I found a position piece from the NRA in a quick lookup for the September PF topic. I loved this: they used the phrase “assault weapons,” i.e., they enclosed the words in quotes, a sort of typographical sneer if you will, and certainly the kind of usage I love to see in political debate. It’s the same as calling an estate tax a death tax. If we want to ban assault weapons, no quotes, we want to ban dangerous weapons that have no reasonable purpose but to kill innocent people, preferably in great quantities. If we want to ban so-called “assault weapons,” on the other hand, we are abridging our constitutional right to protect ourselves and our families.
What a crock.
Anyhow, I love the idea of arguing gun rights. It is probably the most complex constitutional issue that people generally ever get their heads around these days, aside from the belief that somehow the Founders thought we should all be good Christians and that this is somehow written into the document, except that the latter is patently untrue while the former, i.e., the right to bear arms, is, if you’ll pardon the expression, debatable.
There are specifics that one needs to study. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban is specifically referenced, so first of all, what exactly is it and why was it enacted? Of course, from my LD background, I’m always first and foremost interested in the why should we or why shouldn’t we, the inherent moral and ethical issues. But of course there are also the real world analyses: what happens if we do, what happens if we don’t. Good stuff. I’m not sure how it will play out in rounds, but for most folks around here, it’s a one-shot at the Pups and then we move on.
On the LD side of things, I like the study of due process, but I’m not terribly convinced that there’s a good argument to follow due process in some crimes and not others, depending on either the crime or the accused. I mean, if the US stands for anything, it stands for justice, and there is no justice without due process, but what do I know? So for me, LD is an easy vote for the aff, but then again, I won’t judge a single round, so no one has to worry that I’m prejudiced. At the point where we can pick up any scary looking non-citizens off the street and toss them in the pokey and throw away the key without a warrant (literally and LDy), we might as well be some totalitarian hellhole like, oh, Canada for instance. But as I say, the study of this topic will be good for the brains of the assembled multitudes, especially novices. I like seeing an educational topic in that Sept-Oct slot. There’s nothing about this that would shake my faith in the Modest Novice, of course, but we’ve all seen worse. Plenty worse.
Showing posts with label LD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LD. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
Debate: Regarding "The Six Truths Judges Will Never Admit"
One interesting thing about the world today is that if someone writes something about debate, there is not only an audience, but there is resonance. Take this article from Victory Briefs: The Six Truths Judges Will Never Admit. It is smart and true, and it makes me want to add on to it.
1. They can’t actually take your speed
My favorite example of this is when very experienced policy judges have gone into LD rounds and come out with their heads pounding. They went in with an expectation of something a little less than supersonic, but the debaters, seeing the policy label, figured that the gloves were off. A swell time was not had by all.
As Arijanto and Wynn point out, by the time the judge yells "Clear," stuff has already been missed. It behooves the debaters to actually keep an eye on the judges. You can tell if they're following you or not. If they're not, most likely speed is the culprit, in which case, if you don't slow down, you deserve the crappy speaker points.
My favorite complaint, and one that is remarkably common, is the opposite of this one. That is, judges go into the round, the debaters ask if they can handle speed, the judges say no, and then the SST takes off. If you don't care, why do you ask? Debaters do drills for speed. How about a drill for less speed?
2. They haven’t been judging in a while
This is so true, to wit, that debaters assume that the judges know stuff the judges don't necessarily know. The article says you'll use acronyms and shortcuts on citations and the like, but I would go even further and say that some debaters will presume an argument is a given. Everyone under the sun has argued X so many times in exactly the same way that everyone under the sun accepts the argumentation so that's your starting point, but the judge who has never been under the sun and never actually heard that argument is at a total loss. Know thy judge.
Of course, this leads me to something else, where arguments are not made but alluded to. You don't explain why X is wrong; you cite evidence, "Joe Blow 3" and that is enough. That's enough? That's not debate. That's sorting a database. Debates require arguments. Please.
3. They have an idea of who they’re voting for before the end of the round
I'm not quite sure what the point of this is, really, because it's way more unlikely that you wouldn't know. There are more obvious rounds than close ones, and rounds seldom play out to the end, although maintaining the win does require certain ritual steps (much like you have to take classes in your senior year of high school after you're already accepted to college). I think the point might have been that judges know before the start of the round, but I wonder about that. The real problem, strategically, is that debaters know before the start of the round. The number one reason for losses against a debater you think is stronger than you is your belief that the debater is stronger than you. There's always a new dog rising. Why shouldn't it be you?
I would point out that while many debaters develop steadily through their careers, many peak as juniors, for a variety of reasons. Giants fall. Each round stands alone. Always.
4. They have their own opinions
I don't think it's so much that judges lean to the truth of one side or the other, but that they buy the arguments more of one side or another, especially if these are arguments that they've developed themselves. This is really bad judging, of course, and is rife when upperclassmen judge underclassmen: the upperclassmen are pretty limited in their knowledge of possible arguments, and respond best to arguments similar to their own. They are way unlikely to accept arguments that are counter to their own; they've bought into them too much. Unfortunately this is true of some others as well, an inability to sever one's marriage to one's own arguments for an hour or so.
Anyhow, the advice the writers provide is good, but I think this may be the least relevant among strong judges.
5. Their paradigms are outdated and obtuse.
The whole paradigm system is ridiculous. Yes, you can provide some general analysis of your understanding of debate, but most paradigms are patently false. The ones that aren't false are too specific for relevance. The number of judges who actually judge according to what their paradigm says is probably a lot smaller than the ones whose paradigms are predictive. And as the writers say, most paradigms are old, which adds to the problem.
This is, of course, why I'm moving away from paradigms in MJP situations, not so much to eliminate them, but to provide a better barometer off the top.
6. They aren’t in the right mind
The underlying truth of judging, especially in later rounds, is that the judges get progressively more tired and more bored by the same thing over and over again (which is why we try to keep judges from judging the same people more than once, but that's usually close to impossible). Debaters who don't make it easy for the judges are, by default, making it hard. Why would you do that?
Here's a simple fact. In six rounds of debate, debaters debate six times. In six rounds of debate, judges judge up to twelve times because of flighting. Depending on the tournament, some judges are lucky to get one round off in prelims and none in elims, especially if they're highly preffed and/or the pool is small. Judges are way more tired than debaters because judges must draw on reserves of strength unalloyed with the adrenalin that drives debaters.
1. They can’t actually take your speed
My favorite example of this is when very experienced policy judges have gone into LD rounds and come out with their heads pounding. They went in with an expectation of something a little less than supersonic, but the debaters, seeing the policy label, figured that the gloves were off. A swell time was not had by all.
As Arijanto and Wynn point out, by the time the judge yells "Clear," stuff has already been missed. It behooves the debaters to actually keep an eye on the judges. You can tell if they're following you or not. If they're not, most likely speed is the culprit, in which case, if you don't slow down, you deserve the crappy speaker points.
My favorite complaint, and one that is remarkably common, is the opposite of this one. That is, judges go into the round, the debaters ask if they can handle speed, the judges say no, and then the SST takes off. If you don't care, why do you ask? Debaters do drills for speed. How about a drill for less speed?
2. They haven’t been judging in a while
This is so true, to wit, that debaters assume that the judges know stuff the judges don't necessarily know. The article says you'll use acronyms and shortcuts on citations and the like, but I would go even further and say that some debaters will presume an argument is a given. Everyone under the sun has argued X so many times in exactly the same way that everyone under the sun accepts the argumentation so that's your starting point, but the judge who has never been under the sun and never actually heard that argument is at a total loss. Know thy judge.
Of course, this leads me to something else, where arguments are not made but alluded to. You don't explain why X is wrong; you cite evidence, "Joe Blow 3" and that is enough. That's enough? That's not debate. That's sorting a database. Debates require arguments. Please.
3. They have an idea of who they’re voting for before the end of the round
I'm not quite sure what the point of this is, really, because it's way more unlikely that you wouldn't know. There are more obvious rounds than close ones, and rounds seldom play out to the end, although maintaining the win does require certain ritual steps (much like you have to take classes in your senior year of high school after you're already accepted to college). I think the point might have been that judges know before the start of the round, but I wonder about that. The real problem, strategically, is that debaters know before the start of the round. The number one reason for losses against a debater you think is stronger than you is your belief that the debater is stronger than you. There's always a new dog rising. Why shouldn't it be you?
I would point out that while many debaters develop steadily through their careers, many peak as juniors, for a variety of reasons. Giants fall. Each round stands alone. Always.
4. They have their own opinions
I don't think it's so much that judges lean to the truth of one side or the other, but that they buy the arguments more of one side or another, especially if these are arguments that they've developed themselves. This is really bad judging, of course, and is rife when upperclassmen judge underclassmen: the upperclassmen are pretty limited in their knowledge of possible arguments, and respond best to arguments similar to their own. They are way unlikely to accept arguments that are counter to their own; they've bought into them too much. Unfortunately this is true of some others as well, an inability to sever one's marriage to one's own arguments for an hour or so.
Anyhow, the advice the writers provide is good, but I think this may be the least relevant among strong judges.
5. Their paradigms are outdated and obtuse.
The whole paradigm system is ridiculous. Yes, you can provide some general analysis of your understanding of debate, but most paradigms are patently false. The ones that aren't false are too specific for relevance. The number of judges who actually judge according to what their paradigm says is probably a lot smaller than the ones whose paradigms are predictive. And as the writers say, most paradigms are old, which adds to the problem.
This is, of course, why I'm moving away from paradigms in MJP situations, not so much to eliminate them, but to provide a better barometer off the top.
6. They aren’t in the right mind
The underlying truth of judging, especially in later rounds, is that the judges get progressively more tired and more bored by the same thing over and over again (which is why we try to keep judges from judging the same people more than once, but that's usually close to impossible). Debaters who don't make it easy for the judges are, by default, making it hard. Why would you do that?
Here's a simple fact. In six rounds of debate, debaters debate six times. In six rounds of debate, judges judge up to twelve times because of flighting. Depending on the tournament, some judges are lucky to get one round off in prelims and none in elims, especially if they're highly preffed and/or the pool is small. Judges are way more tired than debaters because judges must draw on reserves of strength unalloyed with the adrenalin that drives debaters.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Forensics: Halfway through the summer
One of the problems of putting CL into evolution mode is that when I say evolution, I meant it. I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going—intelligent design does not play into it. My only goal is to open it up to more things than debate. But at the same time, I don’t want to lose the debate parts, which are core. Or the audience that has developed over time because of the debate parts. I have a general idea who’s reading this, in other words. But I don’t think that all of them are only reading it for debate stuff. The VCA is interested in a lot of other things as well. My goal is to provide non-forensic material for those interests, to entertain the sort of person who would be in the VCA in the first place. Forensics remains core, though: make no mistake about that (as Richard Nixon would say, usually when he was lying). I have no intention of moving away from debate, letting the tail take over the dog, so to speak.
Still, we have problems, especially for those who really don’t want the non-debate stuff, or think of the debate stuff as apart from the rest of it. If I could do separate RSS feeds for the same blog, I would, but that is beyond me (or maybe it’s just beyond Blogger). That was one of the reasons Grinwout’s was created, but I’ve already discussed why I’ve given up on that.
Anyhow, to try to make things palatable, I’m adding a generic tag at the top of each post title. I’ll try to keep them to a manageable few, like Movies, Music, Coachean Feed (which I’ve revived as a weekly post), and of course, Forensics. This means that, at the very least, you can see off the top if you want to read that sort of post because you’re in that sort of mood. Or you can just pass over the ones you’re not interested in, if you’re merely reading this to keep up with registration dates at the next high school tournament. Your call. I’ll do this for a while, until I think of something else.
Meanwhile, if you missed it, we put up a new TVFT last week, talking about the second three in the set of 2012-13 resolutions. Mostly we agreed this time around, except maybe on the civil services one, which I went into hating. I came out of it hating it just as much, and I think some of my reservations (chiefly its broadness) started to click with the others. Listen for yourself. In any case, it was good to get all four of us back together again. We do come at things from such radically different points of view. I think of Bietz and CP as hot into the midst of today’s LD, whether they like it or not (L’Etoile did win TOC, after all), while Cruz has such a literally vast army that he has no choice but to take a broader view of forensics as a whole while I’m firmly rooted in the get-off-my-lawn land of about a decade ago. Our longevity is interesting, come to think of it. This was the 59th episode, going back at least a couple of years. We have yet to run out of things to say. How odd that a bunch of speech/debate people could be so chatty.
On the home front, I have sent out the call to the Sailors to get their acts together to sign up for the Pups and Jake, both of which open on August 1. The Pups opens at 1:00 pm and goes immediately to a waitlist, which is pretty sane if you ask me. Jake opens at 12:01 am and closes about a minute later because O’C prefers the style of the midnight opening of the latest Geaoge Lucas film, and models his tournament after The Phantom Menace.
Quick quiz for normal people. No peeking. Okay, quick: Name the last movie directed by George Lucas.
Aha! I knew you couldn’t do it. (O’C doesn’t count.)
Anyhow, at the moment, the Sailor signup sheets remain as pure as the driven snow. I’m sure this will change. (One parent has advised me that their kid is offline for a couple of weeks, which rather shocked me. I didn’t know people could go offline anymore.) I’ll fill in a few slots with dummy entries (that is, temporary space fillers, not wooden-headed students) until a reasonable time. I mean, I do hate going to tournaments alone. It sort of undermines the whole point of things.
Still, we have problems, especially for those who really don’t want the non-debate stuff, or think of the debate stuff as apart from the rest of it. If I could do separate RSS feeds for the same blog, I would, but that is beyond me (or maybe it’s just beyond Blogger). That was one of the reasons Grinwout’s was created, but I’ve already discussed why I’ve given up on that.
Anyhow, to try to make things palatable, I’m adding a generic tag at the top of each post title. I’ll try to keep them to a manageable few, like Movies, Music, Coachean Feed (which I’ve revived as a weekly post), and of course, Forensics. This means that, at the very least, you can see off the top if you want to read that sort of post because you’re in that sort of mood. Or you can just pass over the ones you’re not interested in, if you’re merely reading this to keep up with registration dates at the next high school tournament. Your call. I’ll do this for a while, until I think of something else.
