[HN Gopher] Critical theory is radicalizing high school debate
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Critical theory is radicalizing high school debate
Author : taeric
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-07-29 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.slowboring.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.slowboring.com)
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Did i read it correctly? The main problem is the lack of good
| responses?
|
| The debate landscape wouldn't change with good rebuttals.
| api wrote:
| It reminds me a bit of when a new class of exploit is discovered,
| like in the early Internet when buffer overflows became popular.
| You have a period where the exploit gets abused widely until
| countermeasures are developed and deployed.
|
| In this case it seems to be out of context use of cultural
| critique as a way to throw off the opponent and change the
| subject. If the debate were actually about these topics that
| would be another story.
|
| This one must be more popular in academic settings. Online the
| most popular exploit I see is the "Gish gallop."
|
| I only regard debate as having much value when both sides are
| debating in good faith. Use of thought stopping tactics reduces
| the whole thing to a mere sophistry contest with no value beyond
| testing how powerful the LLM is between each debater's ears.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| To question the premises of the debate topic rather than support
| a side seems like a huge cop-out. You don't have to do your
| research to support evidence based arguments and your opponent
| who may have done their research to support their arguments now
| has to argue against a completely different position for which
| their evidence is useless.
|
| What is going to happen when these people wield actual power in
| politics and public policy and the conclusion policy debates is
| "society is rotten to the core" (example Kritik from the
| article).
| dundarious wrote:
| There is an argument that "debate" in the manner performed by
| these clubs primarily trains people to think _only_ in the
| ideological terms /framing given to them by their "betters".
| "Debate" in this sense is intellectually impoverished. Call it
| "rhetorics" if that's all you want -- it's useful, but it is
| more akin to Toastmasters than politics or political debate.
|
| If there is to be any actual political thinking involved, then
| some challenge to the given framing must be allowed, or the
| framing must be capaciously defined. But it will still be
| mostly a lesson in rhetoric.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > To question the premises of the debate rather than support a
| side seems like a huge cop-out
|
| No, in fact it is the beginning of wisdom. Contrary to your
| assertion that you don't have to do research, the ability to
| question the premises begins with understanding not only your
| argument but many other arguments as well.
| zdragnar wrote:
| In my experience, it was a cop-out. In my day, it was usually
| centered on some grammatical error that turned into a game of
| semantics.
|
| The whole point is to catch your opponent off guard and
| reframe the topic into an arena they hadn't prepared for.
| Debate rounds don't really allow time for thoughtful
| contemplation; you typically have at most a minute of prep
| time between speeches within the round.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Well, nobody ever accused high school debate teams as being
| founts of wisdom.
| oofta-boofta wrote:
| [dead]
| woah wrote:
| They aren't going to wield power because "talk fast and derail
| the entire conversation with unrelated arguments that appeal to
| far-left college students" isn't going to convince any normal
| people of anything and is not a useful rhetorical technique.
| The most this style of debate might do is to cause left wing
| political cause to shoot themselves in the foot.
| dgb23 wrote:
| This article reads like satire.
|
| The prerogative of the young is to question the status quo in
| fundamental ways.
|
| They aren't yet restricted by responsibility and dependents. They
| haven't become numb yet. Let them be sharp and radical.
|
| Does the author prefer control and indoctrination?
|
| Positive cultural change can't happen if we force the young and
| the free into a box. All of the freedoms we have have been fought
| against the mainstream and against established power.
|
| We will always need radical and critical ideas to move forward.
| We need young people to be able to say that our questions and
| subjects are fundamentally wrong.
| almost_usual wrote:
| I agree this is really nothing new.
| scarmig wrote:
| One of the points Yglesias makes is that judges prejudge
| certain arguments to be wrong. For instance, one judge says
|
| > Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a
| Marxist-Leninist-Maoist... I cannot check the revolutionary
| proletarian science at the door when I'm judging... I will no
| longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-
| imperialist positions/arguments... Examples of arguments of
| this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good,
| imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or
| otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel,
| colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.
|
| At this point, the status quo (at least in debate, but also
| more broadly) is simply mouthing liberal pieties. Repeating
| "Black Lives Matter" a thousand times is neither sharp nor
| radical, and it's funny to see people whose ideas are
| incredibly conventional think of themselves as a rebel.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > At this point, the status quo (at least in debate, but also
| more broadly) is simply mouthing liberal pieties
|
| A single example chosen specifically because it is extreme
| isn't the status quo, and Maoism isn't (and is opposed to)
| liberalism.
