Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Did CT ever say anything else?

I’ve always maintained that if you hit enough buttons at random, the technology you’re trying to get to work will, eventually, work. In other words, after about an hour of trying every possible combination of pw and acct number in every possible setting area via every possible access device, I’ve gotten the Virgin WiFi working with my new iPad. Whoop-de- damn-do, to quote Justice Thomas. I’m ready for registration Friday afternoon.

This is the best part of any tournament. People are already committed to pay for what they’ve signed up for. Any changes will only be deletions, for which they will continue to pay, plus they pay additional fines for making the deletion so late. This is also when you realize who reads the invitations and who doesn’t. I’ll send out a last message tomorrow to update everyone on the cockamamie schedule, and this and that. To tell you the truth, I’d like to drop a handful more LDers; I can use the rooms for PF, rather than stuffing people into the corners of the library. However, que sera, sera. I haven’t decided who, exactly, to stuff into the library. Who’s quieter, LDers or Pfffters? Maybe I’ll leave the decision to JV and CP, who, after all, are the ones who will have to deal with said stuffed people.

The Sailors met last night, and we started pretending that they were going to responsibly sign up for tournaments, but we’ll see. They seem to think that the last minute is the best minute, but of course they have no idea about judging requirements and the like. They’ll learn, I guess. At least there’s pretty good parent representation. Literally every freshman parent can now judge. That’s better than ever before.

Not all the plebes have forsworn LD. One plans to soldier sailor on. I advise them all early on that I won’t be much help to them once they’re firmly embarked on this path, a point that was brought home to me yesterday when I read something on the NSD site that I literally had no idea what they were talking about or, as I read it, what they were saying. The problem is, I know full well why people like to turn what they’re doing into a closed-society operation; it gives a sense of specialness and belonging, something that travelers through adolescence (and often beyond) sorely need. Unfortunately, it helps take down the general operation in which they are claiming their special status. I mean, I’m not particularly dumb, and if I can’t understand what you’re saying, try as I will, I wonder who can. I’ve been doing this for ages, and plenty of new stuff has come along and I’ve picked it up well enough. Back in the day I read enough French philosophers to turn my brain into fois gras. But this nonsense? I seriously doubt the educational value of any of it. At least with the pomos, you learned the difference between meaningful and meaningless philosophical writing, so that at the end, you could embrace the good stuff. What’s to embrace in all this heuristic rhetorical analysis that is apparently mostly in aid of removing any conceivable content from debate rounds, making them totally about debate, with its language completely removed from the world of the resolution? Push every round into a totally meta context, and there’s no real text. Yeah, a lot of people are getting a real kick out of this, but it does much less to educate students than understanding the basic resolutions in the first place. Our tenth graders: should we teach them highly suspect argumentative constructs as such, or teach them about democracy and rights and the individual’s place in society? Your choice, and maybe LD will carry on for another thousand years as the former, but, well, it’s not for me. Way more fun, like at last night’s Sailors meeting, talking about the real world of immigrants. All the data are way different from what one might think, especially in a relatively non-immigrant-filled suburb like Hudville (although at least 3 of the parents I’ve met, from 3 different families, were not born in the US).

Ah, the Real World. Ya gotta love it, or at least what’s left of it.

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