The New York Sophist

Giving a talk today via Skype to a policy debate team about Worlds style debating. The question that I am using to orient my comments is one that might be a bit Lacanian: What’s left out? Or, since it’s a format that was created in Britain perhaps the better lecture title might be “Mind the Gap.”

Using this as the principle of constructing how this format works and why it might be valuable to practice seems a better approach than a lot of the head-on, scorched Earth style discussions that many people expect/lament/enjoy/instigate. My feeling is that exposure to one format when one is from another only increases the chances that one might understand the grammar of one’s home format a bit better, becoming a better debater in both formats (over time of course).

What I think happens is the same as in learning a foreign language – you become better able to understand how your own language works when learning a foreign tongue via the weird structural approach that we use in language teaching. This is why many schools report better test results on grammar and reading comprehension when they require Latin in the curriculum.

But it goes a bit deeper. Gadamer in Truth and Method relied on the classics department as his model of a humanities program that doesn’t always go begging to the social sciences for justification on the level of method. The reason why is that these grammars are invented, and one can always interrogate and question the order of the order. Translations in context or out of context or within addendums and modifications to the grammar rules are always in play. This type of fluid understanding is one of the few means to keep truth alive and useful – by keeping it in play, keeping it fluid, keeping it breathing. Dare I say: Keeping it alive.

Debate formats should be like this. Even if you disagree, time is against you. Culture is against you. Show me a policy debate round and I will use the same example to prove that it is not policy debate. Worlds is also changing/changed. These flows and pulses will happen. Do we want to be swept up by the waves or do we want to ride them? Better still, let’s learn how to surf. Enjoy your symptom, as Zizek would say.

Mind the gap when exiting or entering the format.

Image via Wikipedia

Before the debate round starts, the student asks, “Are you going to judge on the flow, or are you more into persuasion?” What in the world could the difference be? What does it mean to be persuasive, and what does it mean to not be into it? What are we doing if not teaching persuasion?

This was my welcome back to the high school debate scene.

Another room, another debate – they stare at each other not knowing what to say. One of them finally picks up some crumpled paper and begins to read what’s on it out loud.

In a third room, a discussion of how best to address gender bias – via policies that call attention to the division around biological difference, or completely deconstruct the relationship through discussion?

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a high school tournament and judged high school policy debate. It was really great, and really took me back to the days when I coached it. A lot hasn’t changed.

Students are still engaging literature and information that is on a level that most people would consider too difficult for them. But gone are the rubber filing bins. I didn’t see one. All of this information is accessed by laptops, flash drives, and small folders of paper here and there. This was the most notable change, the paperless revolution – which seems pretty much over at this tournament.

The students are speaking about and evaluating claims based on paragraphs from scholarly material that is on a reading level they should not be able to access, according to most high school or middle school teachers.

They are speaking clearly and quickly on their feet, and they are attempting to apply this complicated literature to their own lives, and to their own experiences they have during the round, the tournament, the school day, what have you.

All of this is great, but present also were many issues of concern that are not unique to this area, but nearly timeless in high school debating. I dealt with these issues when I was a high school coach as well.

When students are beginning it’s almost as if they are thrown in and reading someone else’s words. They depressingly and confusingly read a bunch of papers and sit down. They don’t understand what they are supposed to do and don’t understand how to participate properly in the debate. One of my friends who attended with me articulated this as the loss of imagination in the debate – students are not asked to rely on their own imagination when they first start out in policy debate, they are given blocks and arguments written at far away places by people who have nearly forgotten what it was like to be a beginner. Wouldn’t it be better to rely on the student imagination?

I think there’s some good criticism here, but the way that policy debate works – and it’s a way that I definitely admire – is to encourage the development of imagination within the boundaries of a rule system that could be a simulated courtroom or simulated academic environment. I like to think about these debates as a hyper-charged creation of a thesis or other academic argument, with the procedural being most closely related to arbitrary scholarly or publication rules. When I say arbitrary I don’t mean useless, but that they could be nearly anything. I think the format calls upon students to use imagination, but they need to be more familiar with a lot of the technical matters first – as well as catch up in reading level as their daily classroom experience is not going to help them read the material they will need for these debates.