| scarmig wrote:
| There's liberalism as a political theory (with all its
| variations, from classical to Rawlsian), which is admirable
| and distinct from Maoism. But there's also the "liberalism"
| that's more accurately described as "the set of cultural,
| social, and political beliefs broadly held by the college
| educated, urban, professional class." And professing
| adherence to Maoism is entirely acceptable in that milieu,
| in a way that professing adherence to e.g. the Religious
| Right or Trumpism is not. (The fact that this judge's
| commitment to Maoism is purely symbolic verbal signaling
| and not linked to any actual activism is besides the
| point.)
|
| Imagine a judge said he was a committed fascist who would
| judge students on that basis, regardless of the quality of
| their arguments. Would that be considered acceptable in the
| same way the Maoist judge is? Just last night I had dinner
| with a friend who was telling me about a family member's
| encounter with Maoist justice: he was murdered by being
| thrown down a well during the Cultural Revolution.
|
| Or, take the other angle. Suppose you had a staffer on Fox
| News who spent his off hours writing racist screeds on
| white supremacist forums (this has actually happened IIRC).
| Would you take it as a single extreme example that's not
| worth thinking about, or would you take it as indicative of
| some deeply troubling aspects of the modern Right?
| panarky wrote:
| Then there's liberalism as a political tradition that
| advocates free markets, laissez-faire economics, civil
| liberties under the rule of law, and individual autonomy,
| limited government, economic freedom, political freedom,
| and freedom of speech.
|
| In liberal democracy, an elected government cannot
| discriminate against specific individuals or groups when
| it administers justice, protects basic rights such as
| freedom of assembly and speech, provides for collective
| security, or distributes economic and social benefits.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > A single example chosen specifically because it is
| extreme isn't the status quo,
|
| This seems to be the lesson we're slow at learning.
|
| A steady diet of extreme examples tends to shift one's
| perspective toward a bad position. The position is bad
| because it struggles to discern reality well - because bad
| inputs keep skewing the math.
| cdtwigg wrote:
| FYI this post was actually written by Maya the intern (Matt
| only writes the weekday posts).
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _> [...] I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian
| science at the door when I'm judging... I will no longer
| evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-
| imperialist positions /arguments_ [...]
|
| Then why would you waste everyone's time, including yours, in
| being a judge? It's like being a figuring skating judge and
| saying " _I hate the cold and so think this sport done in a
| cold environ is dumb so will give everyone a zero._ "
| morelisp wrote:
| Well, no, most debate topics are not "is political take X
| good?" Policy questions could be affirmed by leftist
| positions and argued against from other leftist positions.
| I think the judge's stance is boring, but everyone seems to
| be missing that _high school policy debate is not meant to
| make an actual policy decision._ It 's meant to teach
| students how to argue within a frame - which is how lots of
| arguments necessarily happen! You just don't like this
| judge's particular frame.
| morelisp wrote:
| This is the classic problem of education having to balance
| expression and practice. Bringing a gun to a swordfight is
| effective but if you're in a kendo class it's not especially
| helpful. Such is the effect of kritik within policy debate.
| People should learn kritik, I even agree with much of it, but
| you also want to learn how to argue actual topics. And
| especially as someone who often agrees with kritik, I would
| rather the kids exercise that skill here where it doesn't
| matter, than in the real world with real impacts.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Thank you for explaining this perspective. There's for sure a
| balance here between playful education and actual, invested
| debate. I was leaning too much on the latter, but the former
| is just as valuable.
| morelisp wrote:
| I think your comment was fair; you also want them to learn
| when to bring a gun! I also wholly agree with you that the
| article's case as presented is quite weak. I read it hoping
| to learn some kind of actual radicalization of policy
| debate was happening, not the same pro-K vs. anti-K retread
| we had 25 years ago but with artificial woke/anti-woke
| flavor. The author did not develop the ability to frame
| their arguments in a clear way so that even those who
| disagree can engage with the ideas therein. (Which itself
| is maybe the best argument against my defense of policy
| debate; well, that's also why I left it my senior year in
| favor of other events...)
| RajT88 wrote:
| This seems much better than the last article I read about trends
| in high school debate, which basically was talking over the other
| person and using the gish-gallop maneuver:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
| dadadad100 wrote:
| Thanks for this. I didn't know there was a name for this
| technique. If you listened to RFK jr on Lex recently you heard
| many many examples. And also Trump. I've only heard it
| described as "flood the zone with shit", which is a reference
| to a football (American) tactic
| tekla wrote:
| A big point in debate is learning how to deal with gish-gallop.
| That shit only works if you don't know how to deal with it.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| How do you deal with it?
| morelisp wrote:
| A gish gallop is an asymmetric attack. They can produce
| nonsense faster than, say, a physicist can produce physics
| or a mathematician proofs; and usually have nothing else to
| do with their time. But in a policy debate framework both
| sides have equal time, neither is doing original research
| and both are expected to cite qualified evidence, the judge
| understands the structural flow of the arguments, and you
| can say "this is nonsense" faster than they can "explain"
| the point.
|
| Or as Wikipedia even says: _Generally, it is more difficult
| to use the Gish gallop in a structured debate than a free-
| form one._
| zbentley wrote:
| Careful note taking, keeping your head and identifying
| contingent and similar arguments such that you don't have
| to spend tons of time on each counterpoint, prioritizing
| offensive ("your claim X actually supports my side, not
| yours, because Y", aka. turns) rebuttals over defensive
| ones, and not spending undue time on weaker claims that the
| judge is likely to doubt as well.
|
| There's a lot more you can do, but those are some pretty
| uncontentious strategies.
|
| Source: debated for 8 years in school.
| morelisp wrote:
| I can see why speed debate can seem like a gish gallop, but
| it's not. And the way policy is structured it's definitely not
| talking over anyone (except I suppose in some of the absolutely
| radical Ks that attempt to destroy the policy format, and even
| K-friendly judges hate those).
| RajT88 wrote:
| Trying to find the article now. I am pretty sure that they
| were not misunderstanding the dynamics of speed debate, and
| kids were actually using the gish gallop.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I think this is a useful form of thinking, while exhausting for
| actually attending a debate competition.
|
| Much of the world doesn't operate in affirmation and negations.
|
| And even most of American's political divisions only masquerade
| as opposites, but if you listen - which neither 'side' does -
| you'll see they aren't opposites except in result. While other
| results are possible that do possibly bridge consensus.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I can't stand the actual examples here (which reek of low quality
| Continental philosophy and dogmatic nonsense) but rejecting and
| questioning premises is definitely something I support,
| especially for young people.
| binary132 wrote:
| this is bait.
| dang wrote:
| It does contain ideological flamebait but the details around
| high school debating are interesting and uncorrelated with any
| common topic here. That makes it a good candidate for an HN
| thread. As many commenters have been adding their own
| interesting experience with high school debates, I think HN is
| 'winning' this one so far (i.e. there are more thoughtful
| comments than flamewars).
| onychomys wrote:
| My partner and I went 36-4 in our senior year* in policy debate
| because we continually argued that the federal government was
| inefficient and corrupt and we should instead just give block
| grants to the states. In the mid 1990s in Montana, that was a
| nearly unbeatable strategy. It's always been about finding the
| one argument that the judge will be unable to ignore instead of
| about the actual evidence you have for all the rest of it.
|
| *we lost the state championship to a team from Hardin, MT,
| population about 4000 and guess where the state championship was
| held that year?
| [deleted]
| tekla wrote:
| These alt debates were well around 20 years ago. It was
| incredibly rare that they succeeded because:
|
| a) most judges didn't really like it when the debate becomes some
| weird meta thing.
|
| b) most teams that ran this were NOT good at debate.
|
| What seems new is Judges completely throwing out the substance of
| the debate and relying on their own political views for the
| round.
| morelisp wrote:
| > b) most teams that ran this were NOT good at debate.
|
| Yep. Everyone on my team who ran Ks, especially neg, were the
| people too lazy to do actual research against multiple plans.
| kurthr wrote:
| If, by political views, you mean boredom with a well worn
| artificial meta argument that makes a farce of whatever rules
| do exist in debate. It was funny/interesting once.
| projektfu wrote:
| Now that you say that, it reminds me that there was a term for
| it at least 25 years ago. Something like "dark policy"...
| klooney wrote:
| This was ubiquitous back when I was doing debate, around 20 years
| ago. The ship sailed long ago.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I never debated, but it was explained to me that a key aspect
| was talking as fast as you can to introduce as much
| argumentation to your point as possible (newspaper scoring,
| kind of).
|
| "I guess misdirection from deconstructionistism would be an
| entertaining alternate tactic. Yes you have introduced 122
| points in your favor, but alas the very foundation of your
| arguments is undermined by my simple deconstruction."
|
| The world/life is insane. It is far too large to understand,
| and even if you did, so unpredictable to be predicted anyway.
| Thus logical argumentation is subject to nihilistic
| nullification by a sufficiently skilled / pedantic debater?
