The New York Sophist

(Photo credit: BLCbzyB)

I am wrong about the importance of videoed debates. Not for the reasons that many of you reading this might think. I still maintain that only other debaters watch them, and I don’t believe the APDA debater who ran for office in Long Island a few years ago was defeated because of a debate video (it was more that he was a Democrat trying to get elected in small-town Long Island). I was wrong about debate videos because they are eroding the very principles that I want to teach, and think debate teaches best. I used to think that students could learn how to debate better from these videos, but I was wrong. Students can only learn habits that restrict the potential of their debate ability if they think passively watching online videos of debates is going to improve anything about their ability. Debate videos can actually hurt the quality and ability of debaters. Debate videos do this by making a debate look like something that if you followed the form you will do well.

Now if this last statement is true beyond debate videos, heaven help us all. Who wants to be involved in something that merely teaches itself? Would you study what you study if it only existed to serve itself? Most of us engage in study with the hope of improving something with our new found knowledge, or skill, or experience. Debate should be the same operation. Debate should be something we practice in order to make our practice of being human in the world something valuable, something that adds value to the experiences and lives of others – no matter where we decide to apply our efforts after that very last round is won or lost.

Debate helps teach skills that I think are needed in a contingent, polarized world of symbols and people. It teaches the disappointing nature of reality as contingent. It teaches that you have to change the words you’d prefer into the words that your decision maker would prefer. It teaches that you have to give up your favorite argument, or line, or joke, or witty comment in favor of the one that your audience loves. It teaches you that even at your best, people will still not agree with you. It often times teaches you just how powerless you are, even if you are really smart and have great ideas.

Even though that’s depressing, consider this – debate teaches you how to moderate and navigate a world full of people who have not had your experience. It teaches you how to consider and re-consider, and consider again how to put something just so that others will understand your point of view, or even go along with it (if you are lucky). It also exposes you to the idea that you could, and in many cases are, not quite knowledgeable enough to make a call on a question – and how to handle that. In short, debate helps you become comfortable with the limits of human-ness, as opposed to what non-debaters get in University – great comfort and certainty in the power of ideas from authority, in the power of human knowledge, rationality, reason, and logic. When those fail to work, there must be something wrong with your audience. Dismiss them; they are idiots.  Debaters, if taught to examine their own experiences carefully, realize that rational thinking is never enough, unless it is, in that situation, with that issue, at that time of day, etc.

So debate videos – of course they are a great way to watch good debates from competitions you couldn’t attend. They are good to show to your parents and friends so they finally get a sense of what you are doing with your extra money and time on the weekends. But they are not good for teaching what I want to teach. Debate videos re-enforce the idea that debate is an objective, non-contingent thing. That you can figure out the right thing to say that will work every time if you just watch enough videos. They encourage you to be a formulaic, emphasis on form, thinker rather than a contingent thinker.

The issue of debate videos is that they so easily substitute for study or research or reading because they have been conflated by intermediate students as both the ideal and the practice of argument. Even the most philosophical and ideal theorists of argumentation around today would argue that even though an ideal model of good argumentation is essential, such a model is just that – it does not and cannot exist. However, once we have it structured we can measure our own worth by it. We can see how our discourse is measuring up to our imagined ideal of good debate. But most importantly, watching a debate video makes you feel as if you are working on debating better, but you are trading that time off with serious study that actually will make you a better debater because it will give you the commonplaces and topoi you need to construct good argumentation during the tournament. A witty speech from 4 months ago is not going to help you do that, because debate just doesn’t work like that. Debate wit has a very short shelf life before it goes sour.

Debate videos serve as a poor ideal because they are recorded, situational moments of practice. They fail to be good models of contingency because they are so disconnected to their time and place. They could be any round, any where. Debate videos hover between the two terms needed for solid debate pedagogy, but they don’t serve either very well.

I say keep the videos to show to friends and family. Keep them to showcase what your debate club has been up to. Administrators and other officials love that stuff; I use it a lot, I must confess. I may also start using them to improve speaker style, which might be a good reason to use them in your debate practice. This is highly individual though, and really needs to be done with the speaker and the instructor/audience critic together going through the video and pointing out the problems – this is way too time consuming to be very practical for large programs. However, studying debate videos to get better at debating seems to me to be a non-starter. Read something, discuss something with your peers, and practice as much as you can at debating. This seems to be the type of improvement that debate videos either short-circuit the value of, or seem like good preparation because it’s easier, much more passive, and much more fun than putting your head down into a difficult book or journal.

Enjoying the ECA Conference very much. Heard a lot of smart things today. Reflecting on them quite a bit, but I have a couple of initial thoughts.

First, I think I have found a new rhetorical move similar to Mary Daly’s argument about how feminist and gender issues are always put on the back burner in favor of “more important” policy or issues. The typical form of this move is, “How can you be worried about X issue in a world where these other horrible things are happening? [List goes here]”

Here is the move that I saw about two or three times today: Scholar is presenting a paper that moves toward a gender issue or gender theme. Scholar takes pause to identify to the audience that there is a gender component or issue here, and that it is important to attend to it. Scholar then explains the gender/feminist element of the argument is so important, it warrants a paper and/or panel of its own. It would be terrible to undercover it, so we are going to return to the argument of the paper, sans gender/feminism consideration.

