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I made the choice to change my debate course to something more active from something where we discuss and analyze the role of debate in society through the meta. In the past, students would discuss, write, and speak about various debates in a hope to evaluate the role and purpose of the discourse we call “debating” in society. I started off with a survey of the spread – very much like a fungus or mold – of the U.S. Presidential debate format around the globe. Part of this is the work of the Commission on Presidential Debates but another big realization of this gross growth is that politicians recognize what a beneficial format the U.S. Presidential debates are for them. They can say whatever, they can hide, they can claim they looked great through a future supercut. It doesn’t benefit any of us at all.
I moved away from this to something more active – a series of debates that students would perform. I felt that experiential learning would be the way to go in online debate. But I have never really taught debating in an asynchronous online format before. It’s all kind of radically new, and making me think differently about how I teach debate – particularly the assumptions I make about what’s available to us when we enter a debate.
The idea that there’s no space and time to practice arguments is one issue that I think I can address by being more lenient in terms of when a “final” speech will be due. I think that the idea of constant revision, or low-stakes debating, is the way to give students the time and space to become comfortable with their own voices and their own approach to practicing advocacy on various issues. The entirety of college becomes practice from this perspective, if you think about it. I believe that adopting a serious process of revision and practice is one of the most valuable things that a rhetorical education can give to people. So now I’m considering adopting it into all of my courses regardless of modality.
I’ve been teaching through video, and here are a couple of the lectures I’ve done so far on debating.
I just love the thumbnails that YouTube chooses for my videos
These two videos took a bit longer to produce than the standard in-class lecture. I think it’s something that I am still not adjusted to – the idea that I can’t base a lecture on the presence of students in the classroom. They provide a lot of material and a lot of indicators of where to go next when giving a lesson. Without that, I just have to look into the camera and hope they are following along well enough.
This is an argument for making much shorter talks and then gauging student opinion on where they are through some short assignments designed to measure what they got out of the video. The next one can adjust to that. I have my online public speaking course arranged like that and it works pretty well.
We are a couple of weeks away from the first debates, which will be audio or video files posted asynchronously, with plenty of time for the other side to respond. At the end I hope to edit them all together to seem like one debate, but we’ll see how well that works. It would be nice to have one contiguous file to listen to later and see if people could tell that the debate was not done in a traditional, aka “in person” format. I think they’ll be able to.
Teaching in asynchronous online format courses that have been traditionally predicated on being in person and next to one another is not a novelty, but something we should explore and create resources to address now. We are going to be using it a lot more in the future, more than we can imagine now.
I have been attening the NCA Convention nearly every year since 2003. At first I was enamored and loved it. Now, almost 10 years later, I’m a bit more cynical about it. Going into a nearly empty room to hear someone read a paper composed for the eye in a soft voice is not necessarily my definition of “good communication.” Another would be the fact that I know two to three conversations a night will be ended with “Well I better go up to my room to write my presentation.” But this is a tired old performative critique that doesn’t really advance the goals or the scope of the organization. I want to suggest a different way to go.
Photo by David Nicolai on Unsplash
Debate is on fire right now. I mean in a good way. The Munk Debates along with the Intelligence Squared Debates are very popular hosts of debates that make it into the podcasting universe. Furthermore, these debates excite and engage the public on controversial matters that need to be discussed. I think the events are great in spirit, but they lack the input of scholarship. A scholarly touch on the theory of debate, the theory of argumentation, or just some good old fashioned public speaking best practices would catapult these organizations to the next level, where they honestly want to be. The Munk Debates and Intelligence Squared have peaked as “journalism by other means.” What exactly is the difference between a Munk debate and a long form panel discussion or interview with a top journalist? The insights are about the same. Debate should not be a modality of journalism we engage with when we are bored of the standard interview format.
NCA should get involved here by hosting a big debate at every convention they hold. The cities that NCA takes place in are huge, and they have huge intellectually-charged publics who, if they felt welcome, would attend an event like this. You only need one name, maybe not even that to hold a compelling debate on communication issues: politics, race, interpersonal issues, or social justice are just a few of the topics that NCA members publish about and are by any estimation, bonafide experts.
We also have experts on debate and public address who can help structure the event to focus on the discourse produced rather than the “crucible” model of debating which is forwarded by debate promoting organizations. This theory roughly believes that sharing ideas and perspectives progressively moves us closer to the truth, if not permits us to obtain it unproblematically, after 90 minutes of talk. Debate does not work this way. Nor should it.
