The New York Sophist

English: Karl Popper in the 1980’s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today is the first day of the Karl Popper Debating Championships at the +International Debate Education Association (IDEA) Youth Forum in Leon, Mexico. 

Depending on the state of the internet at the University we are hosting these debates, I will give some updates here and there about what’s going on. I heard a rumor that there are 36 teams, and they seem to come from all over the world. The judges do as well.


The topic has to do with whether ethnic profiling is justified.


It looks to be a good competition and I’m looking forward to judging a few of these debates in a format that I have never officially judged before. The hotel is fantastic, the staff is friendly and helpful, and everyone had a great first night at a reception out by the pool. It was a good way to start the Youth Forum.


I begin my teaching on the 7th in the BP/Worlds track. It will be an interesting audience – they all (for the most part) come from high school debating and want to transition into BP. That’s my guess anyway, but we won’t really know who they are or their level until we meet them.

English: Karl Popper in the 1980’s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today is the first day of the Karl Popper Debating Championships at the +International Debate Education Association (IDEA) Youth Forum in Leon, Mexico. 

Depending on the state of the internet at the University we are hosting these debates, I will give some updates here and there about what’s going on. I heard a rumor that there are 36 teams, and they seem to come from all over the world. The judges do as well.


The topic has to do with whether ethnic profiling is justified.


It looks to be a good competition and I’m looking forward to judging a few of these debates in a format that I have never officially judged before. The hotel is fantastic, the staff is friendly and helpful, and everyone had a great first night at a reception out by the pool. It was a good way to start the Youth Forum.


I begin my teaching on the 7th in the BP/Worlds track. It will be an interesting audience – they all (for the most part) come from high school debating and want to transition into BP. That’s my guess anyway, but we won’t really know who they are or their level until we meet them.

Circle-no-questions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Why do I feel that coming to an event like this, ostensibly only about debating, do I find more people interested in my research and interested in my writing than I found among the professors in my field that I studied with in graduate school?

Why is it that “the choice” – that you have to either become a debate coach OR a scholar, seem so incredibly silly when I am at these events? 


Perhaps it’s because that NCA or field of rhetoric “old guard” who assume debate is for immature thinkers to gain maturity, or for students to be introduced to rhetorical or communication theory, but after that it really is for those malformed thinkers that could have been scholars, but failed/chose not too/couldn’t cut it, are not present, and would never be present at an event that centers around teenage students, high school students, or beginning undergraduates. If this is true, how do you persuade these reviewers that debate, as a practice, as a living thing, is just as valuable as the discourse of Mitt Romney for the study of rhetoric? Does pointing at how English Composition departments are ahead of us in this respect help?


Why is it so clear that there is a field-wide bias against debate in the scholarship of the field of rhetoric, mostly perpetuated by senior scholars who either practiced debate as an undergraduate, or perhaps couldn’t “cut it” as debaters, like the negativity I experienced toward debating as an undergraduate from particular scholars in my rhetoric department at that time?

Flipping the classroom is a popular idea in teaching right now. Could debate serve as a place which we can innovate, as it traditionally has in the field of rhetoric, by flipping the scholarship of the field in an analogous way? Imagine journals containing the narratives of experiential learning from debaters that are explored in the 50 minutes of your University class for connections or disruptions to theories that often take on no more reality for students than that of a spectral powerpoint slide?

How do you persuade scholars of argument that they have the best living laboratory in which to workshop ideas, test theories, and explore the limits of propositional argumentation as an idea every weekend at a campus near them?

Circle-no-questions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Why do I feel that coming to an event like this, ostensibly only about debating, do I find more people interested in my research and interested in my writing than I found among the professors in my field that I studied with in graduate school?

Why is it that “the choice” – that you have to either become a debate coach OR a scholar, seem so incredibly silly when I am at these events? 


Perhaps it’s because that NCA or field of rhetoric “old guard” who assume debate is for immature thinkers to gain maturity, or for students to be introduced to rhetorical or communication theory, but after that it really is for those malformed thinkers that could have been scholars, but failed/chose not too/couldn’t cut it, are not present, and would never be present at an event that centers around teenage students, high school students, or beginning undergraduates. If this is true, how do you persuade these reviewers that debate, as a practice, as a living thing, is just as valuable as the discourse of Mitt Romney for the study of rhetoric? Does pointing at how English Composition departments are ahead of us in this respect help?


Why is it so clear that there is a field-wide bias against debate in the scholarship of the field of rhetoric, mostly perpetuated by senior scholars who either practiced debate as an undergraduate, or perhaps couldn’t “cut it” as debaters, like the negativity I experienced toward debating as an undergraduate from particular scholars in my rhetoric department at that time?

Flipping the classroom is a popular idea in teaching right now. Could debate serve as a place which we can innovate, as it traditionally has in the field of rhetoric, by flipping the scholarship of the field in an analogous way? Imagine journals containing the narratives of experiential learning from debaters that are explored in the 50 minutes of your University class for connections or disruptions to theories that often take on no more reality for students than that of a spectral powerpoint slide?

How do you persuade scholars of argument that they have the best living laboratory in which to workshop ideas, test theories, and explore the limits of propositional argumentation as an idea every weekend at a campus near them?

Day one of the IDEA Youth Forum instructor training is over, and one thing stands out: There is no shortage of problems that you can come up with when you are talking about teaching debate.

Perhaps problem is the wrong word. Maybe challenge? But that sounds too much like business/boardroom speak. I like the idea of calling what we have problems, but I like it only in so far as we, as teachers, accept these things as our problems. We own these problems. These are our problems that could impede our ability to teach.

We did a fantastic exercise where we wrote down challenges that we face as debate teachers, and then redistributed them to groups to address the problems and come up with an activity that could be done that would work toward addressing the problem. Each group came up with fantastic stuff. A couple of the commonalities stuck out to me, because I face them in thinking about my own pedagogy.

1. Inclusivity: How do we address the reticent, quiet, or excluded student? It’s so easy for me to gravitate toward the student who is engaged, active, contributing, and not afraid to challenge my ideas or call me out. But the quiet and not so self-assured student needs equal attention. The group came up with fantastic leadership activities and other things to do to engage these students. The one common element was the idea of building community around the students. The thing I got out of it the most was the idea that each person watching a debate, no matter the skill level, is authorized to comment because they are an audience member – the most important viewpoint about the debate lies with them. I like the idea of audience as an automatic position of valuable speech post-debate practice.

2. Substantive Debate: There was great discussion on how to make argumentation more substantive, deep, and therefore more appealing to the listener. The idea of getting debaters out of their polished and practical style was a big part of this, and some interesting ideas were shared about it. For me, the take-away was (as it usually is) keeping debate in perspective, as a tool that helps us point out a lot of things to people practicing it about the nature of language, persuasion, and rhetoric in the world.

I also had a great conversation today with an argument theorist who teaches in a Spanish Speaking country, and in his introduction he mentioned both Chaim Perelman and Pragma-Dialectics. I think this was the first debate function I’ve been at when I was not the one who brought up those names. We had a good conversation, and I hope there’s a bit more to go. It’s rare to meet someone who wants to incorporate 20th century argumentation theory into the teaching of debate.

Everyone is working hard on curriculum, and it continues tomorrow. We have a lot of exciting things in store for attendees, and I know we are going to have some great instruction. Tomorrow we learn about judging Karl Popper debate, which I have not judged, so I look forward to learning the specifics.