A Dirty Little Secret, Both Sides

Why is there no official, or even pedagogical statement on the value of switch side debating from either the NDT, CEDA, or any other large debating organization?

Perhaps it is because switch-side debating is a cover for teaching conviction and engaging in truth-seeking, something that debate can clearly be used for, but is not debate at its best. This rhetoric takes the form of “students have to explore both sides of a controversy” while at the same time, regular tournament practice has students arguing the same arguments on either side of a debate, for years. In fact, the choice not to participate in switch-side debating is seen as a noble act, giving stronger credence to the claim that their advocacy and arguments are authentic, not meant to win a debate, but meant to precipitate actual change.

The dirty little secret of contemporary debate is that switch-side debate – taking a side you don’t necessarily personally hold and arguing for it – doesn’t interest anyone anymore. The most compelling interest for it is as a foil so one can advance arguments. The switch-side investment or performance is the starting point for a causal link that indicts that speaker. The speaker is someone who has “chosen” to not participate in debate’s norms in order to prove an important point about the political nature of debate and how neutral it appears. This has become so boilerplate that many debate programs teach it as beginning strategy to those first learning how to participate in tournament debating.

The value of switch-side should also be considered for what is being dismissed under the rubric of this current trend.

Switch-side debating is meant to divest the individuals participating in it from personal conviction on an issue.

Switch-side is crucial in a pedagogy that encourages debaters to focus on the structures and suasory power of rhetoric and argumentation as it is, tabling the truth or factual nature of the information researched for the claim. It is the one place where this happens in an education system that is largely read, at least in the US, as arbitrary and unpredictable, a game where the rules are constantly changing, and no student wants to be the one to ask the question that provokes the teacher to change an exam or a final requirement in some way.

In a totally arbitrary system of judgement, like higher education is currently perceived, the personal and the political are totally merged. Junior faculty are divested from experimental advocacy and writing at a time when they are best poised to do it. Senior faculty are too invested in the university system to use their tenure appropriately – to investigate and challenge the norms that are related to the hows and whys of the system that now their comfortable, permanent employment depends. Instead, they offer shrill critiques and indictments of large systems primarily due to the fact that they are so well insulated. A more careful, well researched, and damning critique of such systemic processes, seen as possible indictments of the university, could doom a junior faculty member.

We see something similar with those who refuse to participate in switch-side debate. The requirement to argue on different positions on a question is the evidence they rely on in order to argue that the entire system is flawed, biased, and laden with ideology while appearing neutral. Whatever flavor the argumentation, the structure of it is somewhat similar – it all depends on the requirement that debaters are forced to argue on opposite sides of the question from time to time. This move catapults these teams into the center of the most competitive, most admired, and most duplicated strategies in the entire debating community. In short, like the university, the railing against the system is conducted by those who are at the center of the benefits.

The value of switch-side debating is something that the majority of those participating in debate are fairly uninterested in today – the power of words and the ability of rhetoric to shape reality. Many of those participating in debate are much more interested in truth-seeking, and campaigning for a fundamental truth that they have discovered through means unrelated to anything but preparing for the tournament and thinking about the topic. The debate itself is rather procedural, for in essence, they are using it as a forum to refine discoveries made elsewhere – little difference between that and the layperson’s view of debate.

Alternatively, embracing switch-side removes focus from truth and onto the appearance as such. Debate becomes a place for the study of the invention and reception of truth – or tropes, topoi, whatever you may wish to call them – the containers that make truth recognizable as such. Investigating the shape and power of the containers of what is believed to be true is an incredibly important study, and makes debate one of the most powerful disciplines in the university. Anyone can acquire facts and information, and anyone can use ad bacculum or popularity appeals to get that information over as truth to a community of like-minded people, such as the American debate world. But being able to broadly discuss, identify, critique, and replace the tropes of truth in broader society is much more valuable than the acquisition of resonant information. The reason being that one day that resonance with truth will fade from that information, and those who did not study rhetoric will be left holding the bag. Adaptability is the watchword here, and switch-side might be a good way of teaching it – not because of the thin, rather non-existence scope of adaptability in tournaments (most judges are very much alike in decision-making compared to the variety one gets from a public audience) or the precision that form of adaptation teaches, but the broader and more difficult question of reformulating treasured facts into other things, things considered valuable for a variety of listeners. What contemporary debate offers is akin to a specialized type of biochemistry, possibly focusing on one or two types of bacteria. What I am suggesting with a switch-side focus is the re-emergence of the art of alchemy – transmutation of the worthless into the valuable, and vice versa.

