The New York Sophist

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.

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.

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Now, after just having written about how I think debate videos are bad, let me explain why I think it is incredibly important to keep making them.

A couple of months ago, my external hard disk died very suddenly. I was really sad about it, because I knew I had lost some data I didn’t back up. I wasn’t exactly sure what was on that disk, but that’s what I get for not backing up regularly.

I didn’t throw it away, just kept it on a shelf and forgot about it.  The other day I plugged it in and it worked!

On this disk were a lot of debate videos. But not just rounds, videos of people between rounds, videos of conversations about debates, and other such material.  I started uploading it to the cloud right away as I wasn’t sure when this HDD would fail again.

The videos are pretty silly – lots of post round conversation, lots of practices and practice speeches, all kinds of debate rounds from various tournaments that, for whatever reason, I never got around to uploading. Looking at some of them made me realize that I’ve been here at St. John’s for longer than I concieve of it in my mind, and it made me a bit nostalgic for the early days.

However, this material is a lot more valuable than just that. These videos are our history. They are a set of practices and norms of communication. These videos are a record of those practices that we take for granted. In the future, they might be eye-opening for people interested in our communicative norms or our approach to debating.

We are lucky to be participating in global debate at a time when digital video is inexpensive and storage media are decreasing in cost. It’s time to start considering seriously the idea of a digital archive for debating.

The most frustrating thing that I have had to deal with in recent years was arriving at St. John’s University to reboot (using the term like they do in film) the debate program. The previous director retired, and left not one piece of paper or any type of information about the team anywhere.

This was frustrating because I knew what it meant: I was going to have to re-invent the wheel. I was going to have to chase down every dead end that he probably did. Audio video technology did not exist in the easy and cheap form it does for us, but what about some notes? Handwritten acccounts or reflections? Meeting minutes? History, if it is anything, are records of practices.

But more important than that is all the lost stories about the old team. In our Debate Facility which we call the Debate Dojo, there are numerous trophies extending back to the 1950s. They sit as silent witnesses to a team dynamic that may well be lost. It might seem hard to believe, but practitioners of debate in 20 or 30 years from now might really want to know what it was like to be at your IV, or be a member of your debate club. In a couple of hundred years, who knows what might interest those people. The videos we produce and preserve seem somewhat silly to us, but future practitioners will find them incredibly valuable.

I’m trying to recover those stories by starting a program of interviewing alumni and trying to get a sense of what it was like to be on the team during different eras. I try to shoot some candid conversation shots here and there to get a sense of what’s on peoples’ minds. I also, of course, shoot as many debates as I can. Even looking at some of these older debates gives me a sense of the trajectory of style in debating here in the Northeastern U.S. It might turn out to be an interesting catalog of the changes in persuasive style over the years.

At the University of Pittsburgh, where I received my Ph.D., there is a cabinet in a small room near the debate squad room. Years ago, a coach of the William Pitt Debating Union decided to record public debates on a reel to reel tape player. I found a player and tried to archive these recordings to mp3 in order to start a digital debate history project. Unfortunately, my time was limited and I was unable to see the project through.

In my view, it’s great that those tapes exist whether many people can listen to them or not. At least someone can listen to them and get a sense of what debate was like in the 1950s. I listened to several debates between Pitt and the University of Vermont – and they were nothing like any style of debate that currently exists. More than that, these recordings are amazing evidence of the practices of a different era. Listening to them and thinking about them provide an irreplaceable way to reflect on your own practices, to see what was valued and what we value now in debating.

I think it’s vital we create digital archives similar to this analog one that sits in Pittsburgh. Here at St. John’s we have a new graduate program in public history. These graduate students will be working with new methods for digital archive and information preservation. I hope to get them interested in my project and provide a nice resource for those interested in working on the history of debate practices. We might not think it matters, and we might even feel strange about making these recordings. But in 100 years some scholar will look at them and gasp – for she will have seen something that makes our era click for her in a way that allows a greater understanding of what we are up to for these people who we will never meet (but would love to).