| imbnwa wrote:
| In the 00s alone, I can remember: Fort Hays State winning CEDA
| Nationals on engaging indigenous rather than Western thought;
| New York University winning CEDA Nationals on Zizek's 'letter
| of the law' paradox as a warrant to trying George W Bush at the
| International Criminal Court for war crimes; Kentucky-
| Louisville winning CEDA Nationals on the racial and class bias
| of policy debate. I can't recall if a Kritik ever won the NDT,
| but much like the TOC, the judging pool is much more a closed
| loop of the inside circle the competition.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| [dead]
| cushychicken wrote:
| Same. The kritik and topicality argument forms were everywhere,
| and typically pretty fucking boring.
|
| It was rare that any negative team would take the time to
| present counterarguments to any discrete part of the
| affirmative plan.
|
| These, plus the shotgun, rapidfire delivery style, dominated
| policy debate, and made it pretty un-fun to participate in.
|
| I ended up switching to extemporaneous speaking and enjoying it
| a lot more.
| livinginfear wrote:
| I remember seeing this video a while ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmO-ziHU_D8 Is this actually
| indicative of the kind of structured debate that happens in
| colleges?
| jasonhansel wrote:
| > I've almost exclusively read variations of Marxism-Leninism-
| Maoism
|
| Yikes.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| This has been going on for a long time. Im 15 years removed and
| made a hard U turn back to STEM after high school, but nihilism
| never left me. I blame some of it on debate, and some of it on
| doing salvia (with people from debate)
| ivraatiems wrote:
| This article smacks of a classic bad-debater behavior: "I can't
| win rhetorically on the power of my own argument so I'll attack
| the people and techniques that are beating me instead of
| addressing them substantively."
|
| The correct response to "the whole world is broken and we can't
| debate X because it's stoppered by Y" is "the world is not broken
| (enough) to not debate X because there are practical things we
| can do about X."
|
| If that's a unpersuasive argument, well, then it's unpersuasive
| and you ought to ask yourself why. It's always possible the
| judges are biased in favor of one argument or another, but that's
| how the game has always worked.
|
| There are lots of arguments against critical theory that have
| merit and are useful in debate. "Boo hoo I don't like critical
| theory" isn't one of them.
| ink_13 wrote:
| Formalized debating like this bears about as much resemblance
| to persuasion as fencing does to actual sword fighting. That
| is, the broad strokes are similar but ultimately it's highly
| stylized and not actually the other thing.
| rutierut wrote:
| The whole debate format has been broken forever. Improving
| people's ability to competitively argue for things they don't
| believe in seems a hilariously bad idea.
|
| This stage seems like a marginal improvement, with the biggest
| con being that it's more anti-rationalist. Rationalism isn't a
| panacea, but one needs to master it in order to effectively argue
| post-modern critical theories.
|
| Competitive debate has always sucked and apparently still sucks.
| tekla wrote:
| > Improving people's ability to competitively argue for things
| they don't believe in seems a hilariously bad idea.
|
| If you can't argue in the affirmative of the other side, you
| probably don't actually understand the topic to being with, and
| are probably not very good at critical thinking.
| rutierut wrote:
| I completely agree with this. If you're arguing against
| trickle-down economics you should know where people arguing
| for it are coming from and be able to phrase it in a manner
| that its proponents agree with.
|
| This also happens to be one of the most (holistically)
| effective techniques irl when "debating" with someone.
| tsuujin wrote:
| > Improving people's ability to competitively argue for things
| they don't believe in seems a hilariously bad idea.
|
| I disagree with this so very much.
|
| High school debate was foundational for my adult ability to
| recognize that nuance exists. Arguing a position that you don't
| personally believe in, and winning, is a massively useful tool
| in understanding that for the majority of topics there are
| reasonable, intelligent, and acceptable arguments for both
| sides.
|
| This is a trait seeming missing from most other adults I
| interact with. Too many people accept blindly that there is a
| correct and incorrect position and no room in between.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "Improving people's ability to competitively argue for things
| they don't believe in seems a hilariously bad idea."
|
| Why? One consequence might be to improve your ability to
| steelman an argument with which you disagree.
| rutierut wrote:
| Fair point that is useful, but the majority of people never
| steelman anything, a significant amount of people will even
| refuse to steelman anything on moral grounds. Strawmanning on
| the other hand...
| goodpoint wrote:
| Pushing for competition instead of rational thinking is bad.
| Learning steelmanning is just one minor benefit.
| ryuhhnn wrote:
| Is critical theory a rhetorical dead-end if you want to seriously
| debate something? Sure, but framing a debate and constricting it
| to a dichotomy is no less radicalising than a critical theory
| argument. I think people dislike critical theory so much because
| they know that it shifts focus to the structures everyone knows
| control society but nobody wants to acknowledge. Sure, it's lazy
| to blindly advocate for revolution for the sake of revolution,
| but it's also lazy to reject a line of philosophical inquiry just
| because you don't like how it was presented. What should high
| school debate even be for? Should we restrict it to rhetorical
| sandboxes, or should we allow it to be a forum where ideas can be
| put forth and debated?
