LDEP

Or, Let's Do Exactly Pnothing. (I do wish a synonym for nothing starting with P would occur to me, but then again, pnothing is so much more entertaining.)

You're going to love this. So Jason B sends a message out on the LDEP listserver bemoaning that Emory will offer Mutual Judge Preference. Of course, I'm no fan of MJP, but curiously enough, he drew no responses. I signed up with LDEP last year, thinking that, yeah, I like the idea of preserving what I see as the educational benefits of LD, so why not. Unfortunately, in that year, exactly bubkes has ensued. (Pubkes? Pbubkes?) So I figured, what the hell. I'm already a crackpot; why not make it official.

Here's the message I just sent to the lords and ladies of the esteemed LDEP:

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There’s a great line from Boston Legal. When Betty White gets arrested for murder, she has only one request: “Can I have the Robert Blake jury?”

I have never been much of a fan of MJP for a variety of reasons that I think are pretty valid. Some people are fans of MJP for a variety of reasons that are also pretty valid. But the real issue is not choosing your own jury, or more to the point, the real problem facing LD at large is not as simple as this one thing. I wish it were.

I just went back to look at the LDEP mission statement. And I’ve recollected why I liked the idea last year when I first heard about it, and why I signed on. And, of course, I’ve been spending the school year coaching my team, and learning the latest trends and following the continuing drama.

I do this job because I believe in debate as a superlative tool for developing skills in high school students that are valuable and, to a great extent, unattainable through the normal curriculum. Chief among these are some elementary lessons in ethics that instill an understanding of some classic philosophers, exposure to some of the chief problems facing the world today and studying how ethical solutions can be applied to them, an ability to research at a deep and thorough level, an ability to create logical and persuasive arguments for a particular point of view, and a mastery of public speaking in aid of making those persuasive arguments to an audience. As many of you know, my chief employment is not academic; I’m a book editor. I’ve also managed editorial, administrative and IT personnel. All those skills I’ve just mentioned are the skills that I see (or don’t see) every day; mastery of those skills can easily be the difference between success and failure in one’s career. As we, as educators, can therefore train students for that success, it would seem to me that we should do everything we can to make sure that we are indeed doing it. But, of course, I am preaching to the choir, if you’ll allow me a cliché. You wouldn’t be reading this as members of LDEP if you already didn’t know and believe what I’ve just said.

A number of issues face the LD community at this time. I think most of us agree that these are not simply a natural evolution of the activity, a growth and development based on experience and knowledge, but are instead changes in course that threaten the acquisition of those skills I outlined above, while offering no replacements in kind. The academic benefits, in other words, are being diminished. And this diminution is not the result of differing opinions of the educators involved in the activity, but the result of a small number of individuals wielding an inordinate amount of power: Insofar as the direction of the activity is set by the example of the strongest, most successful competitors, those competitors, and their coaches, send a message to the entire LD community that their way is the way that it should be done if the goal is competitive success. Thanks primarily to the Victory Briefs website, the information about these students, their successes and their styles and their cases, are quickly and thoroughly disseminated throughout the community. The key to winning, it would seem, is in doing whatever these winners do. I can hardly blame the students from trying to emulate them. While as coaches we know that the competition is merely the means to an end, the necessary evil involved in achieving the academic goals of the activity, to the students, the competition is what it is all about. As a coach, I can provide all the direction that I can muster when it comes to how to debate, or how to interpret a resolution, but if some cockamamie interpretation of the resolution is the one that is winning, or if some argument denying the existence of the resolution is the one that is winning, my advice and instruction, which will no doubt lead to a losing record, will not stand against the possibility of winning some other way. My voice will only be heard by my students to the point that it is useful for them to hear it; at the point where there is a more useful voice elsewhere, they will seek that other one. I don’t blame them for that. The students are not to problem here.

So if the students are merely doing what students would predictably do, which is follow the winners, and the coaches are doing what they are supposed to be doing, which is instilling the basic skills of debate and providing reasonable interpretations of resolutions in keeping with the intentions of the framers (which would seem to be an absolute necessity rather than a debatable issue—if the resolution is meant to address, for instance, the power of eminent domain in a Kelo v. New London context, there is vast meat on the educational bones for all of us by sticking to that context rather than seeking some other sideways approach that bypasses the context), then we have to wonder where, exactly, does the problem lie, and what can we do about it. Quite honestly, I doubt if anyone reading this doesn’t know where the problem lies; unfortunately, we’re not doing anything about it.