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Now, after just having written about how I think debate videos are bad, let me explain why I think it is incredibly important to keep making them.

A couple of months ago, my external hard disk died very suddenly. I was really sad about it, because I knew I had lost some data I didn’t back up. I wasn’t exactly sure what was on that disk, but that’s what I get for not backing up regularly.

I didn’t throw it away, just kept it on a shelf and forgot about it.  The other day I plugged it in and it worked!

On this disk were a lot of debate videos. But not just rounds, videos of people between rounds, videos of conversations about debates, and other such material.  I started uploading it to the cloud right away as I wasn’t sure when this HDD would fail again.

The videos are pretty silly – lots of post round conversation, lots of practices and practice speeches, all kinds of debate rounds from various tournaments that, for whatever reason, I never got around to uploading. Looking at some of them made me realize that I’ve been here at St. John’s for longer than I concieve of it in my mind, and it made me a bit nostalgic for the early days.

However, this material is a lot more valuable than just that. These videos are our history. They are a set of practices and norms of communication. These videos are a record of those practices that we take for granted. In the future, they might be eye-opening for people interested in our communicative norms or our approach to debating.

We are lucky to be participating in global debate at a time when digital video is inexpensive and storage media are decreasing in cost. It’s time to start considering seriously the idea of a digital archive for debating.

The most frustrating thing that I have had to deal with in recent years was arriving at St. John’s University to reboot (using the term like they do in film) the debate program. The previous director retired, and left not one piece of paper or any type of information about the team anywhere.

This was frustrating because I knew what it meant: I was going to have to re-invent the wheel. I was going to have to chase down every dead end that he probably did. Audio video technology did not exist in the easy and cheap form it does for us, but what about some notes? Handwritten acccounts or reflections? Meeting minutes? History, if it is anything, are records of practices.

But more important than that is all the lost stories about the old team. In our Debate Facility which we call the Debate Dojo, there are numerous trophies extending back to the 1950s. They sit as silent witnesses to a team dynamic that may well be lost. It might seem hard to believe, but practitioners of debate in 20 or 30 years from now might really want to know what it was like to be at your IV, or be a member of your debate club. In a couple of hundred years, who knows what might interest those people. The videos we produce and preserve seem somewhat silly to us, but future practitioners will find them incredibly valuable.

I’m trying to recover those stories by starting a program of interviewing alumni and trying to get a sense of what it was like to be on the team during different eras. I try to shoot some candid conversation shots here and there to get a sense of what’s on peoples’ minds. I also, of course, shoot as many debates as I can. Even looking at some of these older debates gives me a sense of the trajectory of style in debating here in the Northeastern U.S. It might turn out to be an interesting catalog of the changes in persuasive style over the years.

At the University of Pittsburgh, where I received my Ph.D., there is a cabinet in a small room near the debate squad room. Years ago, a coach of the William Pitt Debating Union decided to record public debates on a reel to reel tape player. I found a player and tried to archive these recordings to mp3 in order to start a digital debate history project. Unfortunately, my time was limited and I was unable to see the project through.

In my view, it’s great that those tapes exist whether many people can listen to them or not. At least someone can listen to them and get a sense of what debate was like in the 1950s. I listened to several debates between Pitt and the University of Vermont – and they were nothing like any style of debate that currently exists. More than that, these recordings are amazing evidence of the practices of a different era. Listening to them and thinking about them provide an irreplaceable way to reflect on your own practices, to see what was valued and what we value now in debating.

I think it’s vital we create digital archives similar to this analog one that sits in Pittsburgh. Here at St. John’s we have a new graduate program in public history. These graduate students will be working with new methods for digital archive and information preservation. I hope to get them interested in my project and provide a nice resource for those interested in working on the history of debate practices. We might not think it matters, and we might even feel strange about making these recordings. But in 100 years some scholar will look at them and gasp – for she will have seen something that makes our era click for her in a way that allows a greater understanding of what we are up to for these people who we will never meet (but would love to).

(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.