| taeric wrote:
| I think the point is some view debate as a way to force folks
| to consider views they might not fully agree with. The search
| for common ground was the lesson.
|
| As this story is presented, a lot of these feel like non-
| sequiturs. Not wrong, and not not worth discussing, but not in
| the spirit of the debate.
| agg23 wrote:
| My high school Policy league (2010+) did not allow kritiks
| essentially at all. It was an extremely rare occurrence to run a
| negative plan (I'm not sure I ever saw it myself). An aff kritik
| would absolutely not have been tolerated as we would ding them
| significantly on Topicality (sticking to the required
| resolution), which is voted on halfway through the round (so if
| aff loses, the round is over). I was one of the most resolution
| bending debators, with most of my aff plans going outside the
| bounds of what everyone else thought of for that topic.
|
| I think my league was very abnormal however as we had a lot of
| layman, parent judges that we had to teach rules to (and
| sometimes the teams had conflicting interpretations), and we
| didn't allow more abusive techniques such as speed and spread (a
| common technique in Policy or Parli to present arguments as
| quickly as possible to prevent the opposite team from being able
| to address all of them, resulting in a de facto win). We would
| never have allowed someone to judge with a bio of "I will no
| longer evaluate and thus never vote for ... fascism good,
| capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good,
| defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism", and it's
| insane to me that this was allowed at a top end tournament. There
| were certainly judges that brought their own priors (and we tried
| to keep track of them to help the rest of our club out), but they
| generally didn't announce it in such a damaging way.
| proxiful-wash wrote:
| Shameless reminder that this it Russian Chinese State that wants
| every part of this argument in our society to do one thing.
| Absolutely annihilate this west, this has been their plan for
| well over twenty years:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
| projektfu wrote:
| I debated in the Lincoln-Douglas format (policy wasn't big in my
| area) and would sometimes try arguments from deconstructionist
| points of view. The judges never really understood them and
| without their understanding, the arguments couldn't remain
| strong. In L-D having better analogies often was a stronger
| method than being clever.
|
| I suppose that's something that was different in policy debate,
| where as I understand it, nonsense can be debated so long as the
| other side responds to it? Also, which approach leads to nuclear
| war? Calling the frame of the debate legitimate or illegitimate?
| [deleted]
| popilewiz wrote:
| [dead]
| RugnirViking wrote:
| Thats always been the problem with competetive debate - you're
| supposed to argue a position that often has significant culutural
| weight, meaning its unlikely anything you say will change anyones
| mind. I was once asked to debate a pro slavery stance in debate
| class despite obviously everyone being against it. I felt our
| team did pretty well and the other team did barely anything and
| yet everyone voted for the other side. Often the only way to
| succeed is by reframing the stupid position you are supposed to
| argue for entirely, which appears to be what this is talking
| about.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Genuinely, in non academic competition often the best way to
| "beat" an opponent is to change the rules
|
| Examples of this that are well understood are regulatory
| capture, where group A convinces a more powerful group B to
| enforce a new constraint on all competitors to group A.
| Generally the constraint is a marginal impediment to group A
| and so "levels the playing field" *wink*
|
| So the idea that there's some pure form of rhetoric that is
| actually worth practicing, given that human conflict (from the
| minor to the major) is rarely to never solved via this
| mechanism (even in formal legal proceedings) - it's not clear
| what is actually being learned here
|
| Other than later in life realizing how formal debate has almost
| no application and it's all about how you refine and evaluate
| your own arguments.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Opponents of abortion would argue that the same "this isn't
| really a human" tactics that the Nazis used are still alive; if
| everyone is comfortable, it sounds like there's a lot of "at
| least we're not the baddies" going on.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| You see that even on sites like this one (or reddit), where the
| etiquette page beseeches everyone to vote for comments that are
| useful, insightful, or well-argued, rather than just what they
| agree with (especially _already_ agree with).
|
| But it never really seems to play out that way; it's always
| pretty easy to farm karma by restating a popular opinion,
| cracking a joke, or dunking on the target de jour.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| This website isn't even that bad compared to literally almost
| anywhere on the internet. From what I've observed with my
| comments, my "popular opinion" and "unpopular opinion"
| comments aren't _that_ far apart in terms of comment karma.