Meanwhile, if you missed it, we put up a new TVFT last week, talking about the second three in the set of 2012-13 resolutions. Mostly we agreed this time around, except maybe on the civil services one, which I went into hating. I came out of it hating it just as much, and I think some of my reservations (chiefly its broadness) started to click with the others. Listen for yourself. In any case, it was good to get all four of us back together again. We do come at things from such radically different points of view. I think of Bietz and CP as hot into the midst of today’s LD, whether they like it or not (L’Etoile did win TOC, after all), while Cruz has such a literally vast army that he has no choice but to take a broader view of forensics as a whole while I’m firmly rooted in the get-off-my-lawn land of about a decade ago. Our longevity is interesting, come to think of it. This was the 59th episode, going back at least a couple of years. We have yet to run out of things to say. How odd that a bunch of speech/debate people could be so chatty.
On the home front, I have sent out the call to the Sailors to get their acts together to sign up for the Pups and Jake, both of which open on August 1. The Pups opens at 1:00 pm and goes immediately to a waitlist, which is pretty sane if you ask me. Jake opens at 12:01 am and closes about a minute later because O’C prefers the style of the midnight opening of the latest Geaoge Lucas film, and models his tournament after The Phantom Menace.
Quick quiz for normal people. No peeking. Okay, quick: Name the last movie directed by George Lucas.
Aha! I knew you couldn’t do it. (O’C doesn’t count.)
Anyhow, at the moment, the Sailor signup sheets remain as pure as the driven snow. I’m sure this will change. (One parent has advised me that their kid is offline for a couple of weeks, which rather shocked me. I didn’t know people could go offline anymore.) I’ll fill in a few slots with dummy entries (that is, temporary space fillers, not wooden-headed students) until a reasonable time. I mean, I do hate going to tournaments alone. It sort of undermines the whole point of things.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Forensics: In which we adapt to our audience
PJ talks about not wanting debaters to be directed into one or another of a couple of narrow styles. I wonder.
For the longest time, I preached that judge adaptation was the most important thing a debater could do in a round. After all, it was the judge who was writing the ballot, so if you wanted that ballot, you did your best to appeal to that particular judge. We’ve talked a lot about prefs and paradigms, but realistically, at most tournaments most debaters know pretty well who’s judging them. Sure, if I go to Greenhill, I’d better read some paradigms, because I don’t know Texas from taxes and the pool will presumably be strongly circuit, but if I go to Bump or Ridge or Newark or Scarsdale, well, it’s mostly the usual suspects. Even Yale and Princeton and Columbia trade in mostly the usual suspects. There’s not a hell of a lot of mystery for the average debater, in other words. I wonder sometimes if we’re talking generalities that are, in fact, inaccurate extrapolations from narrowly perceived specifics.
In any case, while judge adaptation may not be what it used to be as LD has grown up a bit, I think it’s still more important that people acknowledge. I know plenty of extremely strong debaters who have been able to pick up anyone’s ballot, from the most circuit judge to the sweetest mommy judge. They might have on some level preferred a circuit judge, allowing them to get up their head of argumentative steam, but on the level of, I wanna win this ballot, they did what had to be done. They slowed down. They lost the jargon. They skipped the outré material. They stuck to the basics of upholding their values and got nice little 30s and nice little wins. I have, by the same token, actually seen debaters prefer to forfeit a round than debate in front of a judge they thought of as (I shudder at this word) “illegit.” I’ve also seen debaters who have refused to acknowledge the nature of their judge, refusing to adjust on some presumption that their way of debating is the right one, and if you don’t get it, that’s your problem. As far as I recall, the point of a debate round is to pick up the ballot. How does one get one’s brain into such a twist as to think there is some other point? (I don’t mean, of course, a ballot at any cost, but the issue here is not sportsmanship, just common sense.)
Public speaking, per se, requires knowledge of your audience. I’ve seen this over and over again at my DJ. People who are making a presentation who understand their audiences and present accordingly, win. People who talk over their audiences’ heads, or under them, lose. That’s core. On top of that, making your audience feel smart—which, I hasten to point out, is inevitably true, even if they don’t necessarily know what the speaker happens to be talking about—is a worthy approach. “Here: let me tell you about this thing that I happen to know about that I think you’ll be interested in.” It’s about what you’re saying and not about you, which is why there are modes of dress (boring business attire) that make your message clearer. (There may be exceptions to this latter principle, but not that many.) Knowing what you’re talking about is important because, otherwise, why exactly am I spending time listening you if I know more than you do? In debate, I would suggest that you should always believe your judge knows more than you do; it will probably be true in most cases (unless you’re being judged by another high school student) and it will undoubtedly be prudent in all cases.
Et cetera.
In the movement of LD away from public speaking, we do lose something. To be realistic, LD was never about the public speaking per se, and there have always been muttermouths who have been brilliant and successful debaters. But today, that skill of becoming a good speaker, in the real sense of the word, is all but tossed aside. This is neither good nor bad (it’s been replaced by other skills), but it is unfortunate for those of us who happen to value public speaking highly. In any case, no matter how parochial a debater may be in terms of style within a round, no truly good debater doesn’t have the ability to adjust as necessary.
That, to some extent, motivates my pushing for the trads to embrace MJP. In rounds where everyone is on a different page, it will demand adaptation. The better debater, defined as the debater who better adjusted to the situation, thus will have a better chance to win. I think PJ would actually like that.
For the longest time, I preached that judge adaptation was the most important thing a debater could do in a round. After all, it was the judge who was writing the ballot, so if you wanted that ballot, you did your best to appeal to that particular judge. We’ve talked a lot about prefs and paradigms, but realistically, at most tournaments most debaters know pretty well who’s judging them. Sure, if I go to Greenhill, I’d better read some paradigms, because I don’t know Texas from taxes and the pool will presumably be strongly circuit, but if I go to Bump or Ridge or Newark or Scarsdale, well, it’s mostly the usual suspects. Even Yale and Princeton and Columbia trade in mostly the usual suspects. There’s not a hell of a lot of mystery for the average debater, in other words. I wonder sometimes if we’re talking generalities that are, in fact, inaccurate extrapolations from narrowly perceived specifics.
In any case, while judge adaptation may not be what it used to be as LD has grown up a bit, I think it’s still more important that people acknowledge. I know plenty of extremely strong debaters who have been able to pick up anyone’s ballot, from the most circuit judge to the sweetest mommy judge. They might have on some level preferred a circuit judge, allowing them to get up their head of argumentative steam, but on the level of, I wanna win this ballot, they did what had to be done. They slowed down. They lost the jargon. They skipped the outré material. They stuck to the basics of upholding their values and got nice little 30s and nice little wins. I have, by the same token, actually seen debaters prefer to forfeit a round than debate in front of a judge they thought of as (I shudder at this word) “illegit.” I’ve also seen debaters who have refused to acknowledge the nature of their judge, refusing to adjust on some presumption that their way of debating is the right one, and if you don’t get it, that’s your problem. As far as I recall, the point of a debate round is to pick up the ballot. How does one get one’s brain into such a twist as to think there is some other point? (I don’t mean, of course, a ballot at any cost, but the issue here is not sportsmanship, just common sense.)
Public speaking, per se, requires knowledge of your audience. I’ve seen this over and over again at my DJ. People who are making a presentation who understand their audiences and present accordingly, win. People who talk over their audiences’ heads, or under them, lose. That’s core. On top of that, making your audience feel smart—which, I hasten to point out, is inevitably true, even if they don’t necessarily know what the speaker happens to be talking about—is a worthy approach. “Here: let me tell you about this thing that I happen to know about that I think you’ll be interested in.” It’s about what you’re saying and not about you, which is why there are modes of dress (boring business attire) that make your message clearer. (There may be exceptions to this latter principle, but not that many.) Knowing what you’re talking about is important because, otherwise, why exactly am I spending time listening you if I know more than you do? In debate, I would suggest that you should always believe your judge knows more than you do; it will probably be true in most cases (unless you’re being judged by another high school student) and it will undoubtedly be prudent in all cases.
Et cetera.
In the movement of LD away from public speaking, we do lose something. To be realistic, LD was never about the public speaking per se, and there have always been muttermouths who have been brilliant and successful debaters. But today, that skill of becoming a good speaker, in the real sense of the word, is all but tossed aside. This is neither good nor bad (it’s been replaced by other skills), but it is unfortunate for those of us who happen to value public speaking highly. In any case, no matter how parochial a debater may be in terms of style within a round, no truly good debater doesn’t have the ability to adjust as necessary.
That, to some extent, motivates my pushing for the trads to embrace MJP. In rounds where everyone is on a different page, it will demand adaptation. The better debater, defined as the debater who better adjusted to the situation, thus will have a better chance to win. I think PJ would actually like that.
Monday, July 09, 2012
Forensics: PJ responds
And thus we end this particular discussion. I have to point out that, at the bottom, while I may disagree with PJ on MJP, we are pretty much as one on LD. Members of the VCA need not be reminded that I have, aside from using it for novice training, abandoned that particular event. I proselytize for MJP as a tabber trying to rein in circuit dominance. Come to think of it, if everyone were to rank, my job would be a lot harder...
Anyhow, from PJ:
---------
A well thought out reply, so thank you.
My MJP objection applies I think even if no particular people are advantaged.
I do agree that people are going to specialize anyway, I just think we should actively discourage them from doing so, even if that is only along the margins. I am a big fan of schools requiring at least basic competence across the ol' field of knowledge- I would be a pretty poor history teacher if I suffered from innumeracy. And scientists who are not aware of the political and social implications of their research are a real threat to us all.
For debate, even limited to the national circuit, I think that there was more of a variety of approaches once could utilize - or at least be competent at utilizing - in order to be competitive. Even with a continuum, I just think there is less ability to move along that line. While I recognize that MJP does not guarantee I get judges favorable to 'my' style, it does narrow down the styles somewhat (even given the large pool of judges ranked '1'. It gives many debaters less incentive to be Renaissance debaters. It is not just or even mostly a question of national circuit or not.
Perhaps I am pining for the fjords, but I do think that half a dozen years ago Debater X may have had 65% a preferred style, now their younger sibling may be 80%. That's pretty huge. And sure, likely this is not true for the best debaters, but I do suspect it is true for those in the middle.
I do think that having coaches describe the judges helps, and
a tournament with 40 judges would not be too difficult to rank. But a tournament with hundreds?
Even with CPs modification, some schools will assign a person or two to do all the ranking, whereas smaller ones will be be left with their student(s) doing the ranking and the preparing. People like the Parnivore would be the exception to the rule. Not they are not already, but even more so...
These students will have to choose between intelligently ranking judges versus focusing on their arguments and skills. And because we are so judge-centered, I feel that many students will focus on the judge aspect.
Because it is always the judge's fault (though, oddly enough, rarely to the judge's credit...)
In truth, I am not comfortable with a complete newcomer handling a bubble round either. But we did muddle through before MJP, somehow.
The idea that students report back that the judging was excellent is a serious point. The debaters DO work hard. They do deserve good judges. Many suggest that debaters work so hard they deserve some type of agency in choosing their judges.
I just think the idea of agency is misplaced. Debaters should have the agency to run the arguments they want to argue. What they shouldn't have is the agency to avoid the repercussions of those choices. To choose an example that has only happened twice in in the years I have been judging, If someone argues in front of me that genocide is good, or that racism or sexism or homophobia is good, I will vote against them, no matter how well developed their argument. On the just past JanFeb LD topic, I think it would be bad if debaters chose judges who would be receptive to potentially offensive arguments and isolated those who would not be receptive to those arguments. If that is judge intervention, bummer.Other than being a high ranking financial business person, there are not many jobs where people have the agency to take whatever risks they want without worrying about the consequences.
Besides, if there is one belief that debaters have that is not true it is the idea that debate life is fair and merit always wins out. That is not true, and if sometimes losing a round one 'should' have won, well, helps to develop a sense of empathy, that would be not the worst fate.
You do make me feel better (or less worse) about the whole business however...)
Anyhow, from PJ:
---------
A well thought out reply, so thank you.
My MJP objection applies I think even if no particular people are advantaged.
I do agree that people are going to specialize anyway, I just think we should actively discourage them from doing so, even if that is only along the margins. I am a big fan of schools requiring at least basic competence across the ol' field of knowledge- I would be a pretty poor history teacher if I suffered from innumeracy. And scientists who are not aware of the political and social implications of their research are a real threat to us all.
For debate, even limited to the national circuit, I think that there was more of a variety of approaches once could utilize - or at least be competent at utilizing - in order to be competitive. Even with a continuum, I just think there is less ability to move along that line. While I recognize that MJP does not guarantee I get judges favorable to 'my' style, it does narrow down the styles somewhat (even given the large pool of judges ranked '1'. It gives many debaters less incentive to be Renaissance debaters. It is not just or even mostly a question of national circuit or not.
Perhaps I am pining for the fjords, but I do think that half a dozen years ago Debater X may have had 65% a preferred style, now their younger sibling may be 80%. That's pretty huge. And sure, likely this is not true for the best debaters, but I do suspect it is true for those in the middle.
I do think that having coaches describe the judges helps, and
a tournament with 40 judges would not be too difficult to rank. But a tournament with hundreds?
Even with CPs modification, some schools will assign a person or two to do all the ranking, whereas smaller ones will be be left with their student(s) doing the ranking and the preparing. People like the Parnivore would be the exception to the rule. Not they are not already, but even more so...
These students will have to choose between intelligently ranking judges versus focusing on their arguments and skills. And because we are so judge-centered, I feel that many students will focus on the judge aspect.
Because it is always the judge's fault (though, oddly enough, rarely to the judge's credit...)
In truth, I am not comfortable with a complete newcomer handling a bubble round either. But we did muddle through before MJP, somehow.
The idea that students report back that the judging was excellent is a serious point. The debaters DO work hard. They do deserve good judges. Many suggest that debaters work so hard they deserve some type of agency in choosing their judges.
I just think the idea of agency is misplaced. Debaters should have the agency to run the arguments they want to argue. What they shouldn't have is the agency to avoid the repercussions of those choices. To choose an example that has only happened twice in in the years I have been judging, If someone argues in front of me that genocide is good, or that racism or sexism or homophobia is good, I will vote against them, no matter how well developed their argument. On the just past JanFeb LD topic, I think it would be bad if debaters chose judges who would be receptive to potentially offensive arguments and isolated those who would not be receptive to those arguments. If that is judge intervention, bummer.Other than being a high ranking financial business person, there are not many jobs where people have the agency to take whatever risks they want without worrying about the consequences.
Besides, if there is one belief that debaters have that is not true it is the idea that debate life is fair and merit always wins out. That is not true, and if sometimes losing a round one 'should' have won, well, helps to develop a sense of empathy, that would be not the worst fate.
You do make me feel better (or less worse) about the whole business however...)
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Forensics: From the comments, more on MJP
This is from the comments to the last MJP post:
What about the real world aspect of debate? In life we don't get to choose our interviewer when looking for a job. We can't pick the favorable admission committee to get into the college of our choice. Why do it in debate? Also I think it's worth noting that speech does not get to pick judges either - and there are plenty of different styles across the ie world.
I like the idea of a hybrid- let every judge identify themselves as new traditional or circuit. Then give everyone an appropriate number of strikes. I think you would have quite a different activity. A much better one I think.....
The real world aspects of debate? In the real world, I very much do choose what jobs to interview for, and decide what colleges to apply for. If I have chosen wisely, one would imagine that I understand very well what the interviewers are looking for, I understand the nature of the place I'm interviewing to get into, and I am the sort of person they would look on favorably. I choose a job possibility because I like what they're doing; I choose a college because I know what kind of college it is and what that college is like. I could be wrong, of course, but I will prepare accordingly, with the belief that I know what the interviewer is looking for because I know what the interview is for in the first place. The better I know what the institution is for which I am interviewing, the better I will adapt. And I will certainly choose to apply to institutions compatible to me and my talents.
Anyhow, MJP is not about picking a sympathetic judge, which I have to admit was originally my reaction back when I first encountered it. There are two debaters, and they have mutually ranked that judge at the same level. That level can be from 1 to 4. The point is that the choice is mutual, not that it is favorable.
But stay with me here.
The thing is, speaking of the real world, there are plenty of tournaments that don't offer MJP. Probably most of them, if the truth were known. Events with MJP tend to be of the same stripe, working the universe of TOC bids and highly competitive programs and debaters. This is not to suggest that all highly competitive debaters are on a TOC trail, but for those for whom TOC is a possibility, then yes, they are. Why else are they doing all that work, preparing themselves to beat the circuit debaters? MJP is something you see at some, not all, tournaments.
In the real world, there is no question that debaters break down broadly into circuit and traditional. At a tournament with some level of TOC bid, there is going to be a contingent of circuit debaters, and a contingent of circuit judges. And if you are a traditional debater, up against a circuit debater and a circuit judge, all things being equal, you are going to lose. (And you may not even know why, given the speed, complexity and often blippiness of some circuit agruments.) I would like to be able to say that the opposite is true, that a trad debater will beat a circuit debater in front of a trad judge, all things being equal, but I have seen a marked tendency among judges who don't really understand what is going on to pick up the circuit debater based on the appearance of that debater having been better in the round. The judge doesn't want to look dumb, in other words.
So yes, there are times when MJP will put debaters of similar style in front of a judge inclined to favor that style. But if the two debaters are of dissimilar styles, they won't have mutual judges highly ranked. So they're going to get someone way down on their list. Both their lists. They will have to adjust to a newcomer, more likely than not, or someone neither of them knows well. Advantage? Beats me.
Keep in mind this, though, if we're in the real world. MJP will not be going away any time soon. Tournaments are a business, with sellers and customers. As a Tournament Director you design the tournament you want, to appeal to the customers you want to attract. Most people running a TOC tournament feel that MJP will bring in the circuit folks, so they use it. TOC and NDCA both use MJP, and from that example other tournaments flow. And here's the rub, that I was addressing in my original note: At tournaments where there is MJP, mostly only the circuit teams rank. As a result, that tournament becomes biased to the circuit. My core argument is that if everyone ranked, we would change that bias, and until everyone ranks, people like Anonymous here, who obviously is against MJP, is handing rounds to the people who like MJP. Total commitment to MJP would, in other words, minimize the harms (if any).
As for the rest of Anonymous's comment, sure, strikes eliminate a handful of judges, but what is the appropriate number of strikes? It's certainly not all the judges of a certain persuasion. And does anonymous really want tab to assign a random judge to the round at which a team will be eliminated from competition? I understand the arguments that answer yes, but given the number of judges I see who are completely untrained and thrown into tournaments as warm bodies at best by programs who are notorious for this practice, I think those arguments fail. How about other forensics activities? Well, go run your edgy same-sex piece in front of someone wearing a wimple. Yeah, sure, you get what you get in IEs, but I'd like a show of hands from IEers who are happy with preset biases among their judges, over which the speakers get no veto power. But more importantly, I'm not aware of a schism in speech like the one at present in LD, where numerous programs (including my own) have actually stopped doing it because of resistance to the direction the activity is taking.
Anyhow, the hybrid tournament Anonymous likes is certainly out there. In our region, there's probably enough of them to mostly fill up a debater's dance card, including one, Newark, with a TOC bid. No one forces anyone to go to any particular tournament. Programs can pick and choose as they may. If tournaments that run like this get very popular, people like me who run tournaments as fund-raisers will take notice. That's back to the tournament-as-a-business model. But even if we don't change, there's something for everybody. But don't argue the real world, please. In the real world we do make choices that are favorable to our ends all the time. And in the real world, MJP is what's going to determine how a lot of LD (and Policy) tournaments are run for the foreseeable future. In the real world, if we don't want circuit styles to virtually eliminate traditional styles because it's the circuit styles that are winning not because they're better but because their practitioners are better at working the system, then trad people must learn to do likewise. I do not know what the outcome will be (and honestly, anyone who knows me knows I prefer traditional LD), but at least we'll fight the good fight.
.
What about the real world aspect of debate? In life we don't get to choose our interviewer when looking for a job. We can't pick the favorable admission committee to get into the college of our choice. Why do it in debate? Also I think it's worth noting that speech does not get to pick judges either - and there are plenty of different styles across the ie world.
I like the idea of a hybrid- let every judge identify themselves as new traditional or circuit. Then give everyone an appropriate number of strikes. I think you would have quite a different activity. A much better one I think.....
The real world aspects of debate? In the real world, I very much do choose what jobs to interview for, and decide what colleges to apply for. If I have chosen wisely, one would imagine that I understand very well what the interviewers are looking for, I understand the nature of the place I'm interviewing to get into, and I am the sort of person they would look on favorably. I choose a job possibility because I like what they're doing; I choose a college because I know what kind of college it is and what that college is like. I could be wrong, of course, but I will prepare accordingly, with the belief that I know what the interviewer is looking for because I know what the interview is for in the first place. The better I know what the institution is for which I am interviewing, the better I will adapt. And I will certainly choose to apply to institutions compatible to me and my talents.
Anyhow, MJP is not about picking a sympathetic judge, which I have to admit was originally my reaction back when I first encountered it. There are two debaters, and they have mutually ranked that judge at the same level. That level can be from 1 to 4. The point is that the choice is mutual, not that it is favorable.
But stay with me here.
The thing is, speaking of the real world, there are plenty of tournaments that don't offer MJP. Probably most of them, if the truth were known. Events with MJP tend to be of the same stripe, working the universe of TOC bids and highly competitive programs and debaters. This is not to suggest that all highly competitive debaters are on a TOC trail, but for those for whom TOC is a possibility, then yes, they are. Why else are they doing all that work, preparing themselves to beat the circuit debaters? MJP is something you see at some, not all, tournaments.
In the real world, there is no question that debaters break down broadly into circuit and traditional. At a tournament with some level of TOC bid, there is going to be a contingent of circuit debaters, and a contingent of circuit judges. And if you are a traditional debater, up against a circuit debater and a circuit judge, all things being equal, you are going to lose. (And you may not even know why, given the speed, complexity and often blippiness of some circuit agruments.) I would like to be able to say that the opposite is true, that a trad debater will beat a circuit debater in front of a trad judge, all things being equal, but I have seen a marked tendency among judges who don't really understand what is going on to pick up the circuit debater based on the appearance of that debater having been better in the round. The judge doesn't want to look dumb, in other words.
So yes, there are times when MJP will put debaters of similar style in front of a judge inclined to favor that style. But if the two debaters are of dissimilar styles, they won't have mutual judges highly ranked. So they're going to get someone way down on their list. Both their lists. They will have to adjust to a newcomer, more likely than not, or someone neither of them knows well. Advantage? Beats me.
Keep in mind this, though, if we're in the real world. MJP will not be going away any time soon. Tournaments are a business, with sellers and customers. As a Tournament Director you design the tournament you want, to appeal to the customers you want to attract. Most people running a TOC tournament feel that MJP will bring in the circuit folks, so they use it. TOC and NDCA both use MJP, and from that example other tournaments flow. And here's the rub, that I was addressing in my original note: At tournaments where there is MJP, mostly only the circuit teams rank. As a result, that tournament becomes biased to the circuit. My core argument is that if everyone ranked, we would change that bias, and until everyone ranks, people like Anonymous here, who obviously is against MJP, is handing rounds to the people who like MJP. Total commitment to MJP would, in other words, minimize the harms (if any).
As for the rest of Anonymous's comment, sure, strikes eliminate a handful of judges, but what is the appropriate number of strikes? It's certainly not all the judges of a certain persuasion. And does anonymous really want tab to assign a random judge to the round at which a team will be eliminated from competition? I understand the arguments that answer yes, but given the number of judges I see who are completely untrained and thrown into tournaments as warm bodies at best by programs who are notorious for this practice, I think those arguments fail. How about other forensics activities? Well, go run your edgy same-sex piece in front of someone wearing a wimple. Yeah, sure, you get what you get in IEs, but I'd like a show of hands from IEers who are happy with preset biases among their judges, over which the speakers get no veto power. But more importantly, I'm not aware of a schism in speech like the one at present in LD, where numerous programs (including my own) have actually stopped doing it because of resistance to the direction the activity is taking.
Anyhow, the hybrid tournament Anonymous likes is certainly out there. In our region, there's probably enough of them to mostly fill up a debater's dance card, including one, Newark, with a TOC bid. No one forces anyone to go to any particular tournament. Programs can pick and choose as they may. If tournaments that run like this get very popular, people like me who run tournaments as fund-raisers will take notice. That's back to the tournament-as-a-business model. But even if we don't change, there's something for everybody. But don't argue the real world, please. In the real world we do make choices that are favorable to our ends all the time. And in the real world, MJP is what's going to determine how a lot of LD (and Policy) tournaments are run for the foreseeable future. In the real world, if we don't want circuit styles to virtually eliminate traditional styles because it's the circuit styles that are winning not because they're better but because their practitioners are better at working the system, then trad people must learn to do likewise. I do not know what the outcome will be (and honestly, anyone who knows me knows I prefer traditional LD), but at least we'll fight the good fight.
.
Friday, July 06, 2012
Forensics: Menick v. Wexler on MJP (again)
As always, MJP’s Greatest Nonfan, Pajamas Wexler, has responded to my explanation. It was in a comment, so I’ll repeat it here, first in its entirety.
The explanation is fine or as fine as I can make out of this hour of the day. A few thoughts anyway.
1) I think specialization is bad in general. In theory, I don't want to have 'my' debaters being advantaged anymore than be disadvantaged by having only one debater participate in MJP. I recognize given my preferences MJP may be 2-2 or 3-3 but still. I also think that given the inevitable need to sometimes have a 1-2 or 2-3 in later rounds, someone will sometimes have an advantage anyway ( I have not run a MJP tournament myself, so I don't know how common that is admittedly, but it seems it w/b a challenge as the tournament drags on.
2) more importantly I believe that more national circuitry programs - larger ones anyway-will almost always have an advantage in ranking judges. Normally I don't think much of this as an argument but I do think it is valid here. These programs will 1) know more about the judges in the pool as they actually function, not just what is in the written paradigms, 2) be able to have someone read the paradigms and, most importantly, think through strategy for the MJP. It isn't just, or even mostly a paradigm question after all, but ' do I want judge X hearing me in a bump round against those people who I we might be debating in bump rounds'.
It is similar to expecting people to intelligently be able to make decisions about their retirement or health accounts. Sure, some can, but at a certain point there is too much information to intelligently process, especially during the few days rankings are open. For any number of reasons, larger programs will make intelligent rankings, Smaller ones will need to make choices between preparing the topic, ranking the judges, or doing school work, be it studying for tests or writing then.
That is why some opt out, it just isn't a priority given limited resources. Sure, we can say that is their own decision. That is the position some take regarding people who don't choose optimal retirement programs or health ones. I simply don't agree we should rely on the ideology of choice in either case.
I offer, first, an overview. Much of what PJ is saying is an argument against MJP per se. He would prefer that it not be used at tournaments. This is not what I am arguing at the moment. What I’m saying is that, at a given tournament that does have MJP, not using it both disadvantages the nonuser and perpetuates the styles that nonusers do not like. Simply put, at a tournament where all the circuit folk rank and all the traditional folk don’t, that tournament, regardless of the makeup of the pool and the field and the percentage of people in either camp, de facto becomes circuit-oriented. One could, perhaps, use this as an argument against MJP in general, but I think it’s a stronger argument in favor of traditionals getting on board with it. Until tournaments are run with pretty much total MJP buy-in, any discussion of its effects remain theoretical. If a tournament that was 50/50 had full buy-in, what would that look like? I suggest that the answer would be favorable to multiple styles, but as I say, I’m just theorizing. I do have experience of one tournament where everyone ranked, by the way, but that was NDCA, which by definition would be mostly circuit types, or at the very least people well aware of the circuit. Therefore we can’t draw conclusions from that one. At every other tournament I’ve done, I have seen what I’ve been saying, the tendency toward favoring the circuit. Which is why I want everyone else to dive in. Let’s see what happens.
As for specifics, point one:
First, No debater is disadvantaged in MJP because their choice is mutual.
Second, assuming that debaters don’t specialize is a false assumption: all debaters favor a certain style that they develop over time, and it’s a realistic measure of a debater's style to put that style on a continuum ranging from traditional to circuit. In other words, specialization is built in to the humanity of the thing. We each specialize in our own style. The debater who doesn’t tend a certain way is nonexistent.