Switch-side does not teach this directly, but teaches it by numbing the thrill of the possession of truth by forcing students to throw it away at each instance in order to prepare for the next debate. Human nature what it is, debaters will turn toward possessing the next best thing – the forms of persuasion, which opens the door wide for the keen debate teacher to begin the lesson in earnest, showing how the formulation of truth is indistinguishable from the possession of what is believed to be true.

Debate as the Pedagogy of Invention

Debate pedagogy’s primary contribution
to the study of rhetoric and argumentation is in the realm of
invention – how do we come up with and produce argumentation that
both addresses the issue at hand and includes, invites, and engages
the audience to consider that argumentation?
Sadly, this contribution is currently
ignored.
I learned I have a lot of work ahead of
me if I want to continue this project of revitalizing debate-oriented
scholarship. I recently gave a paper considering debate on “other
terms” as a starting point for debate-oriented scholarship, only to
have it attended by the chair of the panel, the other panelists, and
a couple of my friends.
I believe the work is difficult as the
most receptive audience to discussing debate is the current debate
competition community. But they don’t really have a lot of motive to
go beyond reading or investigating issues that are perceived to have
a direct impact on the lived tournament experience. Recent articles
by current competitive debaters on gender are a great example of this
– how tournament success records indicate whether or not gender
inclusiveness is being handled.
The other audience, that of scholars of
argumentation have the barrier of ignorance – many have no idea
that debate clubs exist or that tournaments are occurring on their
campuses. This is partially by design – tournament organizers don’t
really want a lot of “outsiders” attending debates that are
designed to be heard by judges trained to look for specific things in
speeches and celebrate the more esoteric arguments in a debate round
as opposed to the ones that cut to the heart of the matter as public
discourse would frame it. The other barrier is that once identified,
most scholars dismiss debate as a game best reserved for some of your
undergraduate time, but a pretty big waste of energy and resources,
especially for talented students. I’ve had several management and
business professors tell my students that they wish they had some
power over them to force them to stop debating and focus on something
meaningful. After suggesting debate events to a colleague as a way of
engaging the student body for a week-long pedagogy effort at my
university, she responded, “That’s great, but we should do some
real pedagogy as well.” This is primarily due to a lack of any
scholarly treatment of debating. The only remnants of debate
scholarship out there are aimed toward tournament competition, the
rules of such, and the nature of that competition. Within rhetorical
scholarship in the United States, debate-oriented scholarship is seen
as a good graduate student starting point, best abandoned for serious
work once one develops an orientation and some sea legs.
Trading off debate’s attention to
tournament schedules, national championships, and more toward debate
as the pedagogy of rhetorical invention might legitimize
debate-oriented scholarship’s value within both audiences. The
question of “how do I come up with something to say?” is a
constant one for those involved in debating as well as those involved
in teaching. I am not saying just the teaching of
performance-oriented rhetoric courses, but the teaching of any course
– for most courses require a paper or presentation of some kind.
This is one of the few universal
pedagogical questions, and debate could offer a wonderful service to
pedagogy at all levels by being the venue that rigorously develops
methods to answer such questions. Composition departments, usually
housed in writing programs or in English departments, address this
question as well, but it is within a basket of additional questions
such as style and voice. Debate can provide more intense scrutiny on
the question of coming up with what to say, and also unique method on
the question of coming up with what to say when time is limited, and
preparation is restricted – the trope of “thinking on your feet.”
Debate teaches invention when the
resources are limited and the time to speak is upon us. This is the
situation of reaction, the pub conversation, the interview, the
impromptu debate about policy among friends or at work. When one has
time and resources, one can rely on the methods of composition for
the generation of arguments – although often students don’t,
preferring to wait till the last minute to begin work on a paper. It
seems the more we teach students to take advantage of the time they
have to prepare and generate a range of argumentation from which to
write, the less they do it.
Debate is often criticized for being
response oriented – a critique that reaches back to Plato’s
criticism of Sophistry for being about nothing but technique, and
having no substance. Over the centuries, this has cast doubt upon
Sophistic philosophy and work, to the point where many distrust the
acts of debating and speaking themselves, often contrasting them with
“finding the facts” or “the simple truth.”
The Sophistic approach is necessarily
reactive, since the Sophists, for the most part, viewed the world as
contingent and ever-changing. Opinions and views change, which change
the standards by which facts and reasons are judged. The Sophist must
be ready to react – to invent arguments on the fly that both
address the controversy and appeal to the audience in the same
movement. On top of that, humans really don’t like to be pandered to
– or realize that they are being pandered to, more accurately. So
good rhetorical invention must appear to be universal, addressed to
all reasonable people, not just the ears and feelings of the present
group.
Motivating all of this is the concept
of opportunity, or kairos in
ancient Greek. Rhetors must be able to recognize the key moment in
which to deploy their arguments. An argument that is not timed well
could fail, or worse, could fail to be recognized as an argument by
the audience – they could have moved on past that topos
by the time you speak. Debate teaches this painful art of time
management in the well known scenario of having to ditch the argument
you love in order to remain relevant and engaged in the debate as it
is happening.
It’s a tall order, but a return to
Sophistic thought – a recovery effort that has long been underway
in the field of rhetorical studies here in the U.S. – can help root
debate’s uniqueness as the pedagogy of reactive rhetorical invention,
when time and situation hamper our ability to conduct a full and
complete investigation of the situation to determine the certainty of
truth. When “best guess” is what we have to work with, what are
our methods for coming up with arguments that seize the tri-partite
moment that speakers face?
Returning to the Sophists is one way to
root the scholarship, but another is in contemporary theories of
argumentation. Debate offers the missing element of invention from a
field that is obsessed with critique, measurement, and evaluation. It
is rare to hear or read a piece from a contemporary argumentation
scholar that discusses how to generate arguments within a
controversy. Instead, they discuss old controversies, evaluating the
arguments of the participants using the theoretical meter sticks they
have developed.

