The New York Sophist

But all the comments were positive, except for one that, in my mind, is the oldest criticism of all when discussing debating. 

The panelists felt our project would fail because we are not teaching advocacy about anything. We are just teaching debating and advocacy by itself. One panelist said that if we were teaching an issue-based form of advocacy – teaching the students something to stand up for – it would improve the project immensely. But she or he could not see how we could teach debating without a civil society or civil issue connected with it.

My thoughts drifted to the critique of rhetoric offered by Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias. Rhetoric has no substance of its own, so it cannot properly be called an “art.” Rhetoric – teaching people how to advocate without any proper subject matter – is akin to teaching people cookery without teaching nutrition, or teaching people the art of cosmetics without teaching how to care for the body properly. For Socrates and Plato, the concern with the reality behind the words is paramount, and it is impossible to imagine a good society placing  the focus of education on the quality of the advocacy without concern for what will be advocated about. The U.S. State Department agreed with this assessment, citing concerns that students would lose interest because there is no critical or social issue keeping them involved. There is also a fear – a fear about teaching young people the ability to change their minds and the minds of others without regard to a particular issue – which is also an ancient fear expressed by Plato. Without grounding in the good, how would a society know where to steer? We would just go wherever we pleased, and might not actually and really know whether we were doing real good or not. 

As I listened to the debriefing, I couldn’t help but cringe. I thought immediately I should have been clearer in my writing about what debate teaches – it teaches people to advocate for advocacy. It teaches the capacity for building civil society capacity. But then the darker side of this criticism came to light – the side that Plato conveniently forgets to have Gorgias argue in the dialogue. 

This is the side where connecting advocacy training, rhetoric, and argumentation to the investments of order and stability come into play. The U.S. suggests things like women’s issues and the issues of children not because of some alturistic sense of duty, but because these are important footholds for consumer capitalism to gain ground. Developing a taste for Western medical practices and Western ideas of dissimination of rights (which of course require particular material possessions to display that you have access to and enjoy certain rights) forego the possibility to imagine alternative ways of ordering society. Training in debate for the sake of debate, or educating people to advocate for advocacy – something I think that debate could be really good at doing – connects the practices of debating to the imagination, not to the superstructure that exists, churning away in a particular direction, deep under all of our feet in the realm of ideology. 

In contemporary scholarship we have the fears, particularly in the United States, that teaching students how to debate and advocate will ruin their ability to believe strongly – become people of conviction – as opposed to people who can manipulate minds as the occasion requires it. Teddy Roosevelt was very proud to write in his autobiography that he did not participate in University debating which could have ruined his conviction. Ron Green and Darrin Hicks wrote a seminal paper that traces the dispute among debate teachers and coaches in the middle of the 20th century on the value of forcing students to take certain positions in debates, or “switch-sides.” The concern was that this type of debate ruins the development of political and social beliefs, which are not the business of the debate coach to generate. On the other side, the effect of teaching switch-side debating is that democracy – at least the U.S. flavor of it – now has a subject position that is very attractive and very persuasive: Democratic thinkers can adapt both sides of a controversy and examine them.  Both results and both positions on the issue of advocacy as the “subject” of advocacy have made their point in the fact that either way, we teach in the service of some ideology.

We can’t help but serve such tectonic forces in our daily lives. But teaching rhetoric and the possibilities of argument and advocacy for their own sake might help us become a bit more aware of such massive forces, and steer the ship a fraction more one way than another. This is terrifying to those with a vested interest in how the world should look.

What is it that makes us host tournaments and encourage the people we like most to participate in debating? What forces are at work there? These questions are a bit beyond a U.S. Government grant application, but they are perhaps the root of better answers to the concerns of a government that wants to promote civil society – but only in a certain flavor. The U.S. State Department – convictionists? Socratics? Perhaps some sort of 21st century blend of both that believes, as we have for most of modern Western civilization, that debate is something you do after you have discovered the truth. Recovery of the epistemic role of debating is something everyone involved in debate should be spending some of their time considering these days.