Debate should make us question the positions we hold as well as find elements of the positions we reject to be more attractive than we thought they were. It should also make us realize – through those feelings and others – that we just don’t know enough to make a hard and fast call on most controversies we face. The structure of the debate, and the theoretical ideas of what make debates good or productive can serve these ends.
This could become more normalized in the convention after the first couple of big ones. For years I have submitted panels featuring undergraduate debaters that received good reviews in the section only to be vetoed without explanation by convention planners and leadership. Apparently they don’t see the value to anything other than what they are familiar with or expect a boring academic conference to be. Our conservative nature in regards to expectation is always a problem.
Normalizing a plenary debate as an NCA tradition would normalize formal debate as a convention event. We’d have more panels that were debates more often. And that might be a way to make NCA more attractive and interesting to our students who are not Ph.D. candidates.
Furthermore, can you imagine the diversity and interest of a convention that would draw from the local community? The easiest and most on-brand thing we could offer would be a moment of public address on an interesting controversy that showcases our best and brightest from the organization. The costs would be minimal, and the payout would be massive. Imagine the NCA debate becoming a ticketed event that people look forward to. This could reduce convention costs massively, allowing those graduate students and those on the tenure-track, or seeking employment, to attend the convention at no cost or extreme subsidized cost.
On a recent episode of my podcast In the Bin (which I hope you listen to as well as read this blog) I learned about the Science Policy Forum, a plenary and public debate like I’m proposing that was hosted at the 1998 convention. There’s a transcript of the debate available here. I wonder if and how often these events occur. They certainly don’t become a vital part of NCA history or something that people look forward to. It seems that they exist as a rare oddity or something different that happens once in a while. I wonder why there’s not a lot of juice, desire, or push for the continuation of such events.
It’s upsetting to me how NCA remains silent and passive when private organizations, run by journalistic standards of argument, are allowed to crowd the public’s conception of “good debate events.” It’s past time for the organization to rely on its own experts and its own brand of being the national institution that focuses on communication, and enter the arena.
This special late night post is to let you know that In the Bin is back in regular production. This was a wonderful conversation between Matt and I about the issues facing debate and facing the university today. We discuss the role of debate in the classroom and the promise of creating a center for debate, an “advocacy center” which would be somewhat similar to a writing center.
Past episodes are available here in the feed, and for more visit the podcast here.
Got a great question along with a great article from a friend last month, now I’m finally getting to it.
The simple response is, yes of course! But the more complex response is to examine how we should determine what debates are not worth having, and the criteria for this choice should be based not on debate’s limitations, but debate’s strengths.
Deborah Tannen’s best-selling book The Argument Culture might be somewhat dated now (it came out in 1999 I think) but it holds up thanks to people’s addiction to cable tv news programs, even if they are on YouTube.
The argument of the book is simply this: Bad models of debate are harmful to our ability to construct meaningful and useful social policy. Somewhat like the idea that taking too much or too little of a helpful medicine will kill you, debate, poorly dosed out will indeed destroy our ability to reason collectively, think through complex issues (which often requires more than one human mind I’m afraid), and make sure we have the appropriate perspective on whatever it is we are trying to sort through, evaluate, judge, enact, or any number of other verbs.
Tannen’s criteria is what we hope to avoid here. We don’t want to prop up reasons to not have debate based on debate’s weaknesses. We want to be able to say that debate’s strengths are why we should not engage it on every issue that seems like it would fit in the debate slot. Very much like kitchen equipment designed for certain purposes, using debate to make something that it’s not meant to make will render something inedible. This simple realization is lost on debate-critics who think that debate ruins what it touches no matter what you try to make with it.
In the article from Psyche Malcolm Keating provides an excellent explanation of how Naya philosophy in the 10th century did exactly what I’m looking for: Established a conception of choosing to debate because of what debate can provide, not in spite of debate’s limitations, faults, or nature. Naya philosophy prescribes some very good reasons to debate because of what debate provides or forces upon us when we agree to do it.
One of these is being open to changing your mind. Debate absolutely requires this, and the Naya philosophers accept this too. This isn’t simplistic zero-sum gaming, but the idea that what is said in the debate should influence how you articulate your views and hold your views from that moment forward. Douglas Ehninger in my field of rhetoric wrote beautifully about this in his essay “Argument as Method” which was published in 1970 (this definitely still holds up).