|
| One-liner trivialisms and cheap baiting usually gets flagged
| here, not upvoted regardless of the topic, which is a very
| positive thing. I am very grateful to the site's admins and
| users for this lovely place, it's truly a unique thing.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| it's always pretty easy to farm karma by restating a popular
| opinion, cracking a joke, or dunking on the target de jour
|
| Interestingly, my most upvoted recent comment was one stating
| a position that was opposed to ~all of the existing comments
| on a thread.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| that could mean they were taking advantage of upvote
| anonymity, and agreeing without having to put their name to
| it.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Perhaps! But in this case it wasn't an opinion that could
| cause embarrassment or cancellation.
| threatofrain wrote:
| If something is an interesting debate then most people don't
| have the expertise to engage meaningfully with the facts and
| arguments being put forward. Experts can bullshit you all day
| and no amount of critical thinking is going to pull you out
| of a deep well of ignorance.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| So called competitive debate is really just a joke about who
| talk faster. There is no positive feedback loops where either
| side should take a moment to think and gives feedback.
| Sometimes agree to disagree is the best option. You learn
| nothing from this.
|
| It's basically twitter debate before twitter exists where ppl
| talking over each other
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Often the only way to succeed is by reframing the stupid
| position you are supposed to argue for entirely, which appears
| to be what this is talking about.
|
| Winning seems like a low-value goal here. Classroom simulations
| exist so students can be exposed to the reality of consequences
| and outcomes.
|
| I feel better goals here would be how to immerse yourself in an
| unfamiliar/unwanted position and how to understand the dynamics
| of a scenario with competing, entrenched positions.
| IshKebab wrote:
| The one time I've been to a debate they asked everyone's
| opinion on the topic before and after the debate, and then the
| winners were the ones who persuaded the most people to change
| their minds. So you can still win even if you're arguing for an
| unpopular opinion.
|
| It was such an elegant metric I assumed all competitive debates
| used it. From this article it sounds like they just have judges
| that vote for the winner though? Crazy.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Intelligence Squared does this but I think most debates suck
| anyways.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| I think this is called an "Oxford style" debate.
|
| thesohoforum.org puts on a lot of good ones.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The problem with this type of theory is that you have to accept
| that _everything_ is x-ist first, and then the speaker iterates
| on logic that seems internally consistent, _after_ you have
| accepted that the axioms (and conclusions) of their system of
| reasoning are true. The problem is that since the axioms and
| conclusions are negatively defined, any statement within it can
| seem internally consistent, so it doesn 't matter they just run
| down the clock and rope in the credulous.
|
| The legitimacy of these critical theories seems to rest on
| Kripke's invention of so-called "modal logics," which I
| understand were initially presented as a progressive reaction in
| philosophy departments to the positive logics derived from maths.
| The criteria for logic is that it "adds up," or more accurately,
| our rules about logic and consistency (from Godel, Russell, and
| others) were only deemed to represent reality if the logical
| system could represent arithmetic. Kripke seemed to propose that
| if you revisit and start with logics that cannot represent
| arithmetic, you still get consistent logical forms, which are
| sufficient for expressing a much larger range of phenomena.
| Because sure, if you produce nonsense, nonsense can represent
| anything. It's the definition of magical thinking, but within a
| couple of decades, it was being presented as the "formal" logical
| underpinnings for a variety of essentially marxist ideologies of
| different intersectional flavours, where they produce the same
| circular bullshit with only a few words changed, and with the
| same object in mind: dissolution of meaning and the destruction
| (neutralization) of discourse as a means to create chaos and to
| seize power.
|
| It is a rhetorical system for protagonizing antagonists. We can
| sythesize these ideologies pretty trivially and inject them into
| naive minds that turn them into either activists, or neutralize
| any resistance to them because they're just baffling gibberish
| with the threat of political consequences. Nobody wants to admit
| they have been fooled or taken, and its easier to attack the
| people who point it out than to admit that you have been bullied
| and hustled by highly trained pros.
|
| High school teachers judging middle school debate clubs aren't
| equipped to handle this, but theory is teaching kids to rhyme out
| ideologies that are entertaining, and even charismatic, but
| they're nothing but the same old tropes of the 20th century and
| its grisly consequences.
| User23 wrote:
| To me it sounds like you're just describing enthymemes[1]. You
| don't need modal logic for that, just plain old Aristotelian
| rhetoric. And rhetorically you can fly a whole lot of
| ridiculous premise under the radar in the unstated leg so it's
| a powerful technique. It works somewhat similarly to the
| technique of "assuming the sale."
|
| I don't have much to say about CRT or whatever you want to call
| that rhetorical program today, but it doesn't take any great
| analytical ability to suss out the unstated premises. And if
| you do it becomes pretty clear that the whole enterprise isn't
| exactly intellectually honest.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthymeme
| motohagiography wrote:
| Nobody needed modal logic, it was a scam to elevate synthetic
| ideologies to pass them off as scholarly inquiry. Now we have
| generations of indoctrinated kids who "problematize," things.
