Discourse: Debate, Discussion, and Deconstruction
For several years in the 1980s, I was a college debate coach (and individual events). We traveled from Chattanooga to as far as Wichita, Kansas, and Wheaton, Illinois, for tournaments; mostly we stayed in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama but occasionally ventured to Mississippi or Georgia. I completed in the 1970s and traveled with a high-power team in 1978-9 while in graduate school.
I know collegiate debate--the good and the bad, the NDT and the CEDA, the policy and the values, the big issues of topicality and solvency, the order, the time limits.
Granted, we can't expect politicians to debate this educational or classical way, but we can expect something better than what we get when there are dozens of candidates trying to be present (and this goes for 2015-6 with the Republicans, not just now with the Democrats).
I cringe when those events are called debates. Maybe they are fora (plural of forum), maybe public panels or interviews, but they are not debates in any sense of the word. They have nothing to do with logic, structure, or argument. They are about personal attacks and zingers and being seen as--well, I'm not sure what they are trying to be seen as. Definitely not knowledgeable about issues.
Debate is about ideas, not personalities, a truth we have lost. Debates are to be won, but not at the expense of friendship or humanity or civility, another thing we lost a long time ago. Discussions are about "exposure of ideas" with the goal of either further information and understanding or coming to a consensus.
Both of these varieties of civil discourse have been deconstructed, which does not mean destroyed, only weakened by attacks on them by those who engage in them.
I would love to return to a way of teaching real debate to young people so they can 1. learn that disagreements do not have to have moral components; the person with whom you disagree is not wicked or unethical; 2. they can grow their critical thinking skills; 3. they can think on their feet; 4. they can understand that you can defend the other side's point of view, something our students had to do all the time in debate. Even now, though, I've heard the debaters are arguing in the first affirmative speech (the opening arguments) that debate in itself is a tool of oppression because it was created by Europeans, privileges a "kind of truth" or specific kind of knowledge (agonistic, evidence-based), and demands a winner, all of which are not true of all cultures, some of which were oppressed by Europeans.
Sigh. They are using debate to deconstruct debate.
I know collegiate debate--the good and the bad, the NDT and the CEDA, the policy and the values, the big issues of topicality and solvency, the order, the time limits.
Granted, we can't expect politicians to debate this educational or classical way, but we can expect something better than what we get when there are dozens of candidates trying to be present (and this goes for 2015-6 with the Republicans, not just now with the Democrats).
I cringe when those events are called debates. Maybe they are fora (plural of forum), maybe public panels or interviews, but they are not debates in any sense of the word. They have nothing to do with logic, structure, or argument. They are about personal attacks and zingers and being seen as--well, I'm not sure what they are trying to be seen as. Definitely not knowledgeable about issues.
Debate is about ideas, not personalities, a truth we have lost. Debates are to be won, but not at the expense of friendship or humanity or civility, another thing we lost a long time ago. Discussions are about "exposure of ideas" with the goal of either further information and understanding or coming to a consensus.
Both of these varieties of civil discourse have been deconstructed, which does not mean destroyed, only weakened by attacks on them by those who engage in them.
I would love to return to a way of teaching real debate to young people so they can 1. learn that disagreements do not have to have moral components; the person with whom you disagree is not wicked or unethical; 2. they can grow their critical thinking skills; 3. they can think on their feet; 4. they can understand that you can defend the other side's point of view, something our students had to do all the time in debate. Even now, though, I've heard the debaters are arguing in the first affirmative speech (the opening arguments) that debate in itself is a tool of oppression because it was created by Europeans, privileges a "kind of truth" or specific kind of knowledge (agonistic, evidence-based), and demands a winner, all of which are not true of all cultures, some of which were oppressed by Europeans.
Sigh. They are using debate to deconstruct debate.
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