Third, I wonder how much of a difference there is in a 1-2 ranking, since the checks I’ve made on it demonstrate, without enough data for true statistical analysis and standing therefore merely as anecdotal data, that the bottom side of a 1-2 is every bit as likely to win as the top. More to the point, these 1-2s are very rare. At NDCA, where everyone ranked, I estimate they were 5% of the entire tournament roster of rounds, if that. When we say mutual, we mean mutual. Non-mutuals are one-offs that, as PJ suggests, occur in the later rounds if at all, and we try to push them into rounds out of contention for eliminations. Granted, for the people in those rounds, in contention or not, they’re real rounds, but one must face the fact that tournaments are designed for the sake of competition.
Point two:
First, advantage to the big schools. Well, that’s true, MJP or not, in my opinion. Or it’s not true, given my own experience with the Panivore. In any case, non-unique.
Second, nevertheless, even granting the obvious that anyone in the circuit will tend to know the circuit judges better through experience, it misses the point that at many if not most tournaments, e.g. the northeast college tournaments like Yale and Princeton, and even most of the high schools, the pool of judges has plenty of traditional judges who are not on the circuit much. That’s why my system of coaches setting definitions for the judges entered is either circuit, traditional or newcomer. These traditional judges, who are not being ranked, get leftover rounds by default. This means that schools who prefer traditional styles are not only being disadvantaged in rounds, but their judges are sitting around drinking a lot of coffee until the later rounds when we can finally find slots for them. This starts to equate traditional judges with bad judges, and I certainly don’t buy that, because I would call myself a traditional judge, and I may be good or I may be bad, but my quality is not predicated on my preference for traditional LD.
Third, as I say, it’s not too much information, because it’s three categories, circuit, traditional and newcomer. A tournament with, say, 30 or 40 judges? Not hard to sort out, considering that you inevitably do know some already. More to the point, however, CP is promising to work it so that the students themselves can do the ranking, with special accounts that can do only that. In other words, it becomes part of the students’ responsibilities, not the coaches’. If you put it that way, seriously, how many students won’t want to rank? They may not know all the judges, especially when starting out, but they’ll know themselves, and they’ll want what they want vis-à-vis style.
My bottom line is that, until we see how a fully committed system of MJP works, we can’t know its effects. Add to that the alternatives: community rankings (which only work in a small community), no rankings (which means that a judge who isn’t trained is as likely to judge a bubble round as the Coach of the Year), or tab room ranking. I was raised on the latter at invitationals and the random approach at local MHLs. We tried community and found that they were, inevitably, no different from tab rankings; at least they had more buy in than MJP. As for MJP, in my experience, debaters who have used it have inevitably reported back that at whatever tournament, big or small, where it’s been in effect, they had what they considered excellent judging. I’m not saying that the students should make decisions about how the activity should be defined, since that is the job of the teachers, but their experiences of tournaments must indeed inform the teachers doing their job.
Anyhow, I love that PJ responds, because I think his opinions are valid and need airing. Of course, I also think that he’s wrong, but since we’re both in the debate business, I’m sure neither he nor I is bothered by the belief of our individual positions being the correct ones, and the other person’s opinions being not so correct. In other words, he thinks I’m the one who is wrong. We air our thoughts in public so that everyone else can decide on an individual basis. Fun stuff.
.
The explanation is fine or as fine as I can make out of this hour of the day. A few thoughts anyway.
1) I think specialization is bad in general. In theory, I don't want to have 'my' debaters being advantaged anymore than be disadvantaged by having only one debater participate in MJP. I recognize given my preferences MJP may be 2-2 or 3-3 but still. I also think that given the inevitable need to sometimes have a 1-2 or 2-3 in later rounds, someone will sometimes have an advantage anyway ( I have not run a MJP tournament myself, so I don't know how common that is admittedly, but it seems it w/b a challenge as the tournament drags on.
2) more importantly I believe that more national circuitry programs - larger ones anyway-will almost always have an advantage in ranking judges. Normally I don't think much of this as an argument but I do think it is valid here. These programs will 1) know more about the judges in the pool as they actually function, not just what is in the written paradigms, 2) be able to have someone read the paradigms and, most importantly, think through strategy for the MJP. It isn't just, or even mostly a paradigm question after all, but ' do I want judge X hearing me in a bump round against those people who I we might be debating in bump rounds'.
It is similar to expecting people to intelligently be able to make decisions about their retirement or health accounts. Sure, some can, but at a certain point there is too much information to intelligently process, especially during the few days rankings are open. For any number of reasons, larger programs will make intelligent rankings, Smaller ones will need to make choices between preparing the topic, ranking the judges, or doing school work, be it studying for tests or writing then.
That is why some opt out, it just isn't a priority given limited resources. Sure, we can say that is their own decision. That is the position some take regarding people who don't choose optimal retirement programs or health ones. I simply don't agree we should rely on the ideology of choice in either case.
I offer, first, an overview. Much of what PJ is saying is an argument against MJP per se. He would prefer that it not be used at tournaments. This is not what I am arguing at the moment. What I’m saying is that, at a given tournament that does have MJP, not using it both disadvantages the nonuser and perpetuates the styles that nonusers do not like. Simply put, at a tournament where all the circuit folk rank and all the traditional folk don’t, that tournament, regardless of the makeup of the pool and the field and the percentage of people in either camp, de facto becomes circuit-oriented. One could, perhaps, use this as an argument against MJP in general, but I think it’s a stronger argument in favor of traditionals getting on board with it. Until tournaments are run with pretty much total MJP buy-in, any discussion of its effects remain theoretical. If a tournament that was 50/50 had full buy-in, what would that look like? I suggest that the answer would be favorable to multiple styles, but as I say, I’m just theorizing. I do have experience of one tournament where everyone ranked, by the way, but that was NDCA, which by definition would be mostly circuit types, or at the very least people well aware of the circuit. Therefore we can’t draw conclusions from that one. At every other tournament I’ve done, I have seen what I’ve been saying, the tendency toward favoring the circuit. Which is why I want everyone else to dive in. Let’s see what happens.
As for specifics, point one:
First, No debater is disadvantaged in MJP because their choice is mutual.
Second, assuming that debaters don’t specialize is a false assumption: all debaters favor a certain style that they develop over time, and it’s a realistic measure of a debater's style to put that style on a continuum ranging from traditional to circuit. In other words, specialization is built in to the humanity of the thing. We each specialize in our own style. The debater who doesn’t tend a certain way is nonexistent.
Third, I wonder how much of a difference there is in a 1-2 ranking, since the checks I’ve made on it demonstrate, without enough data for true statistical analysis and standing therefore merely as anecdotal data, that the bottom side of a 1-2 is every bit as likely to win as the top. More to the point, these 1-2s are very rare. At NDCA, where everyone ranked, I estimate they were 5% of the entire tournament roster of rounds, if that. When we say mutual, we mean mutual. Non-mutuals are one-offs that, as PJ suggests, occur in the later rounds if at all, and we try to push them into rounds out of contention for eliminations. Granted, for the people in those rounds, in contention or not, they’re real rounds, but one must face the fact that tournaments are designed for the sake of competition.
Point two:
First, advantage to the big schools. Well, that’s true, MJP or not, in my opinion. Or it’s not true, given my own experience with the Panivore. In any case, non-unique.
Second, nevertheless, even granting the obvious that anyone in the circuit will tend to know the circuit judges better through experience, it misses the point that at many if not most tournaments, e.g. the northeast college tournaments like Yale and Princeton, and even most of the high schools, the pool of judges has plenty of traditional judges who are not on the circuit much. That’s why my system of coaches setting definitions for the judges entered is either circuit, traditional or newcomer. These traditional judges, who are not being ranked, get leftover rounds by default. This means that schools who prefer traditional styles are not only being disadvantaged in rounds, but their judges are sitting around drinking a lot of coffee until the later rounds when we can finally find slots for them. This starts to equate traditional judges with bad judges, and I certainly don’t buy that, because I would call myself a traditional judge, and I may be good or I may be bad, but my quality is not predicated on my preference for traditional LD.
Third, as I say, it’s not too much information, because it’s three categories, circuit, traditional and newcomer. A tournament with, say, 30 or 40 judges? Not hard to sort out, considering that you inevitably do know some already. More to the point, however, CP is promising to work it so that the students themselves can do the ranking, with special accounts that can do only that. In other words, it becomes part of the students’ responsibilities, not the coaches’. If you put it that way, seriously, how many students won’t want to rank? They may not know all the judges, especially when starting out, but they’ll know themselves, and they’ll want what they want vis-à-vis style.
My bottom line is that, until we see how a fully committed system of MJP works, we can’t know its effects. Add to that the alternatives: community rankings (which only work in a small community), no rankings (which means that a judge who isn’t trained is as likely to judge a bubble round as the Coach of the Year), or tab room ranking. I was raised on the latter at invitationals and the random approach at local MHLs. We tried community and found that they were, inevitably, no different from tab rankings; at least they had more buy in than MJP. As for MJP, in my experience, debaters who have used it have inevitably reported back that at whatever tournament, big or small, where it’s been in effect, they had what they considered excellent judging. I’m not saying that the students should make decisions about how the activity should be defined, since that is the job of the teachers, but their experiences of tournaments must indeed inform the teachers doing their job.
Anyhow, I love that PJ responds, because I think his opinions are valid and need airing. Of course, I also think that he’s wrong, but since we’re both in the debate business, I’m sure neither he nor I is bothered by the belief of our individual positions being the correct ones, and the other person’s opinions being not so correct. In other words, he thinks I’m the one who is wrong. We air our thoughts in public so that everyone else can decide on an individual basis. Fun stuff.
.
Monday, July 02, 2012
Forensics: MJP explained to the masses
As I said a while ago, I've pretty much decided to send a letter at tournaments with MJP explaining why it doesn't really work if everybody doesn't do it, and more to the point, since only the circuit folks do it, the traditional folks who hate circuit stuff are shooting themselves in the foot. (Feet? I mean, folks in the sentence is plural, but feet sounds wrong for some reason.)
(Feets?)
Here's a pdf of my first draft. Feel free to comment.
.
(Feets?)
Here's a pdf of my first draft. Feel free to comment.
.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
The secession resolution: Menick v. Menick, winner take all
Resolved: The constitutions of democratic governments ought to include procedures for secession.
From my original post on this, both O’C and CP seemed to think that I was suggesting that the US would feature in the arguments. I wasn’t clear. I meant that the US couldn’t feature in the arguments, in a decent debate, as the subject really wasn’t up for grabs here.
The discussion on TVFT was good, and illustrated their opposing point of view on the topic, to wit, not that it was a stinkeroo, but that it was rich with possibilities. I don’t think they’ve persuaded me to give it the 10 they were both suggesting (or maybe they were turning it up to 11, which I’m definitely not buying), but they did get me to think again. Still, I have cavils.
Their point is that nations are sometimes accidental political constructs, formed by history or geography alone rather than the other commonalities of a group (language, religion, culture, etc.) that often distinguish a nation. France, in other words, comprises mostly shared-culture Frenchmen, whereas many African nations (and some European) comprise cultural factions at loggerheads. The creation of the governments of these nations can in practice limit the rights of minorities. For those minorities to secure their rights, they may have no alternative but civil disruption unless failsafes are built into the literal government construct to prevent them. One of these, perhaps the best of them, is the ability for discrete groups to be able to secede from the union to protect themselves, an option of peaceable separation rather than potentially violent separation. Eritrea v. Ethiopia is offered as a cautionary example.
The thought is that this resolution will force students to learn about nationalism, and what it means to be a nation. Very true. It will force research into the various African situations, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, etc., the specifics of which, coupled with an inherent understanding of government theory, will provide meat for the affirmative position. The negative will argue as often as not that the lack of applicability across all constitutions refutes the generality of the aff position; i.e., since no general principle applicable to all constitutions can be presented by the off, the rez is proved false and therefore neg wins. Aff can draw on counterarguments that potential aspects of a constitution need not determine the thrust of the constitution, etc., etc., etc.
I think I’ve got that right. In a way, I may have been intuiting the basic core neg in my original argument against this one, and I have a vague feeling that when we tot up the numbers, neg is going to win like a house afire, but that may just be self-serving baloney on my part. In any case, I have seen the light to some extent, but not to the extent of CP and OC. If I were you, I’d listen to the podcast. Draw your own conclusions.
From my original post on this, both O’C and CP seemed to think that I was suggesting that the US would feature in the arguments. I wasn’t clear. I meant that the US couldn’t feature in the arguments, in a decent debate, as the subject really wasn’t up for grabs here.
The discussion on TVFT was good, and illustrated their opposing point of view on the topic, to wit, not that it was a stinkeroo, but that it was rich with possibilities. I don’t think they’ve persuaded me to give it the 10 they were both suggesting (or maybe they were turning it up to 11, which I’m definitely not buying), but they did get me to think again. Still, I have cavils.
Their point is that nations are sometimes accidental political constructs, formed by history or geography alone rather than the other commonalities of a group (language, religion, culture, etc.) that often distinguish a nation. France, in other words, comprises mostly shared-culture Frenchmen, whereas many African nations (and some European) comprise cultural factions at loggerheads. The creation of the governments of these nations can in practice limit the rights of minorities. For those minorities to secure their rights, they may have no alternative but civil disruption unless failsafes are built into the literal government construct to prevent them. One of these, perhaps the best of them, is the ability for discrete groups to be able to secede from the union to protect themselves, an option of peaceable separation rather than potentially violent separation. Eritrea v. Ethiopia is offered as a cautionary example.
The thought is that this resolution will force students to learn about nationalism, and what it means to be a nation. Very true. It will force research into the various African situations, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, etc., the specifics of which, coupled with an inherent understanding of government theory, will provide meat for the affirmative position. The negative will argue as often as not that the lack of applicability across all constitutions refutes the generality of the aff position; i.e., since no general principle applicable to all constitutions can be presented by the off, the rez is proved false and therefore neg wins. Aff can draw on counterarguments that potential aspects of a constitution need not determine the thrust of the constitution, etc., etc., etc.
