You get to sit around today eating bonbons and getting your nails done, while people like me have to make decisions. Bronx MHL? No Bronx MHL? The weather here at the moment is crappy, but it should clear up overnight, so what to do, what to do… Oh, the hell with it. Have the tournament. Otherwise I’d have to stay home and eat bonbons and have my nails done. And, well, that just isn’t me.
I just sent out a bunch of deadlines to the Sailors regarding the various qualifiers coming up. It’s hard to keep all this stuff straight, and I feel as if I’m sledding down a hill and heading toward a batch of trees and have to jump off at just the right time and am unlikely to do so. I mean, the season is ending, sports fans. A couple of qualifiers, then a couple of things you qualified for, and then it’s time to sink a few putts and I’ll see you in September. The season always ends with a lot of brouhaha, to wit, the complexities of CFL Grands (4 rounds, 3 judges, 2 tabbers, 1 big headache) and then Districts. A couple of days ago I printed up the Goy instructions for the latter; I had to load in a couple of extra reams of paper to handle it. Jeesh! I’m bringing the instructions with me tomorrow to read during the off hours at So Tiny Jake That It Doesn’t Really Count. I’m a great fan of tech and all that, but maybe not all this. Maybe I’ll watch the NYC people play around with it, given they’re also apparently Goyim. We’ll see.
Over at WTF (which really does finally have a literal WTF look to it thanks to the new undesign of the site) things are really popping. They’ve instituted their own LD rankings, oh joy oh rapture. I almost got interested in rankings at some point this year, dickering with somebody about the issue, said somebody making some good points about teams using these as tools for hitting up their administrations for support. (I was, over the course of the year, promising various people results from tournaments I had tabbed, none of which were forthcoming because I quite truly couldn’t find them.) But I still have a lingering distaste for the concept. You don’t get to be a highly ranked debater simply because you’re good; you have to be good at the right tournaments, i.e., you have to go $ircuit. While I don’t believe there couldn’t be a total democratization of ranking, I don’t think there is. Then again, I have to admit I didn’t bother to look at whatever it is being proposed for these rankings. The cult of debate celebrity is something that WTF has managed to shake off over the years, but what else are these rankings for if not to celebrate good debaters with enough money to travel the $ircuit? This isn’t even viable celebrity. Ever notice how winners at some tournaments have little footnotes that they’re coached by the following twenty-three people? Gimme a break. IT’S HIGH SCHOOL DEBATE, PEOPLE!
Oh. Wait a minute. Been there, griped about that. Why bother to gripe again? At least they’re not doing debate celebrity cribs anymore (at least not that I could find, but then again, with the new undesign, it’s probably there somewhere).
I’m in a grumpy mood today. Debate rankings will do that to people like me. Oh, look! You’re number Eleventy-three. Well aren’t you the one! Then again, the NDCA does this already for Policy. That must make it right.
At best these sort of rankings do nothing more than emulate the worst of high school sports. If the football team can have stars, in other words, why can’t debate? But you’re vilifying the concept of football star most of the time, except when it benefits you? There’s certainly enough faux stardom in our activity already, thanks to the $ircuit and TOC bids and the like, some of which I admit to playing into, but this anecdotal method of stardom ought to be enough. It already burdens the activity with an artificial measure of success that is only marginally connected to most coaches’ educational goals. Ranking everybody with numbers adds an artificial firmness to this stardom that can only give high school students something to strive for that they shouldn’t be striving for. Ten to one you don’t believe that standardized tests are the best measure of students’ intelligence. So why is some inherently arbitrary debate ranking number any different? Anyhow, I don’t really blame WTF for this; unless I’m mistaken, they’re just facilitating. But I don’t have to like it. And I don’t have to do it. And, I guess, I won’t.
1 comment:
"Over at WTF (which really does finally have a literal WTF look to it thanks to the new undesign of the site) things are really popping. They’ve instituted their own LD rankings, oh joy oh rapture. I almost got interested in rankings at some point this year, dickering with somebody about the issue, said somebody making some good points about teams using these as tools for hitting up their administrations for support. (I was, over the course of the year, promising various people results from tournaments I had tabbed, none of which were forthcoming because I quite truly couldn’t find them.) But I still have a lingering distaste for the concept. You don’t get to be a highly ranked debater simply because you’re good; you have to be good at the right tournaments, i.e., you have to go $ircuit. While I don’t believe there couldn’t be a total democratization of ranking, I don’t think there is. Then again, I have to admit I didn’t bother to look at whatever it is being proposed for these rankings. The cult of debate celebrity is something that WTF has managed to shake off over the years, but what else are these rankings for if not to celebrate good debaters with enough money to travel the $ircuit? This isn’t even viable celebrity. Ever notice how winners at some tournaments have little footnotes that they’re coached by the following twenty-three people? Gimme a break. IT’S HIGH SCHOOL DEBATE, PEOPLE! "
made my day.
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