But all the comments were positive, except for one that, in my mind, is the oldest criticism of all when discussing debating. 

The panelists felt our project would fail because we are not teaching advocacy about anything. We are just teaching debating and advocacy by itself. One panelist said that if we were teaching an issue-based form of advocacy – teaching the students something to stand up for – it would improve the project immensely. But she or he could not see how we could teach debating without a civil society or civil issue connected with it.

My thoughts drifted to the critique of rhetoric offered by Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias. Rhetoric has no substance of its own, so it cannot properly be called an “art.” Rhetoric – teaching people how to advocate without any proper subject matter – is akin to teaching people cookery without teaching nutrition, or teaching people the art of cosmetics without teaching how to care for the body properly. For Socrates and Plato, the concern with the reality behind the words is paramount, and it is impossible to imagine a good society placing  the focus of education on the quality of the advocacy without concern for what will be advocated about. The U.S. State Department agreed with this assessment, citing concerns that students would lose interest because there is no critical or social issue keeping them involved. There is also a fear – a fear about teaching young people the ability to change their minds and the minds of others without regard to a particular issue – which is also an ancient fear expressed by Plato. Without grounding in the good, how would a society know where to steer? We would just go wherever we pleased, and might not actually and really know whether we were doing real good or not. 

As I listened to the debriefing, I couldn’t help but cringe. I thought immediately I should have been clearer in my writing about what debate teaches – it teaches people to advocate for advocacy. It teaches the capacity for building civil society capacity. But then the darker side of this criticism came to light – the side that Plato conveniently forgets to have Gorgias argue in the dialogue. 

This is the side where connecting advocacy training, rhetoric, and argumentation to the investments of order and stability come into play. The U.S. suggests things like women’s issues and the issues of children not because of some alturistic sense of duty, but because these are important footholds for consumer capitalism to gain ground. Developing a taste for Western medical practices and Western ideas of dissimination of rights (which of course require particular material possessions to display that you have access to and enjoy certain rights) forego the possibility to imagine alternative ways of ordering society. Training in debate for the sake of debate, or educating people to advocate for advocacy – something I think that debate could be really good at doing – connects the practices of debating to the imagination, not to the superstructure that exists, churning away in a particular direction, deep under all of our feet in the realm of ideology. 

In contemporary scholarship we have the fears, particularly in the United States, that teaching students how to debate and advocate will ruin their ability to believe strongly – become people of conviction – as opposed to people who can manipulate minds as the occasion requires it. Teddy Roosevelt was very proud to write in his autobiography that he did not participate in University debating which could have ruined his conviction. Ron Green and Darrin Hicks wrote a seminal paper that traces the dispute among debate teachers and coaches in the middle of the 20th century on the value of forcing students to take certain positions in debates, or “switch-sides.” The concern was that this type of debate ruins the development of political and social beliefs, which are not the business of the debate coach to generate. On the other side, the effect of teaching switch-side debating is that democracy – at least the U.S. flavor of it – now has a subject position that is very attractive and very persuasive: Democratic thinkers can adapt both sides of a controversy and examine them.  Both results and both positions on the issue of advocacy as the “subject” of advocacy have made their point in the fact that either way, we teach in the service of some ideology.

We can’t help but serve such tectonic forces in our daily lives. But teaching rhetoric and the possibilities of argument and advocacy for their own sake might help us become a bit more aware of such massive forces, and steer the ship a fraction more one way than another. This is terrifying to those with a vested interest in how the world should look.

What is it that makes us host tournaments and encourage the people we like most to participate in debating? What forces are at work there? These questions are a bit beyond a U.S. Government grant application, but they are perhaps the root of better answers to the concerns of a government that wants to promote civil society – but only in a certain flavor. The U.S. State Department – convictionists? Socratics? Perhaps some sort of 21st century blend of both that believes, as we have for most of modern Western civilization, that debate is something you do after you have discovered the truth. Recovery of the epistemic role of debating is something everyone involved in debate should be spending some of their time considering these days.

