Why Are We Doing This?

I was going to expound a bit on what I said yesterday about novices, and I wrote some stuff, but it didn’t come out right. The thing is, when you think about novices, you’re mostly thinking about what, exactly, you think debate ought to be. Not the actual rounds, specifically; that is whatever it is and changes however it will change despite whatever anyone might think about it personally. And at some point, the actual rounds are inconsequential compared to what it takes to get into those rounds. Take some unintelligibly fast TOC-style round filled with theory and off-case material: the students in that round started intelligibly as novices, they overcame their fear of public speaking, they learned how to write and research and think, and now they're putting all of that into the 45 minutes of competition. Twenty years ago that 45 minutes in LD was radically different, but those students still started as novices and conquered their guts and marshaled their adrenaline and learned to write and research and think. Things haven’t changed all that much.

Still, I always worry about the students who are not naturally attuned to the rhythms and wiles of debate, the ones who never rise to stardom and who do not want to make debate their end-all, be-all. I want them, too, to conquer their guts and marshal their adrenaline and learn to write and research and think. If my only goal was to send students to top tournaments and win everything, I’d have to do things radically differently, I think. I’d have to research topics, I’d have to come up with positions and blocks, the whole thing. I know a lot of coaches who consider that their job, and for them, perhaps it’s the right thing to do. If your team’s funding depends on your team’s success, then your team better be successful. I don’t think the football coach is thinking how he wants as many students in the school as possible to savor the learning experiences derived from playing football; I think that coach just wants to win the game this Saturday. When you think about it, forensics is one of the few competitive activities where, most of the time, people don’t win. In debate, only 25% of a field advances and only one team wins at the end of the tournament, and most debaters, although they win some rounds, never really get to go the distance or even close to it. In individual events, with six people in a room, there are five losers. We are involved in a world where winning is nice, but mostly, people don’t win, or at least they don’t win very often. Coaches can concentrate on the potential winners, but I think what motivates most of us is the material itself, and its educational value despite winning and losing. Honestly, I think forensics has the ability to make students into better people in the long run. Which is why I think so much about that long run, and extending it to as many people as possible.

Forensics is not taught much in schools around here, aside from the occasional bout of model congress or model UN. I would like to see speech and debate incorporated into curricula, but in a universe where it’s not already there, with the reality of education funding in New York (and presumably everywhere else), good luck with that. Schools need to concentrate on graduation rates and class sizes and safety, et cetera, and enrichment, which no one thinks is unimportant, comes in small and cheap doses. Speech and debate around here costs money, if for no other reason than you have to travel to get there. Buses are not free. Nor are motels, if you go to a multiple-day tournament. Some families find their religious beliefs at risk when their children travel. And so forth and so on. That’s why I’m big on the MHL, which is all one-day tournaments, and all for younger students. We’re working more closely with the NYCUDL this coming year, and we’ve always been close to the NJUDL. You can make a pretty decent debate experience, competing and judging, over the four years of your high school career just in this small universe, and I’m extremely proud of that. That’s one of the reasons that, at our final MHL event of the year, we give everyone a medal that is, admittedly, for having shown up. These kids worked hard all year, and some of them never win a thing. I like that they have something tangible to show for it. But of course I know that they do have all the intangibles, and that’s the important thing. Needless to say, we charge as little as possible for all of this, essentially just enough to cover the cost of the medals over the year. Nobody has ever made any money off the MHL, and I know that some of the people involved have lost money in the deal and never, ever, spoken a word of it. Good people, with their hearts in the right place.

During the summer, lots of people are involved in camps, which are entirely competitive concerns. It’s good that camps are there, especially for those of us who have limited time we can devote to the activity. They take up the slack, and they focus the mind. But I do hope that, coming into a new season shortly, we keep in mind the truly important aspects of what we do. Forensics is a powerful and wonderful experience. It should belong to as many people as possible. Those of us in positions to make this so should, indeed, make it so.