Wednesday, July 10, 2013

We also had a topic where we would eat the Irish novices

With the vacation duly dispensed with, I guess we can get back to business.

First, I noted this on Facebook, but wanted to alert people here as well. It’s Manand’s article in the New Yorker on the Voting Rights Act. I think that the history here will serve everyone well who is teaching (or learning about) Civil Rights vis-à-vis the Modest Novice topic (and for that matter, Civil Rights and the VRA in general). To think that all of this has taken place in my lifetime is more than enough reminder of where we were, where we are, and where we still have to go. I don’t know how long the link will stay live for non-subscribers, so read it while you can.

Speaking of which, apparently the Modest Novice concept has been endorsed by the NFL. Members of the VCA will of course appreciate that I am very happy about this, as the saga of ModNov has long played out in these posts. I came up with the idea lo those many years ago because of what I saw at the time as its many benefits. It provided a topic that would work well for students starting out, for one thing. We discussed this at great length in the region, to pick not only a subject but the best wording. (If I remember correctly, opp gov v no gov was also a strong contender.) This also meant that coaches would be able to develop and use the same materials each year rather than scrambling every August not only to teach Sept-Oct to upperclassmen, but to find entry points to it for novices, which was not always easy. And given that, before long, upperclassmen would have experience in that topic themselves and could pass that experience along intact to their newbies added another benefit. It all seemed pretty straightforward to me.

The big fears that arose were, first, that there would be some body of cases that would just be handed to the novices, which would give them a leg up, and second, the confusion of multiple topics at the same tournament. As for the latter, that proved completely to be a non-issue; for the most part, those folks judging novices at an event only judged novices, and the few times that they did cross boundaries, they didn’t care much, since already people often would judge both LD and PF at the same tournament, or both speech and debate, or whatever. Not a single head exploded, as far as I know.

As for handing downed canned cases, there’s nothing unique to ModNov about that. Some people think that newbies should have a lot of material when they start, allowing them to concentrate on tactics and speaking, and others think that they should build from scratch, allowing them to focus on strategy and writing. Pick your poison, because it won’t be long before they have to work on everything. As it turned out, no teams were so craven as to develop unbeatable novices for a span of three months, if such a thing were even possible. Starting debate is simply not about winning versus losing. I see novice debate as, for the most part, simply an introduction to the activity with the unfortunate distraction of awards, insofar as one’s success as a first-year is not at all an indication of success later on. First-years can come on strong if they’re really smart (not unusual) and confident and then peter out completely if they, as we say, don’t get it. Our goal as coaches is to help as many as possible into that get-it category. Winning a lot, or losing a lot, as a novice doesn’t really count much in the long run-up to winning or losing in varsity, because the higher levels of LD are so different from the starting levels. (And Academy Debate is my attempt to keep people around if they are turned off by the higher levels, but that’s another subject completely.) Of course, some people start strong and stay strong, but those are the 1% to whom this activity comes naturally. Of more interest are the other 99%. By doing a lot of public speaking, the ineffective and less than confident public speakers overcome their phobias and start getting good at it. First-years begin to learn the ins and outs of rhetoric, and are introduced to the literature. They learn to speak and write and think and mix and travel… The specifics of the first couple of weeks don’t matter much, provided that those weeks are intelligible, and the ModNov topic guarantees subject matter of the clearest and most relevant intelligibility.

Anyhow, we’ve done ModNov for a number of years now, and it’s proven its value. Frankly, I think it’s one of my most significant accomplishments as a coach, coming up with it in the first place and convincing almost everyone in the region to go along with it. I had always hoped it would go beyond us in the Northeast, and perhaps now it will. I would love for that to happen.

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