A second criticism is how much the students might run the show. The teachers might provide the basics of the rules and the basic moves in the game, but what one does with that stuff is really up to the students in rounds. A lot of the literature being used is beyond the scope of the teachers’ ability to understand. This can be a bit dangerous at worst, or at best sounds sort of ridiculous. As my friend put it, It’s like they are teaching knives without teaching cutting, teaching guns without teaching weaponry, teaching kicking without teaching karate (or as I just thought, teaching words without teaching rhetoric).

I think the solution to a lot of the problems in the schools would be to turn more over to the students to be responsible for. Under the rubric of competition, students strive to perform high quality work and choose not to just “skirt by” because a teacher isn’t around to use disciplinary power to correct them. What’s correcting the quality of their work is the fact that there’s another team out there working hard to beat them, to win that next round. And this means the students will work quite hard to ensure that they don’t lose.

The other thing it does is help the students learn to trust their own ability to assess the quality of their own work. They have to read it, think about it, speak it and practice it and realize themselves what the quality may be. One student said to me during some after-round conversation, “I knew I should have swapped out those cards, you are right.” The function of the judge is really to be a critic – not a teacher, not a disciplinarian, but a critic of the academic-oriented text that the debaters co-create through their speeches.

Teachers and judges serve as a nice balance to the students who are developing these self-assessment skills. That’s the best thing that those participants can provide during the tournament. I don’t think the hands-off matters that much, as long as teachers and other members of the community are turning student attention back to these issues often.

As far as the opening question goes – I’m not sure what I’m in to or what it is I teach. Sometimes I teach persuasion, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I tell people to avoid it, sometimes I avoid it myself. Somtimes, most of the time, I’m teaching situation based thinking. Some call it advocacy, others call it trickery. What I call it depends on who I’m talking to. And I think that student’s question reveals the beginning of the development of an understanding that being persuasive is not enough. Sometimes one’s persuasion must not be known as such.

Image via Wikipedia

Before the debate round starts, the student asks, “Are you going to judge on the flow, or are you more into persuasion?” What in the world could the difference be? What does it mean to be persuasive, and what does it mean to not be into it? What are we doing if not teaching persuasion?

This was my welcome back to the high school debate scene.

Another room, another debate – they stare at each other not knowing what to say. One of them finally picks up some crumpled paper and begins to read what’s on it out loud.

In a third room, a discussion of how best to address gender bias – via policies that call attention to the division around biological difference, or completely deconstruct the relationship through discussion?

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a high school tournament and judged high school policy debate. It was really great, and really took me back to the days when I coached it. A lot hasn’t changed.

Students are still engaging literature and information that is on a level that most people would consider too difficult for them. But gone are the rubber filing bins. I didn’t see one. All of this information is accessed by laptops, flash drives, and small folders of paper here and there. This was the most notable change, the paperless revolution – which seems pretty much over at this tournament.

The students are speaking about and evaluating claims based on paragraphs from scholarly material that is on a reading level they should not be able to access, according to most high school or middle school teachers.

They are speaking clearly and quickly on their feet, and they are attempting to apply this complicated literature to their own lives, and to their own experiences they have during the round, the tournament, the school day, what have you.

All of this is great, but present also were many issues of concern that are not unique to this area, but nearly timeless in high school debating. I dealt with these issues when I was a high school coach as well.

When students are beginning it’s almost as if they are thrown in and reading someone else’s words. They depressingly and confusingly read a bunch of papers and sit down. They don’t understand what they are supposed to do and don’t understand how to participate properly in the debate. One of my friends who attended with me articulated this as the loss of imagination in the debate – students are not asked to rely on their own imagination when they first start out in policy debate, they are given blocks and arguments written at far away places by people who have nearly forgotten what it was like to be a beginner. Wouldn’t it be better to rely on the student imagination?

I think there’s some good criticism here, but the way that policy debate works – and it’s a way that I definitely admire – is to encourage the development of imagination within the boundaries of a rule system that could be a simulated courtroom or simulated academic environment. I like to think about these debates as a hyper-charged creation of a thesis or other academic argument, with the procedural being most closely related to arbitrary scholarly or publication rules. When I say arbitrary I don’t mean useless, but that they could be nearly anything. I think the format calls upon students to use imagination, but they need to be more familiar with a lot of the technical matters first – as well as catch up in reading level as their daily classroom experience is not going to help them read the material they will need for these debates.