Valuable work to be sure, but
where’s the space for someone who wants to intervene? Debate-oriented
scholarship can take the best of argumentation theory work and
generate some ways to develop arguments that fit the best
argumentation theory has to offer, while also answering the
three-part question of invention that faces anyone who rises to
debate.
Finally, the anchor point with the
biggest pay-off is for debate as rhetorical invention to get involved
deeply in the recent reflexive scholarship about what the university
experience should be for undergraduates. Facing a world where a
rigid, disciplinary major might be a career and intellectual hang-up
for students, debate training as training for the rhetorical
invention of the situational self could be invaluable if implemented
across the curriculum. The ports-of-call are already established:
Biology courses teach people to think like a biologist, history
courses like a historian. All that is missing is the complex question
– such as Roman declamation might offer – that when faced with a
couple of these challenging audiences, how do you speak the terms of
one audience into the other? This question, if practiced via debating
at the university, can be as valuable as an undergraduate research
symposium, but unrestricted by disciplinary identity. The only
identity at question here is the sophistic one: What am I, what can I
be, for this audience, given this question, if I want them to believe
me?

Debate as the Pedagogy of Invention

Debate pedagogy’s primary contribution
to the study of rhetoric and argumentation is in the realm of
invention – how do we come up with and produce argumentation that
both addresses the issue at hand and includes, invites, and engages
the audience to consider that argumentation?
Sadly, this contribution is currently
ignored.
I learned I have a lot of work ahead of
me if I want to continue this project of revitalizing debate-oriented
scholarship. I recently gave a paper considering debate on “other
terms” as a starting point for debate-oriented scholarship, only to
have it attended by the chair of the panel, the other panelists, and
a couple of my friends.
I believe the work is difficult as the
most receptive audience to discussing debate is the current debate
competition community. But they don’t really have a lot of motive to
go beyond reading or investigating issues that are perceived to have
a direct impact on the lived tournament experience. Recent articles
by current competitive debaters on gender are a great example of this
– how tournament success records indicate whether or not gender
inclusiveness is being handled.
The other audience, that of scholars of
argumentation have the barrier of ignorance – many have no idea
that debate clubs exist or that tournaments are occurring on their
campuses. This is partially by design – tournament organizers don’t
really want a lot of “outsiders” attending debates that are
designed to be heard by judges trained to look for specific things in
speeches and celebrate the more esoteric arguments in a debate round
as opposed to the ones that cut to the heart of the matter as public
discourse would frame it. The other barrier is that once identified,
most scholars dismiss debate as a game best reserved for some of your
undergraduate time, but a pretty big waste of energy and resources,
especially for talented students. I’ve had several management and
business professors tell my students that they wish they had some
power over them to force them to stop debating and focus on something
meaningful. After suggesting debate events to a colleague as a way of
engaging the student body for a week-long pedagogy effort at my
university, she responded, “That’s great, but we should do some
real pedagogy as well.” This is primarily due to a lack of any
scholarly treatment of debating. The only remnants of debate
scholarship out there are aimed toward tournament competition, the
rules of such, and the nature of that competition. Within rhetorical
scholarship in the United States, debate-oriented scholarship is seen
as a good graduate student starting point, best abandoned for serious
work once one develops an orientation and some sea legs.
Trading off debate’s attention to
tournament schedules, national championships, and more toward debate