I think I’ve got that right. In a way, I may have been intuiting the basic core neg in my original argument against this one, and I have a vague feeling that when we tot up the numbers, neg is going to win like a house afire, but that may just be self-serving baloney on my part. In any case, I have seen the light to some extent, but not to the extent of CP and OC. If I were you, I’d listen to the podcast. Draw your own conclusions.
Friday, June 22, 2012
They're back! LD resolutions part two
Let’s look at the rest of them. I’m not sure how the NFL decides the order in which to list them, but I’m just following them.
Resolved: On balance, the privatization of civil services serves the public interest.
What? I have little or no idea what this one is supposed to be about. Presumably it’s meant to be a thrust at limiting government, but civil services is an awfully broad phrase, and to be honest, I don’t recall anyone lately saying, Gosh darn it, I wish someone would privatize them thar civil services. Although guess the government is cheaper if there’s less of it. Whatever. As a debate topic, this would be all over the map. By the time any agreement about it comes along, it will be over. As for underlying value, anything the government does is civil service, isn’t it? Road building. The FDA. The DMV. You name it. Where’s the core moral/ethic business? Where’s the philosophy? There’s a reason Ron Paul isn’t the designated nominee…
Rating: 0
Resolved: On balance, labor unions in the United States are beneficial.
This is a perfectly fine resolution for Public Forum. For LD, there’s very little real philosophical meat. It’s a question of politics and business and economics, not of morals or ethics. It can certainly be argued, but why? The word “are” at least limits it to present day. I can’t wait to watch them debate this one in Wisconsin.
Rating: 2
Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee universal health care for its citizens.
Again, a fine resolution for PF with absolutely no LD underpinnings. It’s your politics vs my politics, and here I’ll agree with George Washington that parties just don’t work well.
Rating: 2
Resolved: Oppressive government is more desirable than no government.
I can hear the winds of the good old days blowing down the highway. This was a classic in its day, on so many counts. It’s about the old-time social contract stuff that used to be the meat and potatoes of LD, plus since both sides are bad, you have to run the less bad. On top of that, the advocacy is clear: either you’re one side or the other. 20 years ago this was the most beloved topic of all time. It was a serious contender for the northeast Modest Novice topic; we went with civil disobedience mostly because of the two negatives of this one, which seemed a little sophisticated for newbies. If you want to push LD back a generation or two, vote for this one for Jan-Feb. In the best of all possible worlds, this would be the NatNats topic.
Rating: Depends on the months. 8 for Sept-Oct or Nov-Dec, 6 for Jan-Feb (from a $ircuit bias), 10 for Mar-Apr or NatNats.
Resolved: Rehabilitation ought to be valued above retribution in the United States criminal justice system.
Another classic. This question is ever argued and never settled, and it forces one to draw on canonical texts and thinking. Downside is the interpretation on the neg that rehab ought to be valued the same, which is a Mickey Mouse approach if you ask me, but it will be popular nowadays no doubt, because it’s not illegit, just weak. (When did we arrive in a world where the best defense is not an offense but instead a bland demurral from the other guy's offense?) I don’t like this for newbies because it’s a bit off the mainstream of old-fashioned political philosophy, but it wouldn’t hurt them. Again, putting this in Jan-Feb would make $ircuit heads spin like crazy. Still, I like this topic, and have every other time we’ve debated it.
Rating: 7
So, overall, not a bad list, yet again. A couple of stinkers, no doubt one of which will get through, some oldies but goodies, and some nice new ideas. That's pretty good considering the ridiculous method with which NFL comes up with these things. We've talked about it often on TVFT, and no one inventing a system would invent this system. But the folks on the committee, nevertheless, do a great job under the circumstances. Now it's all up to the voters.
.
Resolved: On balance, the privatization of civil services serves the public interest.
What? I have little or no idea what this one is supposed to be about. Presumably it’s meant to be a thrust at limiting government, but civil services is an awfully broad phrase, and to be honest, I don’t recall anyone lately saying, Gosh darn it, I wish someone would privatize them thar civil services. Although guess the government is cheaper if there’s less of it. Whatever. As a debate topic, this would be all over the map. By the time any agreement about it comes along, it will be over. As for underlying value, anything the government does is civil service, isn’t it? Road building. The FDA. The DMV. You name it. Where’s the core moral/ethic business? Where’s the philosophy? There’s a reason Ron Paul isn’t the designated nominee…
Rating: 0
Resolved: On balance, labor unions in the United States are beneficial.
This is a perfectly fine resolution for Public Forum. For LD, there’s very little real philosophical meat. It’s a question of politics and business and economics, not of morals or ethics. It can certainly be argued, but why? The word “are” at least limits it to present day. I can’t wait to watch them debate this one in Wisconsin.
Rating: 2
Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee universal health care for its citizens.
Again, a fine resolution for PF with absolutely no LD underpinnings. It’s your politics vs my politics, and here I’ll agree with George Washington that parties just don’t work well.
Rating: 2
Resolved: Oppressive government is more desirable than no government.
I can hear the winds of the good old days blowing down the highway. This was a classic in its day, on so many counts. It’s about the old-time social contract stuff that used to be the meat and potatoes of LD, plus since both sides are bad, you have to run the less bad. On top of that, the advocacy is clear: either you’re one side or the other. 20 years ago this was the most beloved topic of all time. It was a serious contender for the northeast Modest Novice topic; we went with civil disobedience mostly because of the two negatives of this one, which seemed a little sophisticated for newbies. If you want to push LD back a generation or two, vote for this one for Jan-Feb. In the best of all possible worlds, this would be the NatNats topic.
Rating: Depends on the months. 8 for Sept-Oct or Nov-Dec, 6 for Jan-Feb (from a $ircuit bias), 10 for Mar-Apr or NatNats.
Resolved: Rehabilitation ought to be valued above retribution in the United States criminal justice system.
Another classic. This question is ever argued and never settled, and it forces one to draw on canonical texts and thinking. Downside is the interpretation on the neg that rehab ought to be valued the same, which is a Mickey Mouse approach if you ask me, but it will be popular nowadays no doubt, because it’s not illegit, just weak. (When did we arrive in a world where the best defense is not an offense but instead a bland demurral from the other guy's offense?) I don’t like this for newbies because it’s a bit off the mainstream of old-fashioned political philosophy, but it wouldn’t hurt them. Again, putting this in Jan-Feb would make $ircuit heads spin like crazy. Still, I like this topic, and have every other time we’ve debated it.
Rating: 7
So, overall, not a bad list, yet again. A couple of stinkers, no doubt one of which will get through, some oldies but goodies, and some nice new ideas. That's pretty good considering the ridiculous method with which NFL comes up with these things. We've talked about it often on TVFT, and no one inventing a system would invent this system. But the folks on the committee, nevertheless, do a great job under the circumstances. Now it's all up to the voters.
.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
They’re here! The new LD resolutions, that is.
Every year ten possible resolutions for the next season are posted after NatNats, then (a handful of) NFL members vote for their favorites in given time slots. Then everyone complains. But the VCA is well aware that around here, we don’t wait to complain until the last minute. We do it at the very first opportunity.
Let’s take a look.
Resolved: The constitutions of democratic governments ought to include procedures for secession.
I personally think of this one as sort of ridiculous, since I vaguely remember something called the Civil War in the US which allegedly put an end to secessionist ideas except for people who have two years of food, a vast collection of weaponry and a statue of the Holy Wingnut in their basement. Are we supposed to argue against the Union? What is this? 1863? For non-US, let’s see. How many countries even comprise entities capable of seceding, for one thing? The point of nation-ness is that it is absolute; suggesting that it isn’t, or shouldn’t be? Why? Anyhow, what particular moral/ethical issue is at stake here? I guess this is thought of as a pre-nup for the social contract, but inherent in democratic polity is that the government represent the people, end of story (or end of government). After all, Hobbes rationalized regicide as an acceptable social action in certain situations…
Rating (scale of 1 to 10): 0
Resolved: When making admissions decisions, public colleges and universities in the United States ought to favor members of historically disadvantaged groups.
SCOTUS said no to this, but that doesn’t make them right. I think SDO’Connor wrote the decision, if I recollect correctly. Anyhow, it’s an okay topic, asking the question whether present day populations carry some responsibility for the actions of previous populations, given that those actions can be socially determinate. On the other hand, I’m not excited about it because it seems sort of narrow, as written. And it allows minority vs non-minority debaters to get a little too dirty and potentially ad hominem.
Rating: 3
Resolved: United States Supreme Court justices should be subject to term limits.
This one is wonderfully nutty: did anyone read the SCOTUS article a week or two ago in the New Yorker? Get it now, just in case this one goes live. Anyhow, what we’re addressing here is very specifically the power of the court, which as it stands now is unbound aside from its inherent need for an internal majority. So the underlying subject is governmental power, and the voice therein of the population. Obviously as it stands now, the Prez picks ‘em according to partisan politics, Congress approves/disapproves them when they pretend not to even know there is such a thing as partisan politics, and then once they get in they put the wingnuts to shame with their unabashed partisan politics. I think this one will be fun, mostly.
Rating: 8
Resolved: The United States is justified in intervening in the internal political processes of other countries to attempt to stop human rights abuses.
Let’s see. The wording, because of all the clauses and limitations, means that people will actually have to argue whether the US is justified in intervening in the internal political processes of other countries to attempt to stop human rights abuses. Right. The point is, you can’t try to push the rez off the track with some wording mumbo jumbo. Normally I demur from wordiness, but here it's necessary. The rez requires an underlying argument that the US has/hasn’t international supra-sovereignty responsibilities (or that everyone does, and simply that the US has the wherewithal), and it requires that you know about the hows of intervention and the wheres of human rights abuses. Can you say Jan-Feb? My only demurral on it is its inherent complexity for novice debaters.
Rating: 9
Resolved: In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory.
Voting is compulsory in Australia, for example, and much of South America. The rez broaches the basic areas of civic responsibility, social contract, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. Plus, it’s only 8 words. In other words, absolutely perfect, especially for Sept-Oct or NatNats.
Rating: 10 (5 for Jan-Feb).
The next five next time.
.
Let’s take a look.
Resolved: The constitutions of democratic governments ought to include procedures for secession.
I personally think of this one as sort of ridiculous, since I vaguely remember something called the Civil War in the US which allegedly put an end to secessionist ideas except for people who have two years of food, a vast collection of weaponry and a statue of the Holy Wingnut in their basement. Are we supposed to argue against the Union? What is this? 1863? For non-US, let’s see. How many countries even comprise entities capable of seceding, for one thing? The point of nation-ness is that it is absolute; suggesting that it isn’t, or shouldn’t be? Why? Anyhow, what particular moral/ethical issue is at stake here? I guess this is thought of as a pre-nup for the social contract, but inherent in democratic polity is that the government represent the people, end of story (or end of government). After all, Hobbes rationalized regicide as an acceptable social action in certain situations…
Rating (scale of 1 to 10): 0
Resolved: When making admissions decisions, public colleges and universities in the United States ought to favor members of historically disadvantaged groups.
SCOTUS said no to this, but that doesn’t make them right. I think SDO’Connor wrote the decision, if I recollect correctly. Anyhow, it’s an okay topic, asking the question whether present day populations carry some responsibility for the actions of previous populations, given that those actions can be socially determinate. On the other hand, I’m not excited about it because it seems sort of narrow, as written. And it allows minority vs non-minority debaters to get a little too dirty and potentially ad hominem.
Rating: 3
Resolved: United States Supreme Court justices should be subject to term limits.
This one is wonderfully nutty: did anyone read the SCOTUS article a week or two ago in the New Yorker? Get it now, just in case this one goes live. Anyhow, what we’re addressing here is very specifically the power of the court, which as it stands now is unbound aside from its inherent need for an internal majority. So the underlying subject is governmental power, and the voice therein of the population. Obviously as it stands now, the Prez picks ‘em according to partisan politics, Congress approves/disapproves them when they pretend not to even know there is such a thing as partisan politics, and then once they get in they put the wingnuts to shame with their unabashed partisan politics. I think this one will be fun, mostly.
Rating: 8
Resolved: The United States is justified in intervening in the internal political processes of other countries to attempt to stop human rights abuses.
Let’s see. The wording, because of all the clauses and limitations, means that people will actually have to argue whether the US is justified in intervening in the internal political processes of other countries to attempt to stop human rights abuses. Right. The point is, you can’t try to push the rez off the track with some wording mumbo jumbo. Normally I demur from wordiness, but here it's necessary. The rez requires an underlying argument that the US has/hasn’t international supra-sovereignty responsibilities (or that everyone does, and simply that the US has the wherewithal), and it requires that you know about the hows of intervention and the wheres of human rights abuses. Can you say Jan-Feb? My only demurral on it is its inherent complexity for novice debaters.
Rating: 9
Resolved: In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory.
Voting is compulsory in Australia, for example, and much of South America. The rez broaches the basic areas of civic responsibility, social contract, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. Plus, it’s only 8 words. In other words, absolutely perfect, especially for Sept-Oct or NatNats.
Rating: 10 (5 for Jan-Feb).
The next five next time.
.
Friday, April 20, 2012
I wouldn't want to judge a round that would want me as a judge
My favorite moment at NDCA was semis. The problem was, we were short a judge. If there’s one thing the group needs to do in the future, it’s insure that there’s a slue of neutrals for late outrounds. In the event, we only had two such floaters, and they were conflicted by their work with one of the teams.
Nails were bitten.
On Sunday night I planned the two semis panels based on hopes and dreams, essentially praying that a couple of people would be there who had no reason to be there. Unfortunately, because they had no reason to be there, they weren’t. At which point, choice of judges devolved to the warm bodies present. I had one backup, and he went right in. And then there was one more hole. The good news was that a judge who had been preffed was available; the bad news was, both teams had struck him. Well, at least it was mutual.