Just to be clear, let’s outline what the problems facing LD are. The ones threatening the acquisition of all those great life skills mentioned above, that is. They include the use of resource materials and arguments of dubious merit, the rejection of the resolutions on face in favor of critiques, and a swift style of presentation that precludes all but the most experienced auditor from understanding what is said in the round. Simply put, there are cases out there that are non-topic-specific that can be run in bald disregard of the resolution, based on cultural critics of what can most generously be described as writing at difficult levels of comprehension, which are run at blazing speeds and which, unfortunately, win tournaments. (Perhaps they win because no one knows what’s being said, or because the judges are enamored of the particular critic being cited, or because the judges simply enjoy the obfuscation. I don’t know.) The question is, what can concerned coaches do about these problems? Better yet, what can concerned coaches do when those coaches are in a position of authority in the activity? Not to put too fine a point on it, but the power of authority that could be wielded by the membership of LDEP is monumental. At the moment, it is also dormant.

My sole contention (that’s a little LD humor) is this: the adult coaches and educators in the activity are being overshadowed by college students with little or no interest in the long-term educational value of the activity. These college students act as ad hoc coaches to high school students because they sell themselves as dispensers of expertise unavailable elsewhere. They provide materials that may be appropriate to college education but not to high school (e.g., postmodern theorists). They often write cases or at least outlines for their students. They work for hire at summer labs where their measurable goal is to polish the top competitors in the country for the so-called national circuit. They regularly judge at high school tournaments favoring their own styles and materials rather than styles and materials that further the activity, yet when it is time to rank judges, they are perceived as the As while many coaches and certainly all parents are perceived of as Cs. They are set on no path as future educators and have no interest in education (and believe me, I know college kids who indeed planned to become forensics educators in the future, who worked with kids during their college careers and who are now teaching high school and who can be accused of none of what I’m indicting here). I do believe that it need not be any bad motivation on the part of these college students I am singling out that results in these problems: I do not accuse them of being motivated by malice or any particular anti-educational agenda. They’re just kids, often just a year older than the ones they’re “coaching.” Blame it on their youth. That’s not the point. Also, let me point out that I do not indict the former debater who shows up occasionally to make a few bucks by judging and/or to give back a little to the activity they loved in high school: these are some of my favorite people (who, by and large, tend to quickly become quite conservative in their evaluations of rounds, and who tend to bristle at the thought, held by many debaters, that since this person once debated at a high level and is now in college, any kind of pomo kritik nonsense will somehow be mother’s milk to them).

(I could provide a second or third contention, and point to other causes of what I think are the problems, but I would prefer to move on to the solutions. Obviously a similar evil to the one above is the lone high school student, the maverick debater from no team bent entirely on competitive victories. Others reading this can perhaps point to other causes of the problems. But as I said, let’s look to solutions.)

