We’ve ended up with a triple play in Academy at Byram Hills, with modules in all three events, PF, LD and Policy. Which means that we’re inaugurating this idea firing on all burners. No one can say the problem, if any, was lack of actual academy content. Frankly, I’m predicting a runaway success, but then again, I’ve been pushing for this since the beginning. One thing that really intrigues me is how we’re going to try to fold in sessions during the off-flights. If this works, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t, that means we could easily pull this off at MHLs, where this sort of thing would even be more desirable. As I know I’ve said earlier, I’ve had the idea of rolling this over to the MHLs for a while now. Why not? MHL is intended as a learning league. Why not offer not only rounds, which are the best way to learn many things, but also brainstorms and lectures and drills, which are the best way to learn many other things?
Of course, the real bottom line of academy is the creation of a reasonable JV division, without the relatively illegitimate status that JV debate now holds around here. The point of high school forensics is rounding off the education of students, providing experiences and knowledge beyond the classroom. I’m really hoping that we can use academy to provide a stratum of debate that is beyond the just giving it a try but not as far as the selling of the soul for TOC bids. The thing about the northeast is that for all practical purposes, forensics is entirely extracurricular. There’s no infrastructure for anything but weekend tournaments, meaning that there’s no gentle way of, say, heading over to the school down the road for a little scrimmage. We’re either at each other’s throats, or not debating. How many sophomores do we have to lose from the activity before we realize that we’re not providing what we claim to be providing? Academy is a move toward a gentler style of debate in an otherwise grueling environment. I have heard plenty of people bemoan the present state of LD, but it’s sort of natural that styles would gravitate to $ircuit in a region where virtually every tournament is indeed pointed at qualifying for the national circuit. If a debater is not dedicated enough to commit to the intensity of circuit styles, on top of actually going to school and preparing for college, that debater is sort of doomed, which doesn’t seem right to me. Plenty of sports allow play at different levels, and if you move up, you move up, and if you don’t, you don’t. Why should debate be any different?
Anyhow, I’ve written about this stuff ad nauseum. Now actions are being taken, and we can look at the results of those actions and see what happens. I still feel there is a general disinterest abroad in appealing to the mid-level students, though. All the sexiness is where the bids are, and virtually every gleam in a prospective tournament director’s eye is enflamed by the hope of earning TOC bids as some sort of imprimatur for the event, as if the presence or lack of bids is the only way to evaluate a tournament. Coaches only aim their students, all of them, regardless how unlikely they are to succeed at the national level, at events pointing to national-level competition. The alternatives are the little one-day events which are fine in their way, but don’t offer the full buffet of experiences offered by invitationals: the travel, the breaking away from one’s comfort zone and meeting new people, the excitement (and the boredom)—the whole package. I will go to my grave believing that the most valuable lessons of high school forensics are those that have little to do with the skills of high school forensics. Sure, pure forensics skills are valuable too, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not that hard to learn. Throwing yourself into a bus for a couple of tournaments a month, far from home, surrounded by strangers, building a team, showing up on time, taking and demonstrating responsibility, working with younger students and helping them along—all of those things are the real lessons we have to offer. Yeah, we’ll make you a good public speaker too, and a good researcher, or whatever. So will a debate class elective for a couple of months. There’s a big world out there, and for an awful lot of students, forensics is their first real introduction to it, their chance to play a role in it. Let’s offer this to as many students as we can.
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