I could not overlook the fact that another potential judge was available. Yep. There was always me…
So I strolled into the round where the two debaters were waiting, and gave it to them straight. They could have the judge they both struck, who, in fact, was an expert policy judge, or they could have me. The benefits of the former, I explained, was that he might understand some of what they were saying. The benefits of the latter, as far as I could tell, were nonexistent. After a little consulting of paradigms, they chose the policy judge. A neutral party who observed this little interplay claimed that I did sort of use my innate persuasiveness to push them in that direction. But let’s face it. The very last time I judged an LD round was, mirabile dictu, the semis round at NDCA 2011. In that, to me, legendary contest, I awarded my ballot to the debater who uttered the most words that I understood—words, not sentences. If I remember correctly, I think the number was 16, but it could have been less. I mean, if you were on the $ircuit, would you want me for a judge if you could avoid it? I know I wouldn’t. I would argue till the cows come home that there is a role for judges like me, but not in a national semis round at this level. I don’t have the technical chops for it, and why should the debaters whose entire tournament has been based on their technical skills suddenly have to forego them?
Oh, yeah. I also managed to duck out of judging. This was not my specific goal, but no action is so horrible that some good doesn’t come out of it.
As I say, this needs to be avoided in the future, and the only way is either hire muchos judges or, as TOC does, set aside late-round panels in advance of the contest, so that people are there who need to be there.
Nails were bitten.
On Sunday night I planned the two semis panels based on hopes and dreams, essentially praying that a couple of people would be there who had no reason to be there. Unfortunately, because they had no reason to be there, they weren’t. At which point, choice of judges devolved to the warm bodies present. I had one backup, and he went right in. And then there was one more hole. The good news was that a judge who had been preffed was available; the bad news was, both teams had struck him. Well, at least it was mutual.
I could not overlook the fact that another potential judge was available. Yep. There was always me…
So I strolled into the round where the two debaters were waiting, and gave it to them straight. They could have the judge they both struck, who, in fact, was an expert policy judge, or they could have me. The benefits of the former, I explained, was that he might understand some of what they were saying. The benefits of the latter, as far as I could tell, were nonexistent. After a little consulting of paradigms, they chose the policy judge. A neutral party who observed this little interplay claimed that I did sort of use my innate persuasiveness to push them in that direction. But let’s face it. The very last time I judged an LD round was, mirabile dictu, the semis round at NDCA 2011. In that, to me, legendary contest, I awarded my ballot to the debater who uttered the most words that I understood—words, not sentences. If I remember correctly, I think the number was 16, but it could have been less. I mean, if you were on the $ircuit, would you want me for a judge if you could avoid it? I know I wouldn’t. I would argue till the cows come home that there is a role for judges like me, but not in a national semis round at this level. I don’t have the technical chops for it, and why should the debaters whose entire tournament has been based on their technical skills suddenly have to forego them?
Oh, yeah. I also managed to duck out of judging. This was not my specific goal, but no action is so horrible that some good doesn’t come out of it.
As I say, this needs to be avoided in the future, and the only way is either hire muchos judges or, as TOC does, set aside late-round panels in advance of the contest, so that people are there who need to be there.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Just as an aside...
Finally something on VB that I not only understand, but agree with, Adam Torson's article on humility.
Everyone in debate should read this, and act accordingly. 'Nuff said.
Everyone in debate should read this, and act accordingly. 'Nuff said.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
No one understands MJP, alas
How about everyone gets three strikes, all judges publish a paradigm and no mjp. Oh wait we cant do that because that would force students to gasp!!! A-D-A-P-T
And if i have to slow down and make reasonable arguments all that money i spend on camp is wasted.
Well, I’ve already addressed paradigms. Read a few some day, preferably when you are suffering from insomnia…
But this comment falls into the realm of really not understanding debate. Does the writer really believe that there is a circuit world where debaters don’t adapt? First of all, how many debaters only argue at elite national events in front of elite national judges? Even if such a creature does exist, why would anyone assume that circuit judges are identical, in the same paragraph where it is assumed that paradigms are a good thing? At the level of argumentation about pre-emptive thises and off-case thatas, circuit judges are not all in complete agreement. If you can stay awake, read those paradigms. I don’t suggest that people stop writing paradigms if they want to, nor that debaters ignore them. Quite the contrary. I’m just saying that to get the great MJP unwashed into the fold, let’s simplify on a tournament-by-tournament basis. But the point here is that all debaters pretty much find themselves regularly in situations where they either adapt or lose, and smart debaters adapt. Circuit debaters do slow down and concentrate on resolutional rather than technical arguments. I see it all the time. In the average tournament, only a handful of the judges are really anyone’s 1s, which means you’re going to put in people who are not your style in the 1s and, of course, the 2s, and you’re going to get them. If a tournament has 70 debaters, it might have 20 judges. I mean, really, you’re going to have to adapt to someone sooner or later, MJP or no MJP, strikes or no strikes. MJP means that, especially on the bubbles, you’ll have your most preferred judges for both sides. It does not mean a circuit judge, it means agreement. If one debater is circuit and the other trad, it’s hello adaptation in front of a 2 or a 3! And when circuit debaters do a round robin, where a sizeable portion of the field is alums or coaches or even members of the school board? Well, my friend, they do A-D-A-P-T, and the good ones do it well.
There are ways of solving issues, and ways of demonizing those on the other side of the issue. Don’t fall into the trap of the demonizers. That’s what most people who don’t believe in MJP do, but by demonizing it (essentially by claiming that it is the death of LD by the promotion of homicidal judges) and ignoring it, they are doing way more to harm the activity than the people who are simply using the tool at hand. If all the nutjobs take up using iPhones, if you claim that iPhones are for nutjobs and refuse to use one, sooner or later that will be true. Understand logic before making your claims. My argument, which I’ve been making at great length, is that everyone using MJP is a better safeguard against a uniform (and highly technical, camp-driven) direction of LD than not. MJP is about 2 years old around here in LD; all the problems people are claiming about LD are way older.
I will grant that camps mostly promote highly technical, fast styles, however. Camps promote what wins; they make their money on their reputations, and their reputations on the successes of their graduates. If something else starts winning…
And if i have to slow down and make reasonable arguments all that money i spend on camp is wasted.
Well, I’ve already addressed paradigms. Read a few some day, preferably when you are suffering from insomnia…
But this comment falls into the realm of really not understanding debate. Does the writer really believe that there is a circuit world where debaters don’t adapt? First of all, how many debaters only argue at elite national events in front of elite national judges? Even if such a creature does exist, why would anyone assume that circuit judges are identical, in the same paragraph where it is assumed that paradigms are a good thing? At the level of argumentation about pre-emptive thises and off-case thatas, circuit judges are not all in complete agreement. If you can stay awake, read those paradigms. I don’t suggest that people stop writing paradigms if they want to, nor that debaters ignore them. Quite the contrary. I’m just saying that to get the great MJP unwashed into the fold, let’s simplify on a tournament-by-tournament basis. But the point here is that all debaters pretty much find themselves regularly in situations where they either adapt or lose, and smart debaters adapt. Circuit debaters do slow down and concentrate on resolutional rather than technical arguments. I see it all the time. In the average tournament, only a handful of the judges are really anyone’s 1s, which means you’re going to put in people who are not your style in the 1s and, of course, the 2s, and you’re going to get them. If a tournament has 70 debaters, it might have 20 judges. I mean, really, you’re going to have to adapt to someone sooner or later, MJP or no MJP, strikes or no strikes. MJP means that, especially on the bubbles, you’ll have your most preferred judges for both sides. It does not mean a circuit judge, it means agreement. If one debater is circuit and the other trad, it’s hello adaptation in front of a 2 or a 3! And when circuit debaters do a round robin, where a sizeable portion of the field is alums or coaches or even members of the school board? Well, my friend, they do A-D-A-P-T, and the good ones do it well.
There are ways of solving issues, and ways of demonizing those on the other side of the issue. Don’t fall into the trap of the demonizers. That’s what most people who don’t believe in MJP do, but by demonizing it (essentially by claiming that it is the death of LD by the promotion of homicidal judges) and ignoring it, they are doing way more to harm the activity than the people who are simply using the tool at hand. If all the nutjobs take up using iPhones, if you claim that iPhones are for nutjobs and refuse to use one, sooner or later that will be true. Understand logic before making your claims. My argument, which I’ve been making at great length, is that everyone using MJP is a better safeguard against a uniform (and highly technical, camp-driven) direction of LD than not. MJP is about 2 years old around here in LD; all the problems people are claiming about LD are way older.
I will grant that camps mostly promote highly technical, fast styles, however. Camps promote what wins; they make their money on their reputations, and their reputations on the successes of their graduates. If something else starts winning…
Monday, March 19, 2012
Give me twenty hours, and I'll give you my paradigm
This whole MJP issue intrigues me. Read the comments on the last post.
Anonymous, fresh from occupying…something, makes an interesting point. A lot of judges don’t publish paradigms, so when it comes time to rank them, it’s a crapshoot. Absolutely. Then again, if you’ve ever read a paradigm, you will be up to your eyeballs in crap, and will want to shoot yourself. Who invented the paradigm, anyhow?
Here’s the thing about paradigms. You take a bunch of young folks who think they are the masters of the universe and ask them to talk about this mastery, and throw into it that they’re all language addicts, and they will go on and on forever. There are paradigms out there that make War and Peace look like a one-liner. The idea that all this content is somehow predictive of a judge’s actions in a round is to believe that that a meteorologist can predict the weather without actually knowing the atmospheric conditions of the spot where he’s predicting. Until you’ve heard what someone says in a round, you can’t know what your reaction is unless you’re an automaton who only reacts to the exact words exactly the same way every time. You’re not. Get over it. Even the same case content, in the forge of an actual round, will vary depending on responses, emphases, presentation, etc.
By the same token, there are judges without paradigms. It’s almost impossible for a tournament to enforce that a paradigm be published for each judge simply because who has the time to track that down? And even if you do, is it that important? Given the nature of most paradigms, which make what a bull does in the woods look like the God’s truth, probably not.
Still, we want to rank, right? I’m thinking that all a ranker really wants to know, and needs to know, is a couple of things. How thin are you going to slice this sucker? I mean, primarily all you want to know is if your judge is a circuit type or an old fart. Anything beyond that is fantasy, because circuit types will judge on non-circuit material occasionally, and an old fart who hates theory will pick up based on theory. Complex paradigms are not predictive, but the general nature of the judge is: in general, old farts want old fartness and circuiteers want circuitness. That’s all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
I suggest that instead of putting in the categories we have now for judges, which usually ask for a measure of experience, we put in a simple three categories:
Circuit judge
Traditional judge
Newcomer
Do you really need to know anything else? And they are completely value-neutral; we don't make any of them sound better or worse than any other. Of course, we insist on all judges being put into one of these categories in the pre-registration. They may, of course, have those complex paradigms as well, and you could consult them to your heart’s desire, but if you only knew this much about the judges you don’t know personally, you would know an awful lot. Add to this that you will also know what school they are from, and you probably have some idea what the general approach of that school is. Say a school is notorious for bringing an army of experienced parent judges. They would all be categorized as traditional judges from that particular school. That is more than enough information to rank them.
I’m going to do this next time I have a chance. I think it makes a lot of sense.
We’ll talk about the other issues from our Occupy Debate Street guy next time. They’re good issues to discuss, as is Pajamas’s.
Anonymous, fresh from occupying…something, makes an interesting point. A lot of judges don’t publish paradigms, so when it comes time to rank them, it’s a crapshoot. Absolutely. Then again, if you’ve ever read a paradigm, you will be up to your eyeballs in crap, and will want to shoot yourself. Who invented the paradigm, anyhow?
Here’s the thing about paradigms. You take a bunch of young folks who think they are the masters of the universe and ask them to talk about this mastery, and throw into it that they’re all language addicts, and they will go on and on forever. There are paradigms out there that make War and Peace look like a one-liner. The idea that all this content is somehow predictive of a judge’s actions in a round is to believe that that a meteorologist can predict the weather without actually knowing the atmospheric conditions of the spot where he’s predicting. Until you’ve heard what someone says in a round, you can’t know what your reaction is unless you’re an automaton who only reacts to the exact words exactly the same way every time. You’re not. Get over it. Even the same case content, in the forge of an actual round, will vary depending on responses, emphases, presentation, etc.
By the same token, there are judges without paradigms. It’s almost impossible for a tournament to enforce that a paradigm be published for each judge simply because who has the time to track that down? And even if you do, is it that important? Given the nature of most paradigms, which make what a bull does in the woods look like the God’s truth, probably not.
Still, we want to rank, right? I’m thinking that all a ranker really wants to know, and needs to know, is a couple of things. How thin are you going to slice this sucker? I mean, primarily all you want to know is if your judge is a circuit type or an old fart. Anything beyond that is fantasy, because circuit types will judge on non-circuit material occasionally, and an old fart who hates theory will pick up based on theory. Complex paradigms are not predictive, but the general nature of the judge is: in general, old farts want old fartness and circuiteers want circuitness. That’s all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
I suggest that instead of putting in the categories we have now for judges, which usually ask for a measure of experience, we put in a simple three categories:
Circuit judge
Traditional judge
Newcomer
Do you really need to know anything else? And they are completely value-neutral; we don't make any of them sound better or worse than any other. Of course, we insist on all judges being put into one of these categories in the pre-registration. They may, of course, have those complex paradigms as well, and you could consult them to your heart’s desire, but if you only knew this much about the judges you don’t know personally, you would know an awful lot. Add to this that you will also know what school they are from, and you probably have some idea what the general approach of that school is. Say a school is notorious for bringing an army of experienced parent judges. They would all be categorized as traditional judges from that particular school. That is more than enough information to rank them.
I’m going to do this next time I have a chance. I think it makes a lot of sense.
We’ll talk about the other issues from our Occupy Debate Street guy next time. They’re good issues to discuss, as is Pajamas’s.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Joey goes maverick
From the comments:
Lets say that in september of next year, a kid joins the debate team. Lets call this mythical kid, Joey.
He a smart hard working kid, who is lets say a junior. His coach, is a brand new teacher who has just been assigned to coach the debate team, and is the sole coach. The kid, being new, did not go to an institute, and never will because his parents do not have the money. He certainly cant get a private coach. But otherwise, we have a talented kid. Joey is a well rounded kid who likes debate, but also is involved in other activties, say he plays on the baseball team.
In 1995, that kid could have gone as far as his talent and work ethic would have taken him. Yes, there would have been a learning curve but once he gained some experience, his sucess probably would have been dictated by his abilities. The lack of a summer institte, asst. coaches, and the fact that he does another activity outside of debate, would not necessarily preclude him from local or national success.
There is a Joey at every high school in this country.
Would someone under those fairly common circumstances succeed in the LD of today?
Define success.
One of the things that I’m not taking into consideration is the world of LD outside of the northeast and the $ircuit. I can’t speak to what happens in California or Nebraska or Iowa or Texas. For all I know, there may be a broad base of LDers debating like it’s 1995, and they all get together at NatNats to duke it out. (Although in recent memory, the debaters in late rounds at NatNats were mostly $ircuit folks, although they modified their styles for the more general judging pool.) If that’s true, little Joey is all set, unless he moves to the northeast or wants to win TOC.
In the northeast, though, there are few schools that don’t know about, and in LD, to some extent aim for, TOC (although there are some that, in fact, specifically bar it). At the point where, at any tournament, a sizeable number of the debaters are trained at institutes and in their competitive experience often come up against others of that ilk, and where the judges are preferring that style/content and those kids are winning, it is natural that this will be the content/style emulated and that it will eventually dominate. That always happens, no matter what, exactly, the content du jour might be.
And here’s where a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people make a big mistake. If a tournament were not to reward a specific behavior, that behavior would not rule. Look at NatNats. It is not TOC, and even the TOC debaters who attend do not debate as they would at TOC. At invitationals, especially at the colleges, where the field and pool are large, and we offer MJP, the coaches who do not wish to see $ircuit style debate dominate have an opportunity to do something about it. If they put in their preferences, then the judges who are not 19 years old might pick up some bubble rounds and make a difference. When only the $ircuit style is preffed, the $ircuit style will dominate. Simple math. As a general rule, the coaches who are most vocal about the demise of LD when it comes to cocktail party blather, so to speak, are the least likely to use MJP as the tool that it is to turn their opinions into action. Only the most $ircuit influenced schools pref. It’s a fact of life. As MJP extends to more and more tournaments, small and large, the longer coaches believe mistakenly that MJP is the tool of the devil, they will dig a deeper and deeper grave for the styles and content that they themselves prefer.
Next year, where I can, I’m going to send out a long screed on this to get these schmegeggies off their non-MJPing butts and stop blaming the tool that could get them what they want for getting them what they don’t want. I, for one, have often noticed that when I don’t use a spoon to eat my soup, a lot of it ends up in my lap. Non-MJPing coaches are spilling the soup of LD on their laps, with the obvious result that $ircuit styles dominate, and I am forced to resort to ridiculous metaphors to make my point.
Oh, the humanity.
Lets say that in september of next year, a kid joins the debate team. Lets call this mythical kid, Joey.
He a smart hard working kid, who is lets say a junior. His coach, is a brand new teacher who has just been assigned to coach the debate team, and is the sole coach. The kid, being new, did not go to an institute, and never will because his parents do not have the money. He certainly cant get a private coach. But otherwise, we have a talented kid. Joey is a well rounded kid who likes debate, but also is involved in other activties, say he plays on the baseball team.
In 1995, that kid could have gone as far as his talent and work ethic would have taken him. Yes, there would have been a learning curve but once he gained some experience, his sucess probably would have been dictated by his abilities. The lack of a summer institte, asst. coaches, and the fact that he does another activity outside of debate, would not necessarily preclude him from local or national success.
There is a Joey at every high school in this country.
Would someone under those fairly common circumstances succeed in the LD of today?
Define success.
One of the things that I’m not taking into consideration is the world of LD outside of the northeast and the $ircuit. I can’t speak to what happens in California or Nebraska or Iowa or Texas. For all I know, there may be a broad base of LDers debating like it’s 1995, and they all get together at NatNats to duke it out. (Although in recent memory, the debaters in late rounds at NatNats were mostly $ircuit folks, although they modified their styles for the more general judging pool.) If that’s true, little Joey is all set, unless he moves to the northeast or wants to win TOC.
In the northeast, though, there are few schools that don’t know about, and in LD, to some extent aim for, TOC (although there are some that, in fact, specifically bar it). At the point where, at any tournament, a sizeable number of the debaters are trained at institutes and in their competitive experience often come up against others of that ilk, and where the judges are preferring that style/content and those kids are winning, it is natural that this will be the content/style emulated and that it will eventually dominate. That always happens, no matter what, exactly, the content du jour might be.
And here’s where a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people make a big mistake. If a tournament were not to reward a specific behavior, that behavior would not rule. Look at NatNats. It is not TOC, and even the TOC debaters who attend do not debate as they would at TOC. At invitationals, especially at the colleges, where the field and pool are large, and we offer MJP, the coaches who do not wish to see $ircuit style debate dominate have an opportunity to do something about it. If they put in their preferences, then the judges who are not 19 years old might pick up some bubble rounds and make a difference. When only the $ircuit style is preffed, the $ircuit style will dominate. Simple math. As a general rule, the coaches who are most vocal about the demise of LD when it comes to cocktail party blather, so to speak, are the least likely to use MJP as the tool that it is to turn their opinions into action. Only the most $ircuit influenced schools pref. It’s a fact of life. As MJP extends to more and more tournaments, small and large, the longer coaches believe mistakenly that MJP is the tool of the devil, they will dig a deeper and deeper grave for the styles and content that they themselves prefer.
Next year, where I can, I’m going to send out a long screed on this to get these schmegeggies off their non-MJPing butts and stop blaming the tool that could get them what they want for getting them what they don’t want. I, for one, have often noticed that when I don’t use a spoon to eat my soup, a lot of it ends up in my lap. Non-MJPing coaches are spilling the soup of LD on their laps, with the obvious result that $ircuit styles dominate, and I am forced to resort to ridiculous metaphors to make my point.
Oh, the humanity.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
The numbers talk
We chezzed it up last night, and talked a little bit about recruitment, the time for which is now, vis-à-vis the Middle School (which sounds like the school the Hobbits go to). And we looked around and saw that there were exactly three debating Sailors. In my office at the DJ, I have a bunch of pictures of fleets past, and each one has maybe three or four kids from each year. We never set sail for a season with less than a dozen, and often there were more. Now there’s two freshmen and a junior.
Dire straits, indeed. We could, potentially, go out of the debate business. Thank goodness the Speecho-American Sailors remain strong.
A lot of the reason for this is the simple pendulum swing, the ebb and flow of interest in the school community as a whole. But when I look at all the people who have started on the team lately and then dropped out, I realize that, for all practical purposes, it is LD itself that has shooed them away. Contemporary LD, that is, LD as it is practiced hereabouts, LD rounds that they watched when the novices were encouraged to audit a varsity round, or LD rounds that they get trounced in, when sophomores hit seniors in random rounds and couldn’t even flow what was said, much less figure it out.
Let’s make an argument that LD, as it is practiced at the so-called highest levels, is the best possible version of LD vis-à-vis pure debate. That is, if you were going to design the activity and what should go on in a round, this is what you would design. I’m willing to grant that (although I don’t personally believe it). Today’s LD is as good as it gets. Okay, fine. The problem with this version of LD, unfortunately, is that it is extremely high maintenance, absolutely necessitating participation in intensive summer camps and requiring a dedicated staff of private or assistant coaches during the tournament season. And it is conducted in such a fashion that only those who are a part of this high-maintenance process of dedicated coaching can understand what is happening in the round. It is not that the participants are being secretive; far from it. They’re all proselytizers at heart, which is why they got into debate in the first place, and they’re as likely as not to want to bend your ear with their theories and paradigms. They publish their thoughts regularly, they critique ad nauseum explaining their thought processes following a round. This is not a closed cabal, in other words, insofar as admission truly is available to anyone, provided they are willing to participate at the necessary level of intensity.
But that’s the thing. That necessary level of intensity, even if it has arguably made LD as good as it gets, is inherently a turn-off to most people. Most students, when faced with something they feel that they should understand but that they can’t, find other ways to exercise their intelligence. Smart young novices see what is going on and a lot of them decide that it’s just not worth the effort. And it is absolutely true that the effort needed to succeed in LD in 2012 bears no relationship to the effort needed to succeed a decade or more ago. Back then, you could go to institute one summer, but if you didn’t, you’d catch up. Lone wolves could succeed at tournaments by scoping out the activity for themselves, not by hiring a battery of private coaches. People might talk fast, but you could pick up the style after a tournament or two, and the speed bore no relationship to the speed today. And the content of the rounds themselves was predictable based on the nature of the resolution: the odd debater who didn’t argue somehow what the resolution was about was, indeed, an odd debater. People actually affirmed or negated the resolution, in front of an audience that was not limited to former debaters. No one wanted to try to persuade an untrained parent judge back then any more than now, but a trained parent was a reasonable audience that a debater could handle if the debater were any good, and there were plenty of trained parents that started out when their kids were novices and learned what to do and learned it pretty well. Like me.
I blame LD for the size of my team. I’m moving over to PF, which certainly has its flaws, because at least those flaws are flaws that are not detrimental to attracting and retaining membership in a debate team. The flaws of LD, on the other hand, are detrimental to attracting and retaining membership in a debate team. Even granting LD its excellence, it is like policy with its particular excellence: virtue had better be its own reward, because when all is said and done, that’s all you’ve got.
I offer no solutions for this, if one perceives it as a problem. The numbers will speak for themselves. The more I go to tournaments where they’re breaking down the doors to do PF and we’re able to make room for them because of the ever dwindling size of the LD fields, the less I’ll care. We have, fortunately, a general debate activity. Maybe it’s not as pure and good as LD and Policy, and maybe it too will go down the road to perdition, but for the moment, it’s doing the job of grabbing the attention of a large contingent of high school students who are interested in adding forensics to their intellectual bag of tricks.
Thank goodness.
Dire straits, indeed. We could, potentially, go out of the debate business. Thank goodness the Speecho-American Sailors remain strong.
A lot of the reason for this is the simple pendulum swing, the ebb and flow of interest in the school community as a whole. But when I look at all the people who have started on the team lately and then dropped out, I realize that, for all practical purposes, it is LD itself that has shooed them away. Contemporary LD, that is, LD as it is practiced hereabouts, LD rounds that they watched when the novices were encouraged to audit a varsity round, or LD rounds that they get trounced in, when sophomores hit seniors in random rounds and couldn’t even flow what was said, much less figure it out.
Let’s make an argument that LD, as it is practiced at the so-called highest levels, is the best possible version of LD vis-à-vis pure debate. That is, if you were going to design the activity and what should go on in a round, this is what you would design. I’m willing to grant that (although I don’t personally believe it). Today’s LD is as good as it gets. Okay, fine. The problem with this version of LD, unfortunately, is that it is extremely high maintenance, absolutely necessitating participation in intensive summer camps and requiring a dedicated staff of private or assistant coaches during the tournament season. And it is conducted in such a fashion that only those who are a part of this high-maintenance process of dedicated coaching can understand what is happening in the round. It is not that the participants are being secretive; far from it. They’re all proselytizers at heart, which is why they got into debate in the first place, and they’re as likely as not to want to bend your ear with their theories and paradigms. They publish their thoughts regularly, they critique ad nauseum explaining their thought processes following a round. This is not a closed cabal, in other words, insofar as admission truly is available to anyone, provided they are willing to participate at the necessary level of intensity.
But that’s the thing. That necessary level of intensity, even if it has arguably made LD as good as it gets, is inherently a turn-off to most people. Most students, when faced with something they feel that they should understand but that they can’t, find other ways to exercise their intelligence. Smart young novices see what is going on and a lot of them decide that it’s just not worth the effort. And it is absolutely true that the effort needed to succeed in LD in 2012 bears no relationship to the effort needed to succeed a decade or more ago. Back then, you could go to institute one summer, but if you didn’t, you’d catch up. Lone wolves could succeed at tournaments by scoping out the activity for themselves, not by hiring a battery of private coaches. People might talk fast, but you could pick up the style after a tournament or two, and the speed bore no relationship to the speed today. And the content of the rounds themselves was predictable based on the nature of the resolution: the odd debater who didn’t argue somehow what the resolution was about was, indeed, an odd debater. People actually affirmed or negated the resolution, in front of an audience that was not limited to former debaters. No one wanted to try to persuade an untrained parent judge back then any more than now, but a trained parent was a reasonable audience that a debater could handle if the debater were any good, and there were plenty of trained parents that started out when their kids were novices and learned what to do and learned it pretty well. Like me.
I blame LD for the size of my team. I’m moving over to PF, which certainly has its flaws, because at least those flaws are flaws that are not detrimental to attracting and retaining membership in a debate team. The flaws of LD, on the other hand, are detrimental to attracting and retaining membership in a debate team. Even granting LD its excellence, it is like policy with its particular excellence: virtue had better be its own reward, because when all is said and done, that’s all you’ve got.
I offer no solutions for this, if one perceives it as a problem. The numbers will speak for themselves. The more I go to tournaments where they’re breaking down the doors to do PF and we’re able to make room for them because of the ever dwindling size of the LD fields, the less I’ll care. We have, fortunately, a general debate activity. Maybe it’s not as pure and good as LD and Policy, and maybe it too will go down the road to perdition, but for the moment, it’s doing the job of grabbing the attention of a large contingent of high school students who are interested in adding forensics to their intellectual bag of tricks.
Thank goodness.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Grumble grumble grumble
I read these LD essays on WTF, and I have no idea what they’re talking about. Of itself, this wouldn’t normally bother me, because there’s plenty of things in the world I have no idea about, but in this case, you’d think at least I’d be interested enough to want to understand them. But I’m not. I’m not putting down the writers here, because they seem to know their stuff. It’s the content. They’re writing about things that have nothing to do even remotely with what is supposedly the content of the rounds. Why even bother to have resolutions, if the core of your argument is that you ought to win because you’re aff or neg, on the basis of some rhetorical observation/analysis unrelated to content? Has LD really gone this far off the track? If this stuff is what’s really happening in rounds, I have to admit that I just don’t care.
All right. You’ll accuse me of being a dinosaur, and there is certainly some reason why the image at the top of this page is what it is. And I’m sure you can provide all kinds of analysis why this is good material for the activity. But the way I see it, the ultimate extension of your case is that LD is now no different from automobile mechanics. It’s entirely about the workings of a machine qua machine workings, and not at all about driving around from place to place. Me, I’m more of a traveler. Then again, I would posit that being knowledgeable about the various topics—targeted killing, domestic violence, etc.—is more educational than being knowledgeable about argumentation per se. These days it seems that a minimal amount of effort goes into studying the topic area specifics, and a lot of effort goes into studying how to argue the topic area generalities. The result? Meh.
Meanwhile, there is a problem on the PF side, where all we’re supposed to have is the resolution, and no overarching/underlying value proposition. April’s topic is mandatory vaccinations. The problem here is that the science has pretty much sorted itself out, and the nutters, if they haven’t gone to ground, don’t have any science to support them anymore (because, well, they never did). Which means that one has the numbers of this and that on either side, to be weighed out on a CBA, but nothing meaningful to tie it into. When this was an LD topic, you could argue the justice or morality of forcing populations to do something, and tie it into an ethical framework of some sort (and I’m using the word framework here in the normal sense of the word, not the LD sense, which is, I gather, itself no longer clearly defined). In other words, I would want to argue what is right and wrong about vaccinations deontologically, but I am prohibited from that by the nature of PF itself. I can only weigh consequences, even when those consequences are virtually identical, or non-comparable, because first, no framework, and second, the language of basic ethics is not inherent in the language of PF, as it once was in LD. Sigh.
So what does one do in all of this? Well, if all I’m able to do is weigh which side has the most flaws, modern-day LD is the clear winner/loser. It’s arcane and progressively limits itself to a smaller audience at its perceived highest levels. It may break out of this—it has changed dramatically a number of times in its history—or it may just solidify. PF, on the other hand, remains generally accessible, which as its sole virtue (if it is its sole virtue) is a damned good one. It might not be as classically sophisticated rhetorically as LD, but I’ll go back to the metaphor above: when it comes to car races, the auto mechanics are absolutely essential, but it’s the drivers who get the fans and the glory.
(Okay, it’s not the best metaphor, but members of the VCA are used to that by now.)
All right. You’ll accuse me of being a dinosaur, and there is certainly some reason why the image at the top of this page is what it is. And I’m sure you can provide all kinds of analysis why this is good material for the activity. But the way I see it, the ultimate extension of your case is that LD is now no different from automobile mechanics. It’s entirely about the workings of a machine qua machine workings, and not at all about driving around from place to place. Me, I’m more of a traveler. Then again, I would posit that being knowledgeable about the various topics—targeted killing, domestic violence, etc.—is more educational than being knowledgeable about argumentation per se. These days it seems that a minimal amount of effort goes into studying the topic area specifics, and a lot of effort goes into studying how to argue the topic area generalities. The result? Meh.
Meanwhile, there is a problem on the PF side, where all we’re supposed to have is the resolution, and no overarching/underlying value proposition. April’s topic is mandatory vaccinations. The problem here is that the science has pretty much sorted itself out, and the nutters, if they haven’t gone to ground, don’t have any science to support them anymore (because, well, they never did). Which means that one has the numbers of this and that on either side, to be weighed out on a CBA, but nothing meaningful to tie it into. When this was an LD topic, you could argue the justice or morality of forcing populations to do something, and tie it into an ethical framework of some sort (and I’m using the word framework here in the normal sense of the word, not the LD sense, which is, I gather, itself no longer clearly defined). In other words, I would want to argue what is right and wrong about vaccinations deontologically, but I am prohibited from that by the nature of PF itself. I can only weigh consequences, even when those consequences are virtually identical, or non-comparable, because first, no framework, and second, the language of basic ethics is not inherent in the language of PF, as it once was in LD. Sigh.
So what does one do in all of this? Well, if all I’m able to do is weigh which side has the most flaws, modern-day LD is the clear winner/loser. It’s arcane and progressively limits itself to a smaller audience at its perceived highest levels. It may break out of this—it has changed dramatically a number of times in its history—or it may just solidify. PF, on the other hand, remains generally accessible, which as its sole virtue (if it is its sole virtue) is a damned good one. It might not be as classically sophisticated rhetorically as LD, but I’ll go back to the metaphor above: when it comes to car races, the auto mechanics are absolutely essential, but it’s the drivers who get the fans and the glory.
(Okay, it’s not the best metaphor, but members of the VCA are used to that by now.)
Thursday, March 08, 2012
The end of the eleven top ten
I look at the new iPad and have no interest; my good Republican cloth coat original iPad still does the job perfectly well. No wonder my LD list seems so out-of-date.
4. Fast thinking
You have to be able to think fast, both in CX and when prepping rebuttals. Preparation in advance of a round, and remembering the responses you've already developed -- rather than creating them on the spot -- is the best approach because it requires that you save your fast thinking for the unexpected, while using your memory for the predictable.
This one is interesting. For lots of debaters once upon a time, responding to arguments meant, for all practical purposes, making something up on the spot. Over the years we’ve evolved into finding the response on your computer (not true when this was written). Fast thinking is still required, but the skill is totally different. Before it was fast creative thinking, now it’s fast recalling. You know you’ve got the response there somewhere; you’ve just got to find it. This is actually a good skill, learning to organize in such a way that when you need something, you can find it. The way this is worded wouldn’t require much if any rewriting for PF.
3. Time management
Use your all time in a round correctly. Your constructives should be timed perfectly. 1ARs should be half and half Aff and Neg (although some varsity think 1:30/1:30 + 1 for V/C analysis, overviews, underviews, middleviews, views of the lake from the cabin, the view from tab, a dim view of the proceedings as a whole). NRs should end with a minute or two of crystallization, while 2ARs should be all crystallization. Use all your prep time, even if it's only to take a deep breath.
Well, when was the last time you heard a 2AR that was all crystallization? Nowadays they just replay all the arguments and give you 27 sufficient and independent reasons to affirm as if they really believe there could be such a number. Judges buy into the pretense, presumably because they get caught up in the magic. Dream on. Still, voting issues are required…
Anyhow, using time efficiently is always important; this can be easily revised for PF rounds, although the emphasis on using prep won’t be so important because there isn’t much of it and it’s mostly spent finding files.
2. Judge adaptation
Since ballots come from judges, working with your judges is, at least according to the HH coach, who will always rank this as #1, the greatest key to success. With former debaters and coaches, you can confidently use a certain measure of speed and LD lingo (almost always -- you'll know the exceptions). With parents, assume that they are rational adults who would like you to be clear and simple in your analysis (see Simplicity, above). They'll also respond to knowledge and confidence, not to mention speaking well. They will be less accepting of speed. If you actually know the individual, that is, if you know the judge, you are best off, because you can -- and must -- adapt to what you know that judge likes.
Here’s the deal about public speaking, aside from high school forensics. Rule number one is to know your audience, and adjust your speech accordingly. Let’s say you are giving a talk about the future of personal computing. If you are giving this talk at Apple HQ, you would do it differently than if you were giving it at my mother’s nursing home, even though the content would be roughly identical. You have to know what it is that your audience knows, and doesn’t know, so that when you’re addressing them, you don’t lose them. If you tell them what they already know, or talk in terms they don’t know, they’re lost.
In LD, back in the day when at any given tournament you could be judged by a wide range of adjudicators, this was absolutely the number one rule of debate. Nowadays, where you can engineer your way through MJP to a reasonably narrow band of judges at least in your most important rounds, it is still required—you will get the odd inexperienced judge, or a coach like me wheeled out from tab because no one else will fit, etc.—and you have no choice but to slow down and simplify, or lose (provided your opponent is smart enough to slow down and simplify; if neither of you do, you both deserve to lose the ballot coin-flip that will transpire, at least metaphorically). Adaptation is still required, but not from round to round, and hence, it is not a top priority.
There isn’t a lot of need for judge adaptation in PF at the moment, given that most PF judges do tend to be lay, even though some of them might be mightily experienced. All of them want what PF proclaims to offer, which ultimately is good speaking and clear points and big picture. So, for entirely different reasons than with LD, this doesn’t loom all that large.
1. Knowledge
There is no such thing as too much research. At the highest levels of debate, all debaters are created roughly equal skillwise; it's the work they do in advance that can make the difference. Contrariwise, if you don't know it, don't use it. Know what you know and avoid what you don't know. Of course, the more you know, the less you'll have to avoid!
It was revolutionary when the Sailors voted this number one over judge adaptation. A sign of the future, you might say. I’d reword this a tad, perhaps, but knowing your topic inside and out is the best thing you can do in aid of winning a round. So, probably, number one again.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Continuing with the eleven top ten...
Somebody called me yesterday from Rippin’ wondering why I hadn’t re-upped for the year. I think I showed remarkable restraint, which is similarly demonstrated here on a daily basis. ‘Nuff said.
When last we looked at the eleven items on the top ten list, we were up to here:
8. Speaking well
If you sound like your mouth is filled with month-old molasses, yet everything you say is intelligent, you will win some rounds. If you sound like a polished Shakespearean actor, with resonant tones that soothe the judgic ear, yet everything you say is idiotic, you will win even more rounds. If you sound good AND talk smart, you will dominate. Practice speaking exercises. Listen to the advice at meetings. Never underestimate oratorical skill.
I would say that this has become way less important in LD (it was on its dying legs even when we last espoused it) and absolutely crucial in PF, where the audience is almost entirely parents. Plus, the paradigm for PF in the first place was presentation, when it was called Crossfire and based on the TV news commentator idea. I can’t say I’m upset that this will feature higher up on the final PF list. Speaking well is a good thing, and while I have nothing against the other skills being taught/learned in Policy and LD that have replaced classic public speaking, I nonetheless like that it is still alive and well somewhere in the debate forum.
7. Opponent adaptation
Adjust your style appropriately. Treat lesser opponents with respect. Treat stronger opponents with the understanding that anyone can be beat. Don't speed-talk against a slow talker. Getting good speaker points often depends on your keeping your cool in tough, unbalanced pairings, regardless of where you yourself are in the balance.
This one probably still holds true in LD, and will be true in PF, although most people don’t practice it as much as they should. Not the treating opponents with respect part; I think that most debaters know enough to be polite in their LD rounds when they know they’re capable of eating their opponents alive. But adjusting to the opponent, absent competitiveness? That’s something else. For the judge, when it’s not so match a matter of talent balance but a question of approach, if the two debaters are coming from totally different directions, the judge must immediately intervene by deciding which approach is preferable. If both debaters are coming from the same place, life is much easier for everyone in the room. In the new rules, this one will probably be rewritten, but one way or the other will continue in the running.
6. Fast flowing
Practice flowing from day one, and never attend a round without flowing it. Even practice rounds. You will simply continue to get better at it. Fast, accurate flowing will mean the difference in your toughest rounds. Learn all the different flow styles and use (or create) one that works best for you, not the one that works best for someone else.
Why would I change a word of this?
5. Confidence
If you act like you know what you're doing, you might actually convince your opponents and judges that you do, in fact, know what you're doing. It is easiest to act as if you know what you're doing, by the way, if, in reality, you do know what you're doing.
Also hard to improve. How many rounds have been lost the very second that debaters look at the schematics and see that they’re hitting someone they think is better than they are? You don’t have to even walk into the room to lose the round, in other words, because it’s already lost in your head. Do the best debaters always debate the best? Is every round completely predictable? But I think more to the point on this one is that people (judges) respond in a certain way to confidence (as compared to visible abject dismay) that is favorable. Not arrogance, just a belief that you belong there, and have something to say worth listening to. It’s usually true, so why not act as if it’s true?
When last we looked at the eleven items on the top ten list, we were up to here:
8. Speaking well
If you sound like your mouth is filled with month-old molasses, yet everything you say is intelligent, you will win some rounds. If you sound like a polished Shakespearean actor, with resonant tones that soothe the judgic ear, yet everything you say is idiotic, you will win even more rounds. If you sound good AND talk smart, you will dominate. Practice speaking exercises. Listen to the advice at meetings. Never underestimate oratorical skill.
I would say that this has become way less important in LD (it was on its dying legs even when we last espoused it) and absolutely crucial in PF, where the audience is almost entirely parents. Plus, the paradigm for PF in the first place was presentation, when it was called Crossfire and based on the TV news commentator idea. I can’t say I’m upset that this will feature higher up on the final PF list. Speaking well is a good thing, and while I have nothing against the other skills being taught/learned in Policy and LD that have replaced classic public speaking, I nonetheless like that it is still alive and well somewhere in the debate forum.
7. Opponent adaptation
Adjust your style appropriately. Treat lesser opponents with respect. Treat stronger opponents with the understanding that anyone can be beat. Don't speed-talk against a slow talker. Getting good speaker points often depends on your keeping your cool in tough, unbalanced pairings, regardless of where you yourself are in the balance.
This one probably still holds true in LD, and will be true in PF, although most people don’t practice it as much as they should. Not the treating opponents with respect part; I think that most debaters know enough to be polite in their LD rounds when they know they’re capable of eating their opponents alive. But adjusting to the opponent, absent competitiveness? That’s something else. For the judge, when it’s not so match a matter of talent balance but a question of approach, if the two debaters are coming from totally different directions, the judge must immediately intervene by deciding which approach is preferable. If both debaters are coming from the same place, life is much easier for everyone in the room. In the new rules, this one will probably be rewritten, but one way or the other will continue in the running.
6. Fast flowing
Practice flowing from day one, and never attend a round without flowing it. Even practice rounds. You will simply continue to get better at it. Fast, accurate flowing will mean the difference in your toughest rounds. Learn all the different flow styles and use (or create) one that works best for you, not the one that works best for someone else.
Why would I change a word of this?
5. Confidence
If you act like you know what you're doing, you might actually convince your opponents and judges that you do, in fact, know what you're doing. It is easiest to act as if you know what you're doing, by the way, if, in reality, you do know what you're doing.
Also hard to improve. How many rounds have been lost the very second that debaters look at the schematics and see that they’re hitting someone they think is better than they are? You don’t have to even walk into the room to lose the round, in other words, because it’s already lost in your head. Do the best debaters always debate the best? Is every round completely predictable? But I think more to the point on this one is that people (judges) respond in a certain way to confidence (as compared to visible abject dismay) that is favorable. Not arrogance, just a belief that you belong there, and have something to say worth listening to. It’s usually true, so why not act as if it’s true?
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