This is a nice move for the patriarchy, as it gives due deference to the importance of gender and feminist issues with a sincere hat tip. But if the issue is that important, why does the paper continue in a direction that totally tables – or ignores in other words – the issue completely until an uncertain, future paper or panel? This way, the gender and feminist concerns of any research project can be addressed by being tabled indefinitely.

The second is more of a question – where is the line for media scholars between being a fan of a TV show or movie, and wanting to talk about how awesome it is that it dove tails with the scholarly literature, or glances off of a theory, and doing serious theoretical or critical work on a TV show or a movie? That line is a tough one to nail down, but I don’t have a lot of tolerance for papers where the author sounds like I do when describing a show I enjoyed or a movie I thought was cool because it reminded me of a theory. I think the direction that best serves us and the field is the direction that uses the show or movie to elucidate, re-read, or enlighten some aspect of communication or rhetorical studies, instead of enlighten us as to the hidden or clever elements of the show.

More to come tomorrow. Our Minecraft presentation went really well today, and our papers merged pretty well with one another – without any planning to do so. More on Minecraft in a later post.

Enjoying the ECA Conference very much. Heard a lot of smart things today. Reflecting on them quite a bit, but I have a couple of initial thoughts.

First, I think I have found a new rhetorical move similar to Mary Daly’s argument about how feminist and gender issues are always put on the back burner in favor of “more important” policy or issues. The typical form of this move is, “How can you be worried about X issue in a world where these other horrible things are happening? [List goes here]”

Here is the move that I saw about two or three times today: Scholar is presenting a paper that moves toward a gender issue or gender theme. Scholar takes pause to identify to the audience that there is a gender component or issue here, and that it is important to attend to it. Scholar then explains the gender/feminist element of the argument is so important, it warrants a paper and/or panel of its own. It would be terrible to undercover it, so we are going to return to the argument of the paper, sans gender/feminism consideration.

This is a nice move for the patriarchy, as it gives due deference to the importance of gender and feminist issues with a sincere hat tip. But if the issue is that important, why does the paper continue in a direction that totally tables – or ignores in other words – the issue completely until an uncertain, future paper or panel? This way, the gender and feminist concerns of any research project can be addressed by being tabled indefinitely.

The second is more of a question – where is the line for media scholars between being a fan of a TV show or movie, and wanting to talk about how awesome it is that it dove tails with the scholarly literature, or glances off of a theory, and doing serious theoretical or critical work on a TV show or a movie? That line is a tough one to nail down, but I don’t have a lot of tolerance for papers where the author sounds like I do when describing a show I enjoyed or a movie I thought was cool because it reminded me of a theory. I think the direction that best serves us and the field is the direction that uses the show or movie to elucidate, re-read, or enlighten some aspect of communication or rhetorical studies, instead of enlighten us as to the hidden or clever elements of the show.

More to come tomorrow. Our Minecraft presentation went really well today, and our papers merged pretty well with one another – without any planning to do so. More on Minecraft in a later post.

Minecraft Castle (Photo credit: Mike_Cooke)

Rhode Island is my staging area for my first trip to the Eastern Communication Association conference. I’m giving a paper tomorrow on Minecraft and the ancient practice of Declamation at around 18:30 GMT in Cambridge, close to Harvard University, but not really hosted there or in any association with them at all. My paper, and hopefully the whole panel, might be recorded in some way, so look for a post. I’m not making a promise here, but I’ll try my best.

At this conference there are a couple of panels I’m interested to see. There are some papers by friends and colleagues that look interesting, but most important to me are panels that begin to address WUDC debating. Nothing so far, although there are a couple of panels where scholars are starting to grapple with non-American formats of debating, and I think it’s interesting to see the initial approaches. I hope to make the audio of these panels available here on this blog for those who are interested in what international formats of debate look like and sound like to American debating scholars at this early entry point. There’s also a historical angle here too, archiving these views so that some future scholar can do a long study across the different approaches.

More updates to come about the conference tomorrow. For now, time to enjoy some Rhode Island local flavor, including (and probably limited to) lobster.

Minecraft Castle (Photo credit: Mike_Cooke)

Rhode Island is my staging area for my first trip to the Eastern Communication Association conference. I’m giving a paper tomorrow on Minecraft and the ancient practice of Declamation at around 18:30 GMT in Cambridge, close to Harvard University, but not really hosted there or in any association with them at all. My paper, and hopefully the whole panel, might be recorded in some way, so look for a post. I’m not making a promise here, but I’ll try my best.

At this conference there are a couple of panels I’m interested to see. There are some papers by friends and colleagues that look interesting, but most important to me are panels that begin to address WUDC debating. Nothing so far, although there are a couple of panels where scholars are starting to grapple with non-American formats of debating, and I think it’s interesting to see the initial approaches. I hope to make the audio of these panels available here on this blog for those who are interested in what international formats of debate look like and sound like to American debating scholars at this early entry point. There’s also a historical angle here too, archiving these views so that some future scholar can do a long study across the different approaches.

More updates to come about the conference tomorrow. For now, time to enjoy some Rhode Island local flavor, including (and probably limited to) lobster.