as the pedagogy of rhetorical invention might legitimize
debate-oriented scholarship’s value within both audiences. The
question of “how do I come up with something to say?” is a
constant one for those involved in debating as well as those involved
in teaching. I am not saying just the teaching of
performance-oriented rhetoric courses, but the teaching of any course
– for most courses require a paper or presentation of some kind.
This is one of the few universal
pedagogical questions, and debate could offer a wonderful service to
pedagogy at all levels by being the venue that rigorously develops
methods to answer such questions. Composition departments, usually
housed in writing programs or in English departments, address this
question as well, but it is within a basket of additional questions
such as style and voice. Debate can provide more intense scrutiny on
the question of coming up with what to say, and also unique method on
the question of coming up with what to say when time is limited, and
preparation is restricted – the trope of “thinking on your feet.”
Debate teaches invention when the
resources are limited and the time to speak is upon us. This is the
situation of reaction, the pub conversation, the interview, the
impromptu debate about policy among friends or at work. When one has
time and resources, one can rely on the methods of composition for
the generation of arguments – although often students don’t,
preferring to wait till the last minute to begin work on a paper. It
seems the more we teach students to take advantage of the time they
have to prepare and generate a range of argumentation from which to
write, the less they do it.
Debate is often criticized for being
response oriented – a critique that reaches back to Plato’s
criticism of Sophistry for being about nothing but technique, and
having no substance. Over the centuries, this has cast doubt upon
Sophistic philosophy and work, to the point where many distrust the
acts of debating and speaking themselves, often contrasting them with
“finding the facts” or “the simple truth.”
The Sophistic approach is necessarily
reactive, since the Sophists, for the most part, viewed the world as
contingent and ever-changing. Opinions and views change, which change
the standards by which facts and reasons are judged. The Sophist must
be ready to react – to invent arguments on the fly that both
address the controversy and appeal to the audience in the same
movement. On top of that, humans really don’t like to be pandered to
– or realize that they are being pandered to, more accurately. So
good rhetorical invention must appear to be universal, addressed to
all reasonable people, not just the ears and feelings of the present
group.
Motivating all of this is the concept
of opportunity, or kairos in
ancient Greek. Rhetors must be able to recognize the key moment in
which to deploy their arguments. An argument that is not timed well
could fail, or worse, could fail to be recognized as an argument by
the audience – they could have moved on past that topos
by the time you speak. Debate teaches this painful art of time
management in the well known scenario of having to ditch the argument
you love in order to remain relevant and engaged in the debate as it
is happening.
It’s a tall order, but a return to
Sophistic thought – a recovery effort that has long been underway
in the field of rhetorical studies here in the U.S. – can help root
debate’s uniqueness as the pedagogy of reactive rhetorical invention,
when time and situation hamper our ability to conduct a full and
complete investigation of the situation to determine the certainty of
truth. When “best guess” is what we have to work with, what are
our methods for coming up with arguments that seize the tri-partite
moment that speakers face?
Returning to the Sophists is one way to
root the scholarship, but another is in contemporary theories of
argumentation. Debate offers the missing element of invention from a
field that is obsessed with critique, measurement, and evaluation. It
is rare to hear or read a piece from a contemporary argumentation
scholar that discusses how to generate arguments within a
controversy. Instead, they discuss old controversies, evaluating the
arguments of the participants using the theoretical meter sticks they
have developed.