I no longer prep like I used to.

Perhaps it is a sign of maturing as a teacher. Perhaps it is a sign of becoming comfortable with the role. More darkly – perhaps it is a sign of being over it, of losing feeling for it.

I’m thousands of feet in the air above the middle if the US writing notes for a weekend of debating workshops I am conducting in Billings at Rocky Mountain college.

I’m certainly excited about the rhetorical situation. At no other time in debate history have students and programs been able to choose and switch back and forth between formats. At other times the splits and changes came with forced allegiances. But not at this moment in debating history.

Many factors are involved in the appearance of that possibility. I won’t detail them here. Only one concerns me, and it is a consequence. Debating, in a multiformat world, is as close to the rhetorical field as it has ever been.

We are finally, in explicit debating practice, allowed – no, forced as teachers – to consider format as such, as a structure, as something chosen and applied, as something to prepare for sans debate. We must teach it oppositionally, as a Roman would learn the distinction between the court and the senate. And hopefully understand chat at the circus maximus as its own distinct demanding form as well.

In short, debating has acquired historicity, if we are wise enough to use it. The elements are here already! See them come rolling off the tounges of those who defend “real debate” versus the strange new interloper of WUDC! All we should hear is the lapping of the currents of a river of history that seemed always to have stopped flowing at a perfect format years before we arrived. Debate was form. Form was not discussed in a way we can now, and must, take it up.

We as debate teachers, have more to do and more to do it with than ever before. And it’s not saddled with specifics, but with dynamics. Interplay and difference rule where once there was no way to discuss form as option.

That’s why I am comfortable. That’s why I am not producing copious notes to help me teach a transition to a new format. And that’s why I can’t help but smile as I jot down ideas for my sessions.

I’ve not lost interest, I’m just finding a familiar flavor surprisingly new again as debate ferments with rhetoric. I hope it turns out to be a good vintage.

I no longer prep like I used to.

Perhaps it is a sign of maturing as a teacher. Perhaps it is a sign of becoming comfortable with the role. More darkly – perhaps it is a sign of being over it, of losing feeling for it.

I’m thousands of feet in the air above the middle if the US writing notes for a weekend of debating workshops I am conducting in Billings at Rocky Mountain college.

I’m certainly excited about the rhetorical situation. At no other time in debate history have students and programs been able to choose and switch back and forth between formats. At other times the splits and changes came with forced allegiances. But not at this moment in debating history.

Many factors are involved in the appearance of that possibility. I won’t detail them here. Only one concerns me, and it is a consequence. Debating, in a multiformat world, is as close to the rhetorical field as it has ever been.

We are finally, in explicit debating practice, allowed – no, forced as teachers – to consider format as such, as a structure, as something chosen and applied, as something to prepare for sans debate. We must teach it oppositionally, as a Roman would learn the distinction between the court and the senate. And hopefully understand chat at the circus maximus as its own distinct demanding form as well.

In short, debating has acquired historicity, if we are wise enough to use it. The elements are here already! See them come rolling off the tounges of those who defend “real debate” versus the strange new interloper of WUDC! All we should hear is the lapping of the currents of a river of history that seemed always to have stopped flowing at a perfect format years before we arrived. Debate was form. Form was not discussed in a way we can now, and must, take it up.

We as debate teachers, have more to do and more to do it with than ever before. And it’s not saddled with specifics, but with dynamics. Interplay and difference rule where once there was no way to discuss form as option.

That’s why I am comfortable. That’s why I am not producing copious notes to help me teach a transition to a new format. And that’s why I can’t help but smile as I jot down ideas for my sessions.

I’ve not lost interest, I’m just finding a familiar flavor surprisingly new again as debate ferments with rhetoric. I hope it turns out to be a good vintage.