Though parli ("public") is a legitimate, if flawed, format of debate at the college level, it suffers some MAJOR problems in high school.
The problems are in large part structural. The debaters get fifteen minutes to prepare ALONE, rather than with their team as in college, with NO PRINTED MATERIAL, on topics they know very little about.
Team preparation is absolutely KEY to learning things about the situation, as well as learning strategic arguments that can apply in this case.
The active antipathy to anything that can approximate a form of printed knowledge within the structure of the activity and the community that reinforces the informal biases within it (the majority echoing a judge I had that wrote "if you want evidence go do policy" when faced with the in-round citation of a relevant Supreme Court case). Don't get me started on how much they hate topicality.
This results in a round wherein it may be asserted that Iraq is completely Sunni, which isn't challenged for the rest of the round. Both sides make up lies or guesses about what sounds credible, and don't have the knowledge base to challenge the other's assertions. Even smart kids think (my ODIers, for instance) that post-Soviet Russia was stationing missiles in Cuba "about ten years ago."
So, what would the alternative be?
In policy debate, kids:
-Focus on one topic per year so they can actually learn about it.
-Use printed evidence so the round isn't in the hand of whichever high schooler has the audacity to lie in the way that helps them the most or at least sounds credible to the judge (who, let's face it' is probably an idiot).
-Have to READ arguments so they learn
a. What other people say about the topic
b. Encounter a wide body of literature, including news, political science, and critical theory
c. The formulation people use to create arguments within the real world
-Learn to analyze forms of argumentation. In the worst case scenario wherein students are reading lists of arguments they don't understand, at least they can use arguments that are explicitly offensive and defensive and learn the distinction. Learning the function of external offense is way better than public debaters who read solvency defense and think they should win.
-Argue TOPICALITY which is awesome because it's probably the most educational argument people can use in their daily lives: What are we talking about EXACTLY? Should we be talking about that thing?
-Argue the K which is the only way that any post-modern argument can make it into high school, ever. If you ever signal that history ISN'T a story of progress, or question the validity of gender as a category in high school, you (as a teacher) will get fired or you (as a student) will be failed.
I really think it's reasonable to say that policy debate is literally the ONLY WAY to access this literature in any significant amount at the high school level, and one if its under-lauded aspects.
-Talk fast which is fucking cool. JK that its coolness is important; but the spread forces people to be strategic about how they answer things so it shows them an argument's most vulnerable point. I would also argue that the changes that brisk debate have forced on my mind make my conversational organization impeccable with subpointing and the ability to remember everything I want to talk about, even when talking at length.
Is public debate still educational? Marginally. Would I rather they do that than nothing? Most definitely. But I think we should evaluate much more closely whether we should be doing ANYTHING to legitimate public debate in high schools, especially if it comes at the expense of a form of debate that's far more educational.
Oh, and all the "policy good" arguments also work for LD to some extent, but less so. Still way better than parli/public.
But the effect on the high school community alone is lamentable. Thomas's statement that "Oh, we just knew policy was over in Oregon once UO stopped doing it." There is now nowhere for people to do collegiate policy debate in Oregon.
I think we're unthinkingly plunging ahead with doing the same thing with ODI. We don't offer policy or LD any more and are solely focusing on "public" at our camp. Considering that we are the ONLY debate camp in Oregon, we have to realize that what we offer turns into a legitimation of what the community "should" look like. We're sending that same kind of signal that we sent when we killed policy. Not only is Oregon a state that is so uncompetitive as to make it economically unviable to offer policy debate, it's also one where you will have to pay more money and travel outside the region to even be educated in it.
That is really important in a time("these tough economic times"- trite overused phrase of the year) when administrations are looking to cut programs and save money anyway they can.
If there's a legitimate form of debate that to outside observers looks just as educational, or even worse, what they think debate "should" look like, then they will clearly prefer that form if it's going to save them lots of money.
But what are we getting for that trade-off? What sort of change are we then affecting in what admins will offer in the future?
Though parli ("public") is a legitimate, if flawed, format of debate at the college level, it suffers some MAJOR problems in high school.
The problems are in large part structural. The debaters get fifteen minutes to prepare ALONE, rather than with their team as in college, with NO PRINTED MATERIAL, on topics they know very little about.
Team preparation is absolutely KEY to learning things about the situation, as well as learning strategic arguments that can apply in this case.
The active antipathy to anything that can approximate a form of printed knowledge within the structure of the activity and the community that reinforces the informal biases within it (the majority echoing a judge I had that wrote "if you want evidence go do policy" when faced with the in-round citation of a relevant Supreme Court case). Don't get me started on how much they hate topicality.
This results in a round wherein it may be asserted that Iraq is completely Sunni, which isn't challenged for the rest of the round. Both sides make up lies or guesses about what sounds credible, and don't have the knowledge base to challenge the other's assertions. Even smart kids think (my ODIers, for instance) that post-Soviet Russia was stationing missiles in Cuba "about ten years ago."
So, what would the alternative be?
In policy debate, kids:
-Focus on one topic per year so they can actually learn about it.
-Use printed evidence so the round isn't in the hand of whichever high schooler has the audacity to lie in the way that helps them the most or at least sounds credible to the judge (who, let's face it' is probably an idiot).
-Have to READ arguments so they learn
a. What other people say about the topic
b. Encounter a wide body of literature, including news, political science, and critical theory
c. The formulation people use to create arguments within the real world
-Learn to analyze forms of argumentation. In the worst case scenario wherein students are reading lists of arguments they don't understand, at least they can use arguments that are explicitly offensive and defensive and learn the distinction. Learning the function of external offense is way better than public debaters who read solvency defense and think they should win.
-Argue TOPICALITY which is awesome because it's probably the most educational argument people can use in their daily lives: What are we talking about EXACTLY? Should we be talking about that thing?
-Argue the K which is the only way that any post-modern argument can make it into high school, ever. If you ever signal that history ISN'T a story of progress, or question the validity of gender as a category in high school, you (as a teacher) will get fired or you (as a student) will be failed.
I really think it's reasonable to say that policy debate is literally the ONLY WAY to access this literature in any significant amount at the high school level, and one if its under-lauded aspects.
-Talk fast which is fucking cool. JK that its coolness is important; but the spread forces people to be strategic about how they answer things so it shows them an argument's most vulnerable point. I would also argue that the changes that brisk debate have forced on my mind make my conversational organization impeccable with subpointing and the ability to remember everything I want to talk about, even when talking at length.
Is public debate still educational? Marginally. Would I rather they do that than nothing? Most definitely. But I think we should evaluate much more closely whether we should be doing ANYTHING to legitimate public debate in high schools, especially if it comes at the expense of a form of debate that's far more educational.
Oh, and all the "policy good" arguments also work for LD to some extent, but less so. Still way better than parli/public.