Friday, May 06, 2011

TOC 2011 Part 4

You may or may not agree with my opinions about TOC-style LD. I don’t claim that they are all that well-founded, insofar as I have, for all practical purposes, found myself having fallen out of the realm of that style. I admittedly can’t follow it, so I base my opinions on study of cases and what little I can glean from this and that. I have already conceded that speed doesn’t inherently bother me, provided it’s not directed at me. Go forth and do what you want, I say. If the Panivore had relied on me for her coaching, she’d have been very promising. By using the skills of CC, she fulfilled her promise. When the two of them talked in my presence they might as well have been conversing in Turkish. Still, I have my opinions. A few years ago X was very popular. Today Y is very popular. Tomorrow Z will be very popular. So be it. Honestly, I prefer today’s Y to yesterday’s (modernist/pomo) X. But keep in mind that I was raised in the early 90s. Some things have changed a lot; others haven’t. I consider it my job to recognize which is which, and not try to impose my opinions on my team where it is detrimental to them if I do so. Which is why I maintain that I am fine with debaters in their first year or two. After that, if they want to go to TOC, they’ll have to go beyond me for help. Doesn’t bother me in the least, and it’s not all that unusual, even with those debate schools I talked about last time. The coach becomes a manager; the business of winning rounds with its cutting of cards and scouting and laying out positions is not usually what they do because, if they’re any good at managing, they don’t really have the time for it on a regular basis.

Anyhow, as I said yesterday, we have what I call the $ircuit, where money is literally the price of admission. And, yes, some teams do not get their money directly from their schools, but most do, and the ones that don’t nonetheless have a good machine behind them or well-to-do parents who can easily afford it. Mostly it’s a class system based not on wealth per se but on access to wealth for this purpose. For instance, I would suggest that Newark is not a wealthy school district, but the commitment of the New Jersey government to debate and the Jersey UDL (and now the contributions of Mark Zuckerberg) raises them up into players on the $ircuit. So it doesn’t matter where the money comes from, but it does have to come. Without it, as I said, you’re not going to fly to Emory this year, or any year. And if you don’t participate in debates at Emory or Glenbrooks or Greenhill or Bronx, or at Round Robins at some of these and at other venues, you’re not really going to be exposed to, experienced in and, ultimately, successful at $ircuit debate. Whether what $ircuit debaters do is better or worse than non-$ircuit is arguable, but it is different. There’s little argument about that.

Over the space of a year, the debate schools invest a lot of money and effort into $ircuit events. The thing is, $ircuit events have a goal, to wit, acceptance into the TOC. $ircuit events provide bids, and while it is nice to win a tournament, a lot of people are happy just to get their bids. If they’ve gotten a bid, if they’ve made it to the bid level wherever that is, they’ve succeeded. Tournaments do not exist as an end in themselves but as a step toward entrance to another tournament. Yes, it’s nice to make it to octos at Big Bronx. But is the achievement the doing well at Big Bronx or the getting of the bid? Pretty often, it’s the latter, and it has been since my first day off the cabbage truck, when Soddy complained from the Jake stage that he did not run his tournament as an opener for some other tournament. If there were no TOC, every tournament would stand alone, measured by its own merits. When Bronx had little or no bid, O’C nonetheless put it on steroids with one of the strongest judge pools imaginable. Did he want a higher TOC level bid? Sure. But his primary motive as far as I can tell was building the best damn tournament he could to represent Bronx Science, and doing it the best way he knew how. That was his primary goal (at which he succeeded). I don’t think he’d do it if it were only for the TOC. He’s doing it for his team and his school and his alums. That is how it should be. Still, people who attend that tournament are spending a lot of money to get to NYC, to stay over for a number of days, etc. Those people want their money’s worth, and their money’s worth is more than just a nice lunch. Their money needs to buy them access to bids. Monticello has some of the best food in the region. It’s cheaper to stay in Monti than in NYC. They’ve got a nice building and great kids. But they do not exist on the $ircuit because they don’t have the bids. From the $ircuit perspective, they might as well not exist at all.

So throughout the year, thousands and thousands of dollars are invested by debate schools in an activity that has a clear goal: TOC. This is true, of course, for PF and Policy as well, although I can’t speak out of my own experience to the effects of TOC on content with them as I can with LD. But they share the goal, or more specifically, there are debate schools doing PF and Policy that share the goal, and doing the investing in that goal. And it is an investment. When one invests, one expects a return on one’s investment. And let’s face it, with these debate schools, there are people whose careers are riding on their debate success. I can coach a fairly ordinary team at Sailorville for eons because we are not one of these debate schools, and our express goals are inclusion on the team and the most benefits we can get for the greatest number. My principal doesn’t know TOC from Shinola. He’s like me. He loves it when Sailors win, but he doesn’t care if they don’t. The VCA knows my motivations by now. At debate schools, though, a coach is expected to deliver the goods. If thousands and thousands of dollars are expended week after week and no trophies are brought home in the process, eyebrows are going to be raised. This isn’t some horrible, evil thing. It’s quite normal. If a school invests in a program, it expects results from that program, regardless of what the program is. Schools are in the business of education, direct and indirect, and the achievement of goals that support education are required. Even high level elite athletics support education when those athletics draw paying customers and revenues that can ultimately be put into new computers in the middle school.

$ircuit debate schools’ goal is the TOC. Their success or failure is measured in TOC terms. Unfortunately, this does not bring out the best in people.

(As a side note, I have seen what I’m talking about at high-level speech contests as well. This is not a debate-only issue.)

No comments: