Menick in Rostrum

That's Rostrum. With 2 Rs.

Here's the article, as written. As I've said, I feel that Jason probably improved on it in the long run, but you can read the final yourself if you've got all that much time on your hands.

I'll report on the weekend in future posts.

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Brainstorming on the Hudson

At Hendrick Hudson we are limited in the amount of time we can spend on debate. Or at least I’m limited. I do not teach at the high school, so we do not have a debate class, or even regular after-school sessions. We meet once a week, at night, for an hour and a half. In that time, we do everything that there is to do. We cover how to debate, we do exercises (some of which may be of dubious value but most of which are fun), we hear enthralling lectures from the coach about Rights, Morality, and the Evils of Fast Food, we decide on the best nicknames for team members (who will have to live with these decisions for a lifetime). And, once in a while, we talk about the resolutions.

There are a variety of academic benefits to be derived from LD, one of which derives from the study of its variety of subject matter. The list of all the possible resolutions of this calendar year, for example, includes judicial activism, separation of church and state, jury nullification, government regulation of industry, property rights of drug companies, progressive taxation, limiting science, censorship, and the—unfortunately vague—conflict of community vs. national standards. There’s a lot of meat on those bones, and even where the areas of discussion are similar—the courts, for instance—the content of the discussion is quite different. As coach I get to lead the brainstorming on the topics; it’s one of my favorite things to do, but it is not necessarily easy. So there are some rules (some of which have been hitherto known only to me) to make sure that we actually derive that hoped-for academic benefit from studying the subject matter.

The process begins with research. My research. First of all, I’ve got to make sure that I understand the background of the topic. If I look at it and it makes absolutely no sense to me, the work is pretty hard, but usually the conflict of the resolution is clear, as is the context, and what I need to do is get some data to back up my instincts. I like deep background on a resolution, because I believe that the more debaters know what they’re talking about, the better off they are in a round. With the separation of church and state topic, for instance, I dug up Jefferson’s letter, the First Amendment, and a handful of meaningful Supreme Court cases: the US having coined the concept of SOCAS, parochial approaches seemed a good starting point. But of course, the topic was not about the US, so I threw in some data on “good guy” countries that do not have SOCAS, viz., Finland and the UK. So now we had a data starter set. In addition I tossed in a few areas of do-some-thinking-and-get-your-own-data, general conflict areas such as creationism, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the 10 Commandments monuments, plus some ideas off the top of my head, like “Protect the church from the state, not vice versa?” I plugged all of this into an email and sent it out to the team on our listserver. (Because of my remove from the school, having a private listserver is our lifeblood.) The seeding had begun.

After the background is mailed, at the first meeting to brainstorm a topic (and there may only be two, plus a little bit of updating after that, for a total of, if we’re lucky, a couple of hours), the first thing I do is write the resolution on the board—all right, to be honest, I have someone from the team tell me the resolution and then I write it on the board. Occasionally they don’t all agree on what the wording is, and we may have our first discussion. Make this a rule: If you don’t know what the resolution is, letter for letter, you’re not ready to discuss it, coach or student. This is because discussing it letter for letter is the best way to begin.

Next, we analyze the wording. Here we’re mostly interested in underlying sense, usually of phrases. “Strict separation of church and state,” for instance, is one phrase, a common usage. It is one thing all by itself, not requiring further reduction. (This approach proved controversial for a while. Some debaters would argue the word “strict,” which is like evaluating levels of virginity, while others would critique the use of the word “church,” arguing the idiom instead of the content. This controversy had mostly ebbed by the time of TOCs, when people tended to argue separation versus no separation, which was the point of the thing in the first place.) “To better protect civil liberties,” “community standards” and “national standards” were the phrases at issue in March-April. “US immigration policy,” “restrictions on the rights” and “democratic ideals” are starting points in September-October. What is US immigration policy? Are we talking about border-guarding or busting illegals at Wal-Mart? What rights do non-citizens have? To what rights are they entitled? To what rights should they be entitled?” What are democratic ideals?

Add to this, the niceties of the resolution’s “evaluating” words, which should take secondary position in discussing the background of the topic—the background must always come first—but which may ultimately determine the grounds of the debate. For instance, the word “consistent” is very leading in the immigration topic. On the other hand, as I mentioned parenthetically above, the word “strict”—unlike “consistent” here—was a dead end in SOCAS; it pays to know a pleonasm when you see one.

So now the brainstorming begins. The topic is written (correctly) on the board, and we begin talking about it. Let’s make another rule: we are not talking about “what to run.” You don’t understand a topic by first discussing arguments about it. You need the facts. You need the data. You need to understand the context. I don’t care what you’re going to run. I don’t care what the arguments are that you heard at institute, or that you ran three years ago as a novice. So I will cut off any discussion of arguments. We are going deep here. We are going to understand the thinking of the people who framed the resolution. What was going on in their minds? Why this topic? Why is it deemed debatable? Sometimes the wording of a resolution is less than sparkling, and we might turn up flaws in our discussion, but that’s not what we’re worried about. We want data. We want facts. We want understanding.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I already know the data, I know the facts, I know what the resolution folks were thinking. Or at least I think I do. How about another rule: I am the coach, and I know what I am talking about, and I am going to make sure that we spend most of our time talking about the right stuff and not going off on some ridiculous tangent. This is a balancing act with yet another rule, that there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm. That no-bad-ideas concept comes from business brainstorming, and it is not meant literally—of course there are bad ideas, and except for the schmegeggie spouting them, all of us know them when we hear them—but it is true that hearing a bad idea can generate a good idea, plus we don’t want to inhibit the free flow of ideas in a lively discussion. Think marketplace of ideas here, but with a governing board of trade. I’ll let any ideas that arise float around, but I will direct things where I want them to go if I deem it necessary.

Which brings us to another rule: one conversation at a time. This is difficult. If everyone is popping with ideas, everyone starts talking at once. Not good. With twenty or so people popping, control is required. And I have to keep an eye on people who aren’t popping. It’s one thing to be taking it all in, and another thing altogether not to be able to get a word in edgewise because the big-mouths won’t shut up. Plus there’s the perceived wisdom of the older kids versus the perceived lack thereof of the younger kids, sometimes true, sometimes not. I do want my varsity to be heard because they are the veterans. But newbies have something to offer too. It is the coach’s job to make sure that all voices are heard as much as possible in the correct balance. And one does have to be careful not to torture someone who really does not have any ideas yet. There are other, more legitimate ways to torture team members, and we need not resort to doing it here at the brainstormings.

And here’s one of the fun things. As a rule, there is an initial tendency toward one side of a resolution. The immigration topic is the perfect example of this, where everyone immediately believed in the negative as better, or, in some cases, categorically correct and inarguable. You can’t restrict people’s rights just because they’re not citizens. Given that they can’t vote, these poor huddled masses, yadda yadda yadda. So this is what I love doing: being prepared with a line of questioning that quickly and efficiently gets everyone to agree with the “wrong” side. I picked Norway for this instance. I began my imaginary cross-examination: Norway is a virtual socialist state in many ways; for one thing, they have universal health care. Imagine that one night you snuck into Norway. Does that mean that the next day you are entitled to a free medical checkup? Maybe get a few cavities filled? Get some new eyeglasses? No? Okay, then you probably wouldn’t feel that you’re entitled to a free education. Or that if you had a baby, that baby should be Norwegian with full entitlement to all the rights and privileges of being Norse. But you’re saying that if some Norwegian sneaks into the US illegally, we instantly make him an American, give his dubiously American children free education, and probably give him an iPod and an SUV to boot, just so he’ll fit in better. By this point, the team is ready to close the borders completely. Of course, sometimes this requires that I play the (right- or left-wing) baddy, taking extreme positions not only far from my own beliefs but far from the realm of the debate. But unless the team can see both sides of the argument, they can’t argue both sides. So maybe there’s a rule here too: be prepared to shake ‘em up a little bit.

After this sort of brainstorming discussion, I believe that the team now has an idea of what the resolution is about. It is not about running so-and-so or critiquing the concept of such-and-such; the resolution is about what the resolution says it is about. And this brainstorming may be the first time you’ve ever heard about it, or given it any real thought. What are the issues involved in this controversial subject? That’s why this resolution was chosen, to inform high school students on an important area of controversy. That is where the academic value lies, in knowing about and studying that area of controversy. And we don’t even ask you to make up your mind; in fact, we demand that you don’t, and that you be prepared to argue both sides of it. You could, of course, unearth some bizarre argument from some obscure French flaneur and run it every single debate against every single topic and maybe even win a few rounds doing it, but you’re probably better off knowing the real issues involved and running them. That’s why most of us are here. That’s why I’m here. (That, and those Friday night ziti dinners at high school cafeterias throughout the northeast—hmmm-hmmm!) Most specifically, a coach has to ask, am I doing my best academically for my team? Bringing your team to an understanding of a complex and important controversy is a good positive answer to that question.

[About me: I’ve been the debate coach at HHHS since 1996, and I’m the District Chair of the New York State District. My day job is Deputy Editor of Reader’s Digest Select Editions.]