Valuable work to be sure, but
where’s the space for someone who wants to intervene? Debate-oriented
scholarship can take the best of argumentation theory work and
generate some ways to develop arguments that fit the best
argumentation theory has to offer, while also answering the
three-part question of invention that faces anyone who rises to
debate.
Finally, the anchor point with the
biggest pay-off is for debate as rhetorical invention to get involved
deeply in the recent reflexive scholarship about what the university
experience should be for undergraduates. Facing a world where a
rigid, disciplinary major might be a career and intellectual hang-up
for students, debate training as training for the rhetorical
invention of the situational self could be invaluable if implemented
across the curriculum. The ports-of-call are already established:
Biology courses teach people to think like a biologist, history
courses like a historian. All that is missing is the complex question
– such as Roman declamation might offer – that when faced with a
couple of these challenging audiences, how do you speak the terms of
one audience into the other? This question, if practiced via debating
at the university, can be as valuable as an undergraduate research
symposium, but unrestricted by disciplinary identity. The only
identity at question here is the sophistic one: What am I, what can I
be, for this audience, given this question, if I want them to believe
me?

Debate Format Camp vs. Debate Camp

Debate camp in the United States was a
large mainstay for many years. It still continues, mostly in edited
form, across the country. The major reason that debate camps dried up
in the early 2000s was mostly due to funding. When schools no longer
have the money to subsidize attendance at debating summer camps, they
are unable to run.
Another factor is the university’s
endless quest for revenue streams. Seeing summer camp as a way to
supplement dwindling revenues, dorm rental rates and room rentals for
summer camp activities are just a couple of ways the university
attempts to supplement themselves at the cost of the debate camp’s
margin. Paying good faculty for time and travel are essential.
Even given these barriers, there are
still a number of debating summer camps in operation. Sometimes they
are referred to as debate institutes, or debate summer institutes.
This title doesn’t really work for most
of them. I believe they should be called debate format summer
institutes. The scope of what they instruct and practice rarely
skirts beyond the ideology of a particular format of debating, used
soley at tournament competitions at a limited selection of
universities on a few weekends a year. Hardly something worth
spending thousands of dollars of travel and fees.
If debate institutes would focus on the
idea of being a debate summer institute, most universities could host
a thriving and valuable summer camp experience for a much larger
number of students, engaging them intellectually in ways that their
schooling fails. Debate is a much broader concept, intersecting
almost all disciplines at the university, as well as public policy
and civic life. Exploration of the nature of debate, from invention
to delivery to critique and response of audience is something worth
spending a large amount of money and time to study. Here’s how
current debate format summer institutes could alter their practices
very simply in order to access this:
Replace Debate Coaches with
Subject Matter Experts
Too often the debate format ideology
believes that once something becomes a debate topic, a debate expert
is all you need in order to teach the controversy and clash
surrounding the issue or issues. This leads to terrible instruction,
as I recently saw in a high school topic lecture on YouTube at a
major summer debate format institute. Since these are university
hosted and sponsored events, why not ask faculty from the relevant
schools to give short talks on the state of the debate within the
field? These would be much more dynamic and much more engaging than
what passes now. As I witnessed, the lecturer, an assistant debate
coach, suggested that if the people attending his topic lecture
wanted to learn more about the topic, they could read Wikipedia
articles. Debate coaches are experts on format, for better or worse,
and they should defer to actual subject matter experts in these
situations. Debate coaches usually know little about the topic, but do know how to research it. Giving students access to this distinction by providing the contrast between the scholar of the issue and the debate approach only makes the student more savvy on the question of how to engage multiple audiences. 
Stop Having Camp Tournaments
Tournaments tend to attract more
attention and investment than they are worth. Their very presence in
the near future tends to trump the direction and focus of debate
work, ensuring that most students are interested in working to
defeat the teams that they have identified as threatening. This
limits the aim and the scope of research and argument development to
a very narrow band use. One or two uses, and the argument as served
its purpose. Contrast this with a debate camp that considers its aim
to be engagement with the public on controversies that have no clear
solution in sight. The research and development of arguments become
long-term, much more so than the camp tournament or the trope “You
will be able to use these arguments in September at the first
tournament.” Tournament debating is fun, but it isn’t debating. It
is actually restrictive and amimetic to argumentation conducted in
the public. Without a tournament to turn the focus of the students
toward one another within the small community of the institute,
which audiences will you choose to have the students address? What
are the limits of such an intense summer experience? This goes a bit
beyond the “side-effect” argument most debate coaches make –
that participation in frequent, intense tournament experiences
create people willing and able to engage the public. I would say
first, it is not true nor-supported that this happens. Usually one
creates people who want to hang around the debate community due to
their ethos there and the comfortable familiarity of the discourse.
Secondly, cut out the middleman. It’s bad to take a drug for the
side-effects. Here we have the option of engaging the issues
directly. Why wouldn’t we?
Engage the Public 
Most of the
university community has no idea that a debate summer institute is
happening on their campus. A few events where students and
instructors debate for the university faculty and students about
issues facing the campus and community would go a long way to
including the surrounding population. Often, the university’s work
is critiqued as being an ivory tower, isolated and cut off from
public utility. Debate format institutes are doubly so, cutting
themselves off even from the ivory tower institution. Inclusion not
only sparks curiosity and excitement that such an event is taking
place on the campus, it allows the participants to interact with
people from varied backgrounds and varied viewpoints – well beyond
the ideology of debate format, which would be 100% of the
instructors and audiences for the debates they currently have –
expanding their thought process about adaptation, persuasion,
evidence, proof, and of course, argument.
Teach Rhetorical and
Argumentation Theories
The subject
matter experts that are closest to home for the debate coach are
rhetorical and argumentation theory. Most have encountered it, read
it, or written a master’s thesis on it. As for the other portion of
instructors – those who have tournament success – they might
have it via their undergraduate work, or by virtue that they were
introduced to it by their coach. Either way, the access here is much
easier to obtain. Teaching theories of rhetoric and argumentation
give students interesting frames from which to approach
argumentation beyond the over-simplistic and incorrectly taught
Toulmin model, which dominates debate format camp instruction. As an
alternative, the use of contemporary argumentation and rhetorical
theory in lectures to address the topic, the potential arguments, or
key elements of a debate would push students into thinking more
creatively about what they are crafting in the workshops, pushing
the material in ways that could go beyond the traditional, “No,
don’t write that, it won’t win” pedagogy we so often see at debate
format camps.
Publish The Product
Debate format
camps are experimenting with YouTube, clearly unaware of how it
might expose them to criticism of the quality and nature of their
instruction at the debate format camp. They are okay however –
modern debating has been rendered so irrelevant to the public that
the only people who would watch a topic lecture suggesting reading
Wikipedia to learn more about the topic would be the format
entrenched crowd. A debate camp, in contrast, would work to publish,
either through video, blog, webcast, or print – the work that the
students accomplished. This is a public intervention as opposed to a
battle chest of cut cards, or a cache of possible strategies to
unleash in September upon the uninitiated in round 1 and 2 of a
local tournament. This is practice in intervention in public,
intellectual affairs. What sort of product will both convey the
value and the power of what we work on here? What would be
intelligible to someone who has not been to a debate tournament? And
what was the value-added to my writing and speaking that this
institute provided? A good product would answer all of these
questions in an engaging manner meant to sustain general audience
attention. And it would cause the audience to wonder, “Does my
university do this? Does my child have access to this? Perhaps they
should!” – which is the best ally debating could have in the world
of dwindling public funding for intellectual pursuits.