Thus we identify (some of) the serpents in the garden: college student “coaches” who are not trained as educators. If this contention is true—if we can isolate a small group of individuals as illegitimately wielding too much power in the activity—then if we can act to limit their participation in the activity, we will presumably act to return the power to the true educators, with whom it belongs. And there are ways of doing this. To wit:
1. Eliminate mutual judge preference.
Allowing students to select their adjudicators allows students with dubious materials to find judges who prefer dubious materials. On the most basic level, can I get the Robert Blake jury? More importantly in the long run, enhancing the skills of public speaking will not ensue if you get to decide who your public is that you are speaking to. I wish that all the times I have given presentations at work my audience already knew what I was talking about when I was presenting complicated technical material. I wish they all agreed that the steps I was proposing were the right ones for the company to take. I wish that—and this is a major one for me—they all had English as a first language. Often I have been hamstrung by all three of these, but I’m a better speaker as a result. I present my materials more clearly, I offer more logical rationales and plans for change, and I talk so that my colleague from Thailand understands what I am saying. To the extent that we remove preferential judging from Lincoln-Douglas, we similarly make our students better speakers.
2. Mandate adult chaperones at tournaments.
There is, shall we say, roving bands of debaters, usually singletons but occasionally small groups, led by a college student coach. Absent any issues with that coach’s educational stature, if there were to arise any problem whatsoever with any of those students—from hiccups to heart palpitations to sexual harassment—that college student is not equipped to handle it. Worse, there are singletons who register with no coach (and inevitably those singletons are prepared to debate with the worst possible materials). Who attends to their hiccups or heart palpitations or sexual harassment? The tournament director? Not me! I direct my own invitational plus a regional league with monthly tournaments, all of which have one hard and fast rule: no teams without an adult (i.e., over 21) chaperone. There is a practical side to not accepting unchaperoned minors; if an issue arises, each team has an adult to handle it. There is probably a legal side as well. However you look at it, I won’t do it. And by not doing it, I coincidentally eliminate some teams of questionable provenance. These are two good things at once.
3. Bar “independent” entries.
There are almost no good reasons to accept teams that compete without the approval of their schools, but from the point of view of LD, there is the greatest likelihood that these teams will be the most focused on competition per se, and the least interested in the educational benefits of the activity. Regardless, the liability issues are simply too dire to entertain, for all the reasons cited in #2 above.
4. Institute a speed limit (noted clearly as part of the tournament invitation/packet).
This will be controversial because it is subjective, but then again, it does benefit a speaker to know that the person being spoken to understands what is being said. This rule could work quite simply. A judge would certainly discuss in advance of a round any speed issues he or she might have, and a good competitor would comply. However, sometimes one person’s blazing speed is another person’s lumbering gait. So, a judge may call simply “Speed!” when a debater is talking too fast. No penalty, and the debater should slow down. A second “Speed!” can be called if the debater doesn’t comply with the initial request. Still no pentalty. A third call of “Speed!” mandates that the debater receive no more than 25 speaker points. The debater will have had 2 chances to put on the brakes. Refusing to do so will and should result in guaranteed low points.
5. Mandate that students debate the resolution (noted clearly as part of the tournament invitation/packet).
This is the toughest one. There are certainly all sorts of interpretations of a resolution that may be fine to one person and off-the-wall to another, where reasonable individuals can hold differing opinions. On the other hand, there are cases that clearly critique the resolution on face, claiming that it is, for one reason or another, inarguable. It would be the tournament’s stance that this resolution having been chosen for this tournament, the debaters must agree to argue it. If a debater comes to that tournament and argues not the content of the resolution but that the resolution does not make sense, that the resolution cannot be argued, that the “theory” of LD makes the resolution invalid, or that the writings of any individual make the resolution immaterial, then that student is not sticking to the bargain struck by accepting the invitation. That student would forfeit any round running that case. This would probably have to be adjudicated by the tournament director. That is, the round would run and the judge would let it conclude as any other round, but would claim afterward that a challenge will be made of irresolutionality (there’s a word the spellchecker doesn’t like). An opponent could make a similar claim. All such claims would be decided by the tournament director. (Let’s face it. This issue is probably what bothers us most. My solution would address it head-on. If we don’t address the issues that bother us most head-on, we might as well give up now.)

You may or may not agree with these steps. You may have others you would add. We should discuss these.

But here’s the thing. I look at the names of the directors of the LDEP: there’s a lot of TOC bids there. I’ve got sway over my tournament’s bids, obviously, and I doubt if few of my colleagues in the northeast would seriously disagree with what I’m saying here (being that we’ve all said much of it in our various get-togethers). If we band together and institute an LDEP seal of approval or something like that, based on the criteria above, and we enact these same things at all our tournaments, the result would be major. If one of us does it, the result would be meaningless. We should probably go so far as to enact that any tournament with TOC bids subscribe to them, and that TOC itself subscribe to them. While I do like the idea of the LDEP providing educational materials, that’s not enough. And personally, even though I worked on the ballot model, I’m not that pleased with it, especially the whole speaker-point thing, but more importantly, as one of my judges said to me, it merely replaces one set of instructions she didn’t read with a different set of instructions she didn’t read, so that’s not enough either. These are baby steps that have little real impact on the problems we all see. Mandating the 5 actions enumerated above, on the other hand, or others like them, would address the problem at the core. Granted, I may be wrong about some of this stuff, but the challenge then is for someone to come up with an even better way, and I’ll be there standing right next to you. But if we don’t do anything, we only have ourselves to blame as more and more of our students opt out of the activity and into PF because they understand it better, or out of forensics altogether because they’re simply too frustrated. We will have only ourselves to blame if the vast majority of the TOC Advisory committee is struck as judges by the students at the tournament because we are out of touch with debate reality. We will have only ourselves to blame if we walk into a round and have no idea what anyone is talking about. We will have only ourselves to blame when the parents won’t come and help out any more because it’s all over their heads and they don’t want to feel like idiots in the presence of fifteen-year-olds. And we will have only ourselves to blame as school after school eliminates its programs because the activity has been rendered meaningless to the academic community it is supposed to serve.

Let us please take action, and soon. I’m asking a lot. But I fear the consequences of not doing a lot.

Thanks for reading this.