A second criticism is how much the students might run the show. The teachers might provide the basics of the rules and the basic moves in the game, but what one does with that stuff is really up to the students in rounds. A lot of the literature being used is beyond the scope of the teachers’ ability to understand. This can be a bit dangerous at worst, or at best sounds sort of ridiculous. As my friend put it, It’s like they are teaching knives without teaching cutting, teaching guns without teaching weaponry, teaching kicking without teaching karate (or as I just thought, teaching words without teaching rhetoric).

I think the solution to a lot of the problems in the schools would be to turn more over to the students to be responsible for. Under the rubric of competition, students strive to perform high quality work and choose not to just “skirt by” because a teacher isn’t around to use disciplinary power to correct them. What’s correcting the quality of their work is the fact that there’s another team out there working hard to beat them, to win that next round. And this means the students will work quite hard to ensure that they don’t lose.

The other thing it does is help the students learn to trust their own ability to assess the quality of their own work. They have to read it, think about it, speak it and practice it and realize themselves what the quality may be. One student said to me during some after-round conversation, “I knew I should have swapped out those cards, you are right.” The function of the judge is really to be a critic – not a teacher, not a disciplinarian, but a critic of the academic-oriented text that the debaters co-create through their speeches.

Teachers and judges serve as a nice balance to the students who are developing these self-assessment skills. That’s the best thing that those participants can provide during the tournament. I don’t think the hands-off matters that much, as long as teachers and other members of the community are turning student attention back to these issues often.

As far as the opening question goes – I’m not sure what I’m in to or what it is I teach. Sometimes I teach persuasion, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I tell people to avoid it, sometimes I avoid it myself. Somtimes, most of the time, I’m teaching situation based thinking. Some call it advocacy, others call it trickery. What I call it depends on who I’m talking to. And I think that student’s question reveals the beginning of the development of an understanding that being persuasive is not enough. Sometimes one’s persuasion must not be known as such.

Image via Wikipedia

From the 1906 version of An Introductory Course in Argumentation by Francis Perry. He’s why he arranged the textbook the way he did:

In the first place, the student is practiced in the processes of argumentation without the added difficulty of research. No teacher of narration begins his work by demanding that a student write a historical romance requiring serious preliminary study of the period in which it is placed — he begins, rather, with simple pieces of work exercising the student’s power of imagination on material that lies within his experience. The beginner in the study of argumentation should, in like manner, be set to work to exercise his reasoning power on familiar material. This is not a loss, but a gain. Even advanced students, when allowed to write at the start on subjects upon which they must ‘read up’ develop little power to argue; they too often count their work done when they have gathered from a  book and summarized the arguments of another. The student required to argue on material already at his command finds pleasure in turning it over, seeing it in new lights, in new relations, with new significance, and argument seems to him serviceable and pleasant work. I do not, however, advocate suiting endeavor to power, and at the close of the course the student is instructed in methods of research with the epxectation that he will be ready to encounter added difficulties. (5-6)

This seems like sound pedagogy to me for debating, and makes a hell of a lot of sense for teaching WUDC debate. However, I think I used to do this when I taught American Policy debate (I’d always start with the motion “Resolved: We should go to the movies.” You can teach any policy debate theory concept in a tiny amount of time if you make people work with this).

I think this pedagogy isn’t really followed much today – whenever people think of debate or the teaching of debate they think “facts first” or set up a component for finding information first then use the debate as a technology of dissemination. This might be good for teaching research skills, but as Perry rightly points out, this backgrounds debate to an instrument of teaching research, and risks ruining the whole thing.

Since it was written in 1906, the “switch-side” movement did not exist. Perry is a “convictionist” debate coach – helping students refine beliefs they come to by other means. He continues:

The subject is further simplified by leaving persuasion out of consideration until the student understands conviction. This too, is a gain; the student who begins by suiting his argument to the hearer too often comes to value sophistry above thoroughness and accuracy; like a sharp bargainer he prides himself more on a fraudulent victory than on an honest one. (6)

Contrary to Perry’s conventional use of the terms “persuasion” and “sophistry,” his style of teaching debate might actually be more properly “sophistic” in the sense that the debate teacher becomes a hired adviser, irrelevant of position or stance of the client. Switch-side debate, after reading Perry, struck me as more properly “Platonic” due to a heavy investment in the theory behind dialectic. Socrates often worked from assigning positions, although they were derived from statements of conviction from those participating in the dialogue. Plato assigned positions in writing each dialogue. The extant sophistic speeches, minus Encomium for Helen, were not produced this way, but used a kernel of conviction (i.e. “I didn’t kill that person, I am innocent”) as the start of constructing the speech they were hired to write for Athenian courts. I wonder if the convictionists are onto something here. We don’t know that much about how they taught; we do know a bit about what they believed they were teaching.