| Scratching the surface of that at all brings the whole
| edifice down.
| cratermoon wrote:
| An enthymeme is like saying "giving everyone free health care
| would be socialism!", and leaving out the unstated premise
| that socialism is bad. It's surprising how much garbage can
| be shoveled into an argument if it's anchored on one premise
| the audience believes without evidence.
| Guvante wrote:
| Isn't the entire point of debate to restrict how you can argue in
| order to provide a similar creative structure to artists using
| arbitrary rules?
|
| Doesn't allowing adhoc attacks on semi related structures
| effectively bypass that structure?
|
| Also given the notes in the article it sounds like the judges are
| too generous with blue sky proposals. "It would be neat if" does
| not make good policy and shouldn't make good debate.
|
| Policy and by extension debate should focus on changes small
| enough that the outcome of the change is predictable. "Capitalism
| is terrible" is easy to show but an off ramp to anything else
| requires more than an hour of explanation...
| welshwelsh wrote:
| Yes, but a more important function of debate in school is to
| expose people to new ideas and to question assumptions.
| Unfortunately, debates are often structured in a way that
| forces students to accept some ideas and prevents them from
| expressing others, which is a problem.
|
| For example, whether you argue to raise or lower the minimum
| wage, either way you are still implicitly accepting the wage
| system. By framing the debate in this way, the teachers prevent
| students who oppose the wage system from having an opportunity
| to express their views.
|
| Another example - as Noam Chomsky wrote about in "Manufacturing
| Consent", after the Vietnam War, the New York Times discussed
| many different theories for why the US didn't "win" the war.
| But it never considered the obvious - that the war itself was a
| mistake, and the US was wrong to be there in the first place.
| Framing the debate in this way is a way of silencing the
| opposition, by presenting two "sides" that are actually both on
| the same side and only disagree about trivial details.
|
| If you opposed the Vietnam war, then it would be against your
| interests to follow the rules of a "debate" about how to win
| the war. The correct course of action in this scenario is to
| take the opportunity to argue for what you believe and to
| undermine the debate itself, even if it results in you "losing"
| the debate.
| morelisp wrote:
| > Yes, but a more important function of debate in school is
| to expose people to new ideas and to question assumptions.
|
| While this is definitely the overall goal of teaching debate,
| it's not clear to me this is actually how policy debate in
| school should _operate_ in order to teach that. For one
| thing, I think other events (congressional is more persuasive
| and iterative, group discussion more freeform and
| collaborative, L-D more moralistic) have the potential to do
| this better. Policy 's structure is really meant to force you
| to defend an evidence-based position in depth. Basically
| inherent the format is that at least 50% of the time you
| won't agree with it.
| [deleted]
| JHorse wrote:
| Good.
|
| This country has been in desperate need of revolutionaries for
| far too long.
|
| Respecting the structures and rules of polite society let the
| Climate Change "Debate" feed denialism that's literally burning
| the world down around these kids right now.
|
| They're going to need to make some radical moves quickly once
| they get to positions of influence, and it's heartening to know
| that they're preparing for that.
| [deleted]
| prohobo wrote:
| There was a period where people were claiming that critical
| theory is being pushed in schools, while school board members
| refuted the claim as nonsense. Then it became clear that the
| students aren't being taught critical theory at all, but are
| being subjected to critical pedagogy - ie. teaching methods
| influenced by critical theory.
|
| So, the school board was correct!
| morelisp wrote:
| What? Especially ca. 2005 all the _coaches_ I knew hated Ks.
| The influence was often from the _judges_ who were not
| teachers, but former policy debate kids now at university.
| runpommel wrote:
| [flagged]
| jsmcgd wrote:
| Why do the debate organisers tolerate this? If the debate is X
| versus Y, why allow someone to say we should really be discussing
| Z? Imagine this in any other competitive arena like sport where
| during a match some team starts playing another sport entirely.
| There's nothing wrong with debating critical theory but not if
| that's not what's being debated. It should be an automatic fail,
| just as it would be if you're supposed to debating in a certain
| language and you refuse to do so. This just seems like deliberate
| sabotage/propaganda masquerading as sincere communication. As
| much fault lies with the organisers as with those who wish to
| deliberately pervert the debate.