Debate Format Camp vs. Debate Camp

Debate camp in the United States was a
large mainstay for many years. It still continues, mostly in edited
form, across the country. The major reason that debate camps dried up
in the early 2000s was mostly due to funding. When schools no longer
have the money to subsidize attendance at debating summer camps, they
are unable to run.
Another factor is the university’s
endless quest for revenue streams. Seeing summer camp as a way to
supplement dwindling revenues, dorm rental rates and room rentals for
summer camp activities are just a couple of ways the university
attempts to supplement themselves at the cost of the debate camp’s
margin. Paying good faculty for time and travel are essential.
Even given these barriers, there are
still a number of debating summer camps in operation. Sometimes they
are referred to as debate institutes, or debate summer institutes.
This title doesn’t really work for most
of them. I believe they should be called debate format summer
institutes. The scope of what they instruct and practice rarely
skirts beyond the ideology of a particular format of debating, used
soley at tournament competitions at a limited selection of
universities on a few weekends a year. Hardly something worth
spending thousands of dollars of travel and fees.
If debate institutes would focus on the
idea of being a debate summer institute, most universities could host
a thriving and valuable summer camp experience for a much larger
number of students, engaging them intellectually in ways that their
schooling fails. Debate is a much broader concept, intersecting
almost all disciplines at the university, as well as public policy
and civic life. Exploration of the nature of debate, from invention
to delivery to critique and response of audience is something worth
spending a large amount of money and time to study. Here’s how
current debate format summer institutes could alter their practices
very simply in order to access this:
Replace Debate Coaches with
Subject Matter Experts
Too often the debate format ideology
believes that once something becomes a debate topic, a debate expert
is all you need in order to teach the controversy and clash
surrounding the issue or issues. This leads to terrible instruction,
as I recently saw in a high school topic lecture on YouTube at a
major summer debate format institute. Since these are university
hosted and sponsored events, why not ask faculty from the relevant
schools to give short talks on the state of the debate within the
field? These would be much more dynamic and much more engaging than
what passes now. As I witnessed, the lecturer, an assistant debate
coach, suggested that if the people attending his topic lecture
wanted to learn more about the topic, they could read Wikipedia
articles. Debate coaches are experts on format, for better or worse,
and they should defer to actual subject matter experts in these
situations. Debate coaches usually know little about the topic, but do know how to research it. Giving students access to this distinction by providing the contrast between the scholar of the issue and the debate approach only makes the student more savvy on the question of how to engage multiple audiences. 
Stop Having Camp Tournaments
Tournaments tend to attract more
attention and investment than they are worth. Their very presence in
the near future tends to trump the direction and focus of debate
work, ensuring that most students are interested in working to
defeat the teams that they have identified as threatening. This
limits the aim and the scope of research and argument development to
a very narrow band use. One or two uses, and the argument as served
its purpose. Contrast this with a debate camp that considers its aim
to be engagement with the public on controversies that have no clear
solution in sight. The research and development of arguments become
long-term, much more so than the camp tournament or the trope “You
will be able to use these arguments in September at the first
tournament.” Tournament debating is fun, but it isn’t debating. It
is actually restrictive and amimetic to argumentation conducted in
the public. Without a tournament to turn the focus of the students