I am assuming that the portrait we get of Melvin Tolson from The Great Debaters is a two dimensional caricature designed to serve the familiar plot of film rather than advance our understanding of the issue unraveled. Tolson is the convictionist’s convictionist in the film – but surely he was more strategic in his teaching than what the film depicted. Can we consider Tolson’s methods sophistic? Not properly, no – he is much more like Socrates in the film. But that is most likely a device for our entertainment benefit. Tolson might be the first modern debate coach in the sense that he thought he was teaching students the “right way to think” about politics, ethics, and the world or debate as “truth finding” – something we see far too much of in contemporary coaching methods in the US. I don’t think convictionists would agree that this is the right way to teach debate either. I think their position, if Perry is a good example, is a bit more nuanced than that. As I have it from these short passages, it seems like it is “Find out what the student believes and is interested in. Explore the structure of it. Have them speak about it. Have them consider effective ways of presenting it. Then go research it further.”

I wonder what other pedagogical insights we have lost from the dominance of the switch-side theory. Is there value in perusing a project to recover the convictionist teaching methods?

First of all, here’s an American Debate Semifinal for you to have a look at. Lots of reliance on cited sources and files in this format, you might notice. Deep research is the key to doing well in these debates.

When I was a high school debate coach, I made sure to always have an excellent and close relationship with the librarians. It was essential. The librarians would become staunch allies once they saw the research and writing skills that policy debate developed in students. When students started spending more time at the library before and after school searching for “evidence,” then the librarians had no choice but to fall in love with debate. Near the end of my tenure in that position, the librarians would ask me about the upcoming topic for the next year – they wanted to use their resources to buy essential books and other resources for the coming competitive year.

When I moved to University coaching, I found the same thing – a close relationship with the library was essential. It was beyond question that you seek out your allied librarian to help you find unusual books and articles on the annual topic. That process of discovery was really fun.

I do miss it, although I am enjoying exploring the fairly new territory (at least in the US) of WUDC debating. Of course, the librarians still know me well, but it’s mostly for my personal or professional research interests, not for the debate topic, per se. I do keep the campus news pipeline full of information about what we are doing in debate, but I think they feel a bit left out.  From time to time they ask me, “What’s the library’s role in all this?” The American assumption is that one collects lots of information, processes it, assembles a case, and then goes to debate (see the film The Great Debaters for an example of how entrenched this is).  The reason is that American debating has always been a practice modeled on adversarial decision-making (as opposed to creative or cooperative argumentation). In WUDC format, the process is different – and sometimes can be the opposite – you go seek out information after debating something because, well bluntly, you did a terrible job in putting a relevant case together. We perform some research in a general sense on various topics that we think may come up in a debate. But that research is quite different from what I used to do as a policy coach.

This article made me think that perhaps the change is in both directions. The contemporary University Library is becoming more of an information literacy center rather than a place to discover (or uncover) the dusty tomes of fact to bolster your belief.  It seems, at least from the tone of the article, that the library at most Universities is transforming itself into a place that serves in the formation of belief and opinion via information processing – one of the ways debate is valuable as a pedagogical activity as well.

This tone circulates around re-appropriation of space, resources, personnel and more. It seems to graft onto, almost directly, the recent trend in the United States of “paperless debating” – debating from a laptop instead of paper files. Still a long way off from being universal, I think, but it’s coming. I think the library is moving this way too.  Whatever the previous relationship with your library, you stand to gain something from being involved in an official capacity as a debater. Whatever new resources you might need or want for your debating experience, it seems now is the time to develop, or re-develop, that library relationship.

Policy debate and WUDC debate, the two formats I’m most familiar with, are also facing the stimulus that is behind these changes for the library. Perhaps you and your club should take stock of your relationship to the library and how familiarity at a time of great change can improve both of these vital parts of your University.