| kleinsch wrote:
| The article explains it. Students like these formats bc they
| fit with their interests and politics, students graduate, the
| ones that were most active in debate become judges and
| reinforce that these topics will be rewarded
| aabhay wrote:
| As a debate student that goes to dozens of tournaments a year,
| arguing about the same policy topic over and over can get very
| dry. When I was in high school debate, I found these diverse
| literatures exciting and stimulating, which made my passion for
| debate much stronger.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > As a debate student that goes to dozens of tournaments a
| year, arguing about the same policy topic over and over can
| get very dry.
|
| That brings up a good point. We probably need to
| differentiate between a student debate as part of a class vs
| extracurricular debating.
|
| Students participating in a classroom debate only get so many
| minutes of exposure; each is valuable. Tighter boundaries
| would seem to be called for there.
| peterlk wrote:
| This absolutely happens. Running a K (kritik) is a risk because
| if the judge decides that you're full of shit, they can
| basically just ignore your case. Your opponent can make an
| argument to throw the kritik out, and then you're dead in the
| water
| AYBABTME wrote:
| As a foreigner with kids growing up in the US, this crazy bias
| toward critical-everything in the US education system makes me
| worried that my kids will be indoctrinated in some weird
| speculative theory instead of educated in normal fields in a
| focused and rational manner. It leaves me wondering if I
| shouldn't send them abroad to some school system that has
| remained sane.
| knewter wrote:
| Homeschool your kids. No one else cares about them
| mbg721 wrote:
| In my area of the forgotten flyover country, the options are:
|
| 1) Public school for free for middle-of-the-road (in our
| district) results, and be at the mercy of school-board
| politics,
|
| 2) Do Catholic school, and we agree with the religious
| particulars of the Catholic school near us, but it's
| expensive and they may be weak in STEM and global social
| studies,
|
| 3) Join a home-school co-op, and use the flexibility and
| extra time to get it all right and fill in any gaps.
|
| I don't know what the right answer is, but 3 is looking
| increasingly good.
| skyechurch wrote:
| As a public school teacher in the US, I would strongly suggest
| you look into the real conditions at your public school and
| weight those observations much more strongly than viral takes
| in the outrage economy.
|
| (Not to suggest that there is or isn't nonsense going in in
| your district - really do get involved - think of this a Kritik
| of the very bad incentives which exist in substack world.)
| drewrv wrote:
| "Kids are doing something differently from how we used to do it"
| is always a red flag for me.
|
| The fact that traditional high school debate produced leaders
| such as Nixon, Pelosi, and Larry Summers is not the ringing
| endorsement of the process that the author seems to think.
|
| I think this a compelling argument: "minimum wage is an
| irrelevant debate in a country where basic necessities such as
| housing, healthcare, and education are increasingly out of reach.
| Structural reforms are needed, not minor adjustments to
| regulations that often go ignored."
|
| If people don't think that's compelling, I'd love to hear that
| argument! But the author's complaint is framed as "kids today are
| doing it wrong" and it doesn't really counter the points the kids
| are making.
| aabhay wrote:
| Interesting to hear that the high school debate world is just
| like it was when I went to high school 20 years ago.
|
| I became somewhat radical and left wing through my debate
| experience and then took action on it in college (participated in
| lots of illegal/anti-cap collective actions at Berkeley) and
| ultimately found that the entire revolutionary cause and
| "movement" are intellectually bankrupt. It all certainly sounds
| and feels very different when you can flit around the
| intellectual landscape in a debate versus having to settle on a
| real vindication and make your life out of it.
| erulabs wrote:
| Had a similar experience - I was exceedingly excited after
| reading the communist manifesto, some Jorge Luis Borges, and a
| number of other revolutionary texts as a kid. I searched high
| and low for people to talk seriously about this with. It wasn't
| until well into my late twenties I finally realized all the
| pleasant, satisfying, productive conversations I'd had had been
| with moderates or what I may have once foolishly called
| "imperialists".
|
| I do love talking to bright young communists tho. It's
| amazingly pleasing to introduce an ounce of doubt, or
| conversely an ounce of appreciation for the world we inhabit.
| bratgpttamer wrote:
| > When debaters reject the topic and advocate for these critical
| theories, they choose not to engage in pragmatic policy
| discussions. Instead, they condemn American institutions and
| society as rotten to the core. They conclude that reform is
| hopeless and the only solution is to burn it all down. Even if
| they're not advocating for kritiks, in order to succeed at the
| national level, debaters have to learn how to respond critical
| theory arguments without actually disagreeing with their radical
| principles.
|
| Debating without actually disagreeing seems like an entirely
| frivolous and self-gratifying activity.
|
| I dunno what the carbon footprint of a national-level debate is,
| but maybe they could just see whose TikTok gets the most likes?
| [deleted]
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