toward one another within the small community of the institute,
which audiences will you choose to have the students address? What
are the limits of such an intense summer experience? This goes a bit
beyond the “side-effect” argument most debate coaches make –
that participation in frequent, intense tournament experiences
create people willing and able to engage the public. I would say
first, it is not true nor-supported that this happens. Usually one
creates people who want to hang around the debate community due to
their ethos there and the comfortable familiarity of the discourse.
Secondly, cut out the middleman. It’s bad to take a drug for the
side-effects. Here we have the option of engaging the issues
directly. Why wouldn’t we?
Engage the Public 
Most of the
university community has no idea that a debate summer institute is
happening on their campus. A few events where students and
instructors debate for the university faculty and students about
issues facing the campus and community would go a long way to
including the surrounding population. Often, the university’s work
is critiqued as being an ivory tower, isolated and cut off from
public utility. Debate format institutes are doubly so, cutting
themselves off even from the ivory tower institution. Inclusion not
only sparks curiosity and excitement that such an event is taking
place on the campus, it allows the participants to interact with
people from varied backgrounds and varied viewpoints – well beyond
the ideology of debate format, which would be 100% of the
instructors and audiences for the debates they currently have –
expanding their thought process about adaptation, persuasion,
evidence, proof, and of course, argument.
Teach Rhetorical and
Argumentation Theories
The subject
matter experts that are closest to home for the debate coach are
rhetorical and argumentation theory. Most have encountered it, read
it, or written a master’s thesis on it. As for the other portion of
instructors – those who have tournament success – they might
have it via their undergraduate work, or by virtue that they were
introduced to it by their coach. Either way, the access here is much
easier to obtain. Teaching theories of rhetoric and argumentation
give students interesting frames from which to approach
argumentation beyond the over-simplistic and incorrectly taught
Toulmin model, which dominates debate format camp instruction. As an
alternative, the use of contemporary argumentation and rhetorical
theory in lectures to address the topic, the potential arguments, or
key elements of a debate would push students into thinking more
creatively about what they are crafting in the workshops, pushing
the material in ways that could go beyond the traditional, “No,
don’t write that, it won’t win” pedagogy we so often see at debate
format camps.
Publish The Product
Debate format
camps are experimenting with YouTube, clearly unaware of how it
might expose them to criticism of the quality and nature of their
instruction at the debate format camp. They are okay however –
modern debating has been rendered so irrelevant to the public that
the only people who would watch a topic lecture suggesting reading
Wikipedia to learn more about the topic would be the format
entrenched crowd. A debate camp, in contrast, would work to publish,
either through video, blog, webcast, or print – the work that the
students accomplished. This is a public intervention as opposed to a
battle chest of cut cards, or a cache of possible strategies to
unleash in September upon the uninitiated in round 1 and 2 of a
local tournament. This is practice in intervention in public,
intellectual affairs. What sort of product will both convey the
value and the power of what we work on here? What would be
intelligible to someone who has not been to a debate tournament? And
what was the value-added to my writing and speaking that this
institute provided? A good product would answer all of these
questions in an engaging manner meant to sustain general audience
attention. And it would cause the audience to wonder, “Does my
university do this? Does my child have access to this? Perhaps they
should!” – which is the best ally debating could have in the world
of dwindling public funding for intellectual pursuits.