In that essay Ehninger isn’t discussing debate, per se, but he sets up exactly what you’d want in a debate to make it work. His model of the “corrector” versus the teacher or the authority figure is essential to the model. He argues that debating someone else must be predicated on the idea that you are as susceptible to quality reasons and believable evidence as the person you are engaging. In short, the rules apply to everyone. If something is convincing either way, it should be accepted by both. Please note how Plato’s Socrates seems to lampoon this model in most of the dialogues. We never see him alter his point of view although he does pretend to be surprised quite well like you would in front of a jury or something.
The point is that this model of debating excludes all topics that one couldn’t imagine holding up to that standard of conviction. There might be some issues we feel so strongly about that we would be unwilling to change our mind about them even given a lot of great evidence. In cases like this, we can soften that feeling by engaging in “switch-side” debating (as it’s called in the United States) where you are assigned a side of a topic and are supposed to craft arguments for something you might not believe or (even worse) don’t care about that much. This practice helps us make a stronger connection to the ideals of Ehninger-style argument as well as inform us about the various things going on in a number of controversies worldwide.
Keating does fall into the philosophical norm of viewing debate through a Platonic lens as a given, not a choice. Rhetoric, sophistry, and debate are all dismissed as packing materials for philosophy’s fine and delicate pieces because of these deeply held Platonic ideologies; there are very few who would consider the Sophists philosophers of any kind, even educational philosophers, because of this deeply held bias. Here we see it in characterizations of “unreflective” debate being ironically this very clever attempt to deceive, trick someone, or score points (all of which involve a lot of planning and strategy, so I never really get how or why these assumptions are made about it). To decieve someone you really have to get to know them, or get them to place a lot of trust in you, which requires at the minimum a workable model of human motives based on acute and accurate observation and study.
Philosophy’s attitude to debate is always, “We can debate in spite of the failings that people have.” The rhetorician’s attitude is, “Let’s talk about all the different ways we can debate.” It seems to me that without the Platonic ideology framing the Naya discussion of types of debate, these philosophers are perhaps more rhetorically inclined. Who else would come up with different kinds of debate for different purposes, then tell us to either do it or not based own what we think the value of the exchange might be? Keating seems to miss that truth is not a prerequisite here, but something that may or may not come out of one of the various modalities of debating these philosophers practiced. These are not opposed models, but different levels of practice that serve the purpose that all debate practice should have: To prepare the mind to change given the appropriate conditions.
Debating any topic at all with no conditions does not prepare the mind for much, only fuels the anger and frustration that we inappropriately aim at debating itself. As far as what topics do not qualify for debate, those we cannot subject to the ethics of good debate, i.e. “I’ll change my position if I find really good reasons to do so” are off the table. We can soften up that conviction by practicing the rival conviction, that of rhetorical reasoning, through doing some of the “lesser” forms of debating as Keating seems to want to call them, which give us a lot of insight into how human motives, language, and speech are intertwined in complex ways. This combination of various moving parts help us understand the complexities of commitment, and further our desire to hold the principle of rhetorical reason through debate as primary, and being right second. That’s the only way we can ensure that a topic will be treated appropriately and fully.
Keating’s essay has made me want to investigate these thinkers more as I think they can offer a very complex, necessary, and wonderful discrimination of modalities of debate that all serve the same purpose: To answer the question of what to debate and why to debate it. There’s no hierarchy here, only different modes of speaking for different purposes and people. This is the heart of the Sophistic position. It’s also a very human-centered ethic about how to change minds, given that it forwards how complex people are in their attitudes and beliefs.
So how do we know a topic shouldn’t be debated? I think we have to first get comfortable with the idea that there’s not just one “debate” out there, and we can thank Keating for that in this great essay. Secondly, we need to be honest about whether we are debating for the benefit of the topic and our own minds. Are we debating to correct course, or are we giving orders? Topics that we feel don’t require a course correction are difficult to debate unless we do a lot of low-stakes practice frequently with one another (which seems to be what the Naya philosophers were doing from what little I glean here). Low-stakes practice helps you see how wrong you can be and how often it can happen, encouraging an increased faith in the method of debate. Finally, there are topics that we might not want to debate that come up so often because we are bored, or tired, of having those debates. Audiences are good indicators of whether this is true or not. Often once we have engaged a topic many times we feel there’s nothing left to explore. But this is indicative of failing to uphold the debate ethic. We can only feel we’ve fully explored a topic if we think of the reasons and topic as being “out there” somewhere and not “here with us” in the form of audience. We also fail to uphold the debate ethic if we feel we have it right and couldn’t have it better through a re-articulation of our reasons before others who are mulling over those reasons, or who have a stronger hold on their convictions rather than on how they got to those convictions.