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Re: Mr. Hopper
>>>>>>>>>>
1) The "absoluteness" of some tabula rasa positions bothers me more and more
as I continue in the activity. I keep asking myself what the "educational
values" of the activity are if there isn't at least
SOME level of what Professor Snider calles "micro-intervention" on
the part of the judge.
>>>>>>>>>>
And I keep asking myself what the "educational values" of the activity are if
there is too much "micro-intervention" on the part of the judge. Now where
the brite line lies is the question for the ages. My personal brite line says
that if there is clash on an argument, I have to evaluate it to render a
decision. If there is NO clash, then I have to remain outside that argument.
>>>>>>>>>>
Seems like if we don't at least have some standard for determining relative
merits of arguments, all educational values ascribed to the activity
(research, discourse, etc.) are non-unique and even ancilliary.
>>>>>>>>>>
I disagree. When we (judges) set the standard instead of letting the debaters
set them, THEