The Politics of Politics
I have no idea why I took Debate 101 my sophomore year of high school back in the Paleolithic. I‘m not an enthusiastic public speaker. Nor have I ever been inclined to become one.
Perhaps I was interested in learning advanced debating techniques so I’d always triumph in the important debates of daily life:
“You think you deserve that last piece of pizza? Let me tell you why you don’t.”
The explanation may be simpler:
- My personal experience suggests that teenagers aren’t terribly bright
- My later, more evolved, experience as a high school junior and senior suggests that sophomores aren’t terribly bright either.
Entering Debate 101, I was:
- a teenager and…
- a sophomore
The evidence, however circumstantial, is enough to convict.
If I was interested in learning debate technique, I was disappointed: the debate class wasn’t designed to systematically instruct students to taking apart their own position, reassemble it into a stronger position, and then use their new strong position to destroy their opponent’s position. This debate class was designed to cull skilled debaters out of the general student body who would then go on and compete in regional and state debate competitions. Some technique was dispensed from time to time in miserly bursts, Mostly though, it was one instruction-free speaking assignment after another. Those with innate debating instinct went on to join the school team with all the glory that bestowed (not much). The rest of the class had to live with disappointment (again, not much).
A debate format we were taught, Lincoln-Douglas (or LD), roughly followed this format I’ve adapted from Wikipedia:
1. The Affirmative (the person in favor of a proposition like “Free pepperoni pizza is a human right”) reads a pre-written case. Time taken: 6 minutes.
2. The Negative (the person against a proposition i.e. “No commie pinko scum, free pizza will destroy the fabric of society and lead to dancing”) cross-examines the Affirmative in an attempt to trip them up. Time taken: 3 minutes.
3. The Negative reads a pre-written case against a proposition and moves on to savage the Affirmative’s case without ruth. Time taken: 7 minutes.
4. The Affirmative cross-examines the Negative (“Why is it you want to make the pizza deprived into glue?”. Time taken: 3 minutes.
5. The Affirmative dissects both their opponent’s case and their own. Time taken: 4 minutes.
6. The Negative dissects the dissection of the Affirmative and summarizes the debate for the judge. Time taken: 6 minutes.
7. The Affirmative dissects the Negatives dissection of the Affirmatives’ dissection and summarizes the round for the judge. Time taken: 3 minutes
The LD format is adversarial: one debater speaks in favor of a proposition and their one speaks against it. Points are awarded by a judge. The winner is the debater who wins on most points.
I don’t know the specific format or scoring criteria my debate class used. I do remember the essence: if, in the course of your debate, you conceded that any of your opponent’s arguments had successfully debunked your own, you lost points. No points were given for being agreeable. Points were only given for being disagreeable. The more disagreeable, the better.
Being a mid-tier debater, I was pitted against a offensive lineman from our 4A state champion high school football team. I have linebacker height but not linebacker bulk: my debate opponent (we’ll call him “Brett”) outweighed me by 30-60 pounds. If our confrontation had been physical, I would have been dead. But I figured I was a better debater than “Brett”. I thought I could best him at LD.
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