Why Debate? - Sean Tiffee

The Old Man Speaketh.

I’d like to begin this short post with an even shorter question: why debate? What is the activity’s purpose, what is its function, and what do we hope to accomplish from a pedagogical position? In short, why debate? If you asked a dozen different debaters, you would most likely get a dozen different answers, all of which are probably right in their own way. Some debaters want to sit back and pontificate about poststructuralist theory. Others want to discuss the ins and outs of policymaking and what constitutes good governance. Some want to find a higher Truth, some want to learn to speak well, some want to improve their research skills, some think it looks good on a college application, and some just think that a weekend isn’t complete unless at least 6 hours are spent in a van or bus.

To me, these are all a part of debate and part of what makes debate a wonderful activity, but none of them are central to what we do. None of them fully answers the question, why debate? If there were no debate, we could still ponder Derridean deconstruction and the implications of setting up a global system to map asteroids. There would still be philosophy departments and schools of public policy and while, yes, they debate there, they don’t debate like we debate and you know it. What is it that makes our activity unique, that constructs the way we see the world in such a way that you can tell when someone has been trained in “our debate?”

The American Forensic Association, the oversight body for the NDT and publisher of debate’s academic journal, Argumentation and Advocacy, states the obligation of the debate teacher is “to expand students' appreciation of the place of argument and advocacy in shaping their worlds, and to prepare students through classrooms, forums, and competition for participation in their world through the power of expression; and … seeks to empower through argument and advocacy.” While debate will most certainly make us better critical thinkers, activists, policymakers, etc., and while the mission statement does include the notion of advocacy, what is central to our activity, and what separates it from others, is our commitment to argumentation. As teachers, we first and foremost teach argumentation, and, as debaters, you first and foremost engage in argumentation. Why debate? To learn how to argue. Interestingly, the framework debates that I see never seem to focus on argumentation – they focus on good policymaking, or good research, or possibly the fairness of the game, but never about what makes for the best argument. Our fundamental commitment to argumentation seems lost and I believe it is time we refocus our attention.

I made the decision to make my blog post about argumentation for two seemingly contradictory reasons. First, debate evolves at a pace that is simply staggering. The ninth grade debaters of today will be the ones shaping our activity in under a decade. As we all know, debate is a time intensive and life encompassing activity. While there are certainly coaches who have committed their lives to the activity, more and more seem to hit their early to mid 30s and decide they don’t want to lose every weekend for a minimal stipend, which leaves the activity in the hands of 20-somethings. A large-scale commitment of high school debaters to focus on argumentation today means that high school and college debate looks a whole lot different in less than 10 years. Second, as fast as our activity can change, we attempt to innovate among calcified thought. Some of these debates have already been had, they say, and there’s no point in going over them again. I disagree. While some of these debates have been had, it can be a good idea to revisit them with fresh eyes and the benefit of hindsight. In particular, I’d like to revisit a portion of a debate that took place in the Fall 1984 edition of The Journal of the American Forensic Association between Robert Rowland and Walter Ulrich. I know this is old school, but hear me out. Further, in the interest of full disclosure, I intend to cherry pick from these articles in an effort to initiate discussion and encourage you to seek out and read these relatively short articles yourself.

From the outset, I believe that this article explains the lack of focus on argumentation in today’s debate. For Rowland, argumentation serves several functions and his commitment to dialectic as concept is unwavering, even while he questions dialectic as practiced in academic debate. For him, good argumentation is the prerequisite to good critical thinking skills as students will learn to differentiate between strong and weak arguments. In turn, this offers an epistemological question as debates between formal and informal logic, (ir)rationality, and language as structure all contaminate the issue of debate as epistemic. For Rowland, dialectic overcomes these limitations in that “the adversary process serves as the best check on argument quality. … The proper standard for evaluating the argument can be discovered in the dialectical exchange itself.” The problem for Rowland, however, is that tabula rasa judging removes the critic from the dialectic process. While no judge would ever claim to truly be a “blank slate” and the ubiquity of detailed judging philosophies has allowed certain judges to claim an overt bias for or against certain arguments, I contend that most judges still attempt to intervene as little as possible. For Rowland, this leaves critics to “evaluate arguments based only on what the debaters say about them … A debater can often win a weak argument be presenting so many reasons for it that one of the reasons slips by unrefuted.” Even though written in 1984, this line describes 90% of the college rounds I watched in 2011.

I understand that this sounds like an old man ranting that debate just ain’t like it used to be, but, well, okay so this IS an old man ranting, but it doesn’t mean that I’m wrong. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve voted on a link to the criticism only because it was dropped by a 1AR who didn’t answer the 2NC “link wall” that was really nothing more than an “ink wall.” I cringe every time I read “evidence” that consists of 6 pages of 8 point font with 5 words highlighted to a page making a grand total of 3 sentences. “But,” I think to myself, “I can’t intervene.” But why can’t I? Why shouldn’t the critic be part of the dialectic? Should I vote on an argument that was dropped even though it is clearly factually wrong? It’s not that I disagree with it; it’s that it is objectively stupid. No, the earth is not hollow with little elves living inside of it, even though I’ve got cards that say that’s “true.” I also wonder if critics should vote on a dropped “severance perms bad” argument when the perm was neither severance nor intrinsic (because the 1NR mindlessly read that block too) to begin with. And how can I justify voting on the 15 point condo bad block in the 2AC that was really just 3 arguments said in different ways, all of which were just unwarranted claims to begin with, and when can I pull the trigger on that 8 second A-Spec shell the 1NC spit out? Ultimately, here’s the point I’m trying to make: debaters engage in poor argumentation because critics refuse to enforce standards of good argumentation. Be honest, as you read the last paragraph, your number one thought was: how can I get my hands on that sweet sweet Hollow Earth file?

Ulrich responds to Rowland by arguing that if “either side wishes a higher standard for argument to be used, they can introduce that standard in the round.” Honestly, this isn’t unheard of, as recently several teams at the University of Texas have argued for a “data standard” to determine what constitutes evidence. The question remains, though, if debate is better when judges remove themselves from the dialectic and pretend as though argumentative ignorance is actually impartiality. Why is the responsibility of the debaters alone to create the standards for what constitutes “good debate?” It’s at the bottom of MY ballot (and, ultimately, your ballot relatively soon) that asks who did the better job debating. To abdicate this responsibility to the debaters seems to “encourage debaters to make weak arguments and support them with pseudo reasons. It also has the potential to legitimize presentation of arguments which could destroy the debate process.” Ah, a “destroys debate” claim that you have no offense against. In an offense-defense paradigm, this means you lose. Then again, the offense-defense paradigm means that I continue to vote for weird little procedural counterplans where the solvency evidence is marginal (at best) and seems like it might be talking about the Sweedish parliamentary system, but the Affirmative never said that, and the net benefit with 26 internals has a .00000000000001% risk, so I guess counterplan solves case with no risk of the net benefit so the Negative wins. By the way, I find myself voting Negative like it’s my job these days. And, yes, I speak in generalities. It is quite possible that you don’t engage in any of the behaviors I’ve outlined, but a lot of debaters do and I think they shortchange everyone when they do.

I would like to end like I began, with the simple question: why debate? We debate to learn how to argue. We debate for other reasons as well, but argumentation still resides as the core of what we do. In my mind, topics should be even and topics should be interesting, but we could debate about anything and the activity would have immeasurable value because students would learn how to argue. That point, however, seems to be lost as we move forward through the calcified thought that judge “impartiality” is a good thing. Are judges who remove themselves from what is going on in the room, hoping to “follow the path of least intervention,” truly helping the activity? To me, we’ve gone too far. Of course I don’t want a critic to dismiss Lacan out of hand because they personally disagree with psychoanalysis, but do we have to allow for that to say that judges should apply some standard to arguments? Isn’t there a middle ground? I do know that I think what passes for evidence today is laughable. The links to the K are fabrications. The counterplan solvency doesn’t assume the affirmative. The disad only wins because the PIC solved the case. And the affirmative arguments are getting worse because they try to compete with all of the above.

Maybe the alternative is worse, but I’m afraid the activity is moving further and further away from the core value of argumentation and it leaves me wondering: why debate? What are your thoughts? Speak loud, my hearing is going. References to 1970s punk earn you extra speaker points. A good X-Ray Spex joke might get you up to a 26.5. What? 26 isn’t average anymore? I know what my next old man blog rant will be about.