In which we look at the new resolutions

I saw a little bit of sturm und drang online over the new LD topic, although I’m not quite sure why. I mean, whenever a new topic is released there’s always an immediate flow of WORST TOPIC EVER with a little side trickle of, Hmmm, I Can Debate This, ultimately followed by people accepting reality and actually doing some research and finding that it is, in the end, just another debate topic. I can’t say I know much about qualified immunity per se, as in, how it plays out in real life. But if there’s a topic area more important than this one today, I’m hard pressed to imagine what it is. The racial side of the story is hard to argue. I wouldn’t want to be in a position of denying inherent racism, but by the same token, I wouldn’t want to be in a position to have to present a solution. But what looks like a fairly deep lack of appropriate training of police forces is something else altogether. When there’s a news story virtually every day of another inexplicable act of violence against a civilian, you have to start believing that whatever role racism plays in them (and it certainly plays a starring role), there’s more to it than that. Racial violence has a long and varied history, of course, but this particular brand of it is isolatable and, in its way, unique (although hardly new). In the research that students will be doing, and in the thinking that students will be doing, I think they will learn quite a bit. At least I hope so. As for the debates themselves, as I’ve often said, what do I know? I’m out of the LD business, which has gone way beyond my own coaching and judging experience. I’m not qualified to comment. Then again, I never cared much about debating as an educational opportunity in and of itself. It’s the researching and thinking where the education mostly takes place. (Certain cases may extend that education into the rounds, and in a dynamic, meaningful way, but not every round, no matter how dramatic and well-informed.) If this topic moves the needle just a little bit, in that hundreds of students learn something important about one of the biggest problems facing our communities today, it will be a good thing. I want the smart citizens of tomorrow to have this information in their brain cells.

On the other hand, while I’m happy that the PF universe chose the right topic, I’m rather astounded that it was a close call. Maybe it’s been ever thus, and that people who were born after the wheel was invented were ignorant of trying to drive BMWs before the wheel came along. Whatever. Curiously, the student vote was way in favor of arguing the negatives of smartphones but the school vote outweighed. That, children, is known as dodging a bullet that you didn’t even know was being aimed in your direction. The superficiality of those potential debates versus the true importance of the subject that you will actually be debating, if you really get into it, is quite a chasm. Trust me. You’re on the right side of it.

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