[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]
Return to main CEDA-L Archive Page

Latin America v. Education


Amy Anderson writes:
>Recently there has been a claim that if there is going to be a nuclear 
>war then we should be discussing it.  First, we have been discussing 
>nuclear wars forever and one has never happened.  I don't think that many 
>of us really think that there will be one over some issue in Latin 
>America.  Secondly, aren't you sick of debating nuclear war impacts?  I 
>certainly am.  

I think you are wrong here.  As we (industrialized nations) discard our 
old tech, the LDCs like to grab it at bargain basement prices. Besides, I 
think Trond more than adequately discussed this in his post. Although I 
don't believe that nuclear war is the end all be all to impact debate, the 
idea of it frightens me just a little bit.  


>Tara Tate also claims that there would be very little impacts under the 
>education and recreation topics.  I disagree.  Just because they may not 
>lead to a nuclear war impact does not mean that there are not important 
>impacts.  The education topic has great impacts.  For example, the future 
>competitiveness of our nation with the rest of the world.  I believe that 
>the impacts of topics such as education and recreation may not be as easy 
>to see and weight in terms of lives lost as that of Latin America, but to 
>me they seem to be much more realistic.  They have impacts that I can 
>actually see and believe are happening.  

C'mon Amy.  I think we need to escape a little bit of our eurocentrism 
here.  I think that the machismo mindset as well as the historical rise of 
the caudillo system of Latin America is easy to see, even outside of 
nuclear war.  These philosophies influence how other nations interact with 
LA.  It is also easy to see and believe the decimation of the Indigenous 
Peoples, the destruction of the environment, the influence of 
industrialization, the impacts of US influence in LA.  It seems like the 
effects of bowling on the psyche of middle class America would be a little 
bit more difficult to ascertain.


>Many of you also say that Latin America has very easy access.  Again, I 
>tell you that the only access we would have to anything on the Latin 
>America topic that is not generic and out-dated would be through the 
>internet.  It would be very difficult to do all of our research through 
>the internet since our system is not open all the time and it goes down 
>an awful lot.  The education topic on the other hand is very accesible 
>since most schools do have an education department and material to go 
>with it.  Education information is also available on the internet and 
>information as to how to acces it has already been posted here on the L.

There is nothing to say that access for LA could not be achieved through 
the same means.  Were you on-line when Christina Wise posted the 
information about supression in Mexico?  Additionally, much of the best 
research is found through BOOKS written by authors who consult SEVERAL 
DIFFERENT sources and thus, in some ways, have a much better context for 
evaluation. If you do not have a good Latin America section of your 
library or a large book budget, I'll dare say you might have an 
Interlibrary Loan program.  

>Tara Tate also claims that the Latin America is small enough.  I can not 
>agree.  I think that it could be narrowed enough so that it was small, 
>however I do not believe that this will happen.  I think that there is a 
>tendency when it comes to foreign policy topics not to limit it enough.  
>For example, the topic from the spring of last year about the US 
>fostering democracy was extremely large.  You could pick just about any 
>country in the world to debate about.  I fear that the same kind of 
>broadness would arise in a Latin America topic.

I think this is undue pessimism.  Are you arguing against broad topics in 
general or broad topics for Latin America?  I would prefer a broad topic 
for Latin America over a broad topic for generic democracy.  But really, 
the issues of broad topics are better addressed in the threads concerning 
topic areas...

>Tara also says that the education topic could be too broad.  Of course 
>all of the resolutions have the chance of being defined as large topics, 
>but at least with the education topic there is a general area of research 
>and a lot of general information which could help you even if the 
>resolution was broad.  Also, the education topic would be very easy to 
>narrow and I believe that they will.  I will get back to you all with 
>specific education resolutions that I think might be fun! 

Why would a Latin America not provide for generic information?  I am sure 
that the ed topic could be as generic or specific as you would like it to 
be (depending on your strategy and your style of debate), much as any 
topic could be. Looking forward to hearing your education topics.  That 
would initiate good discussion.

Aimee Anderson
Southern Utah Brown Tide
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
Return to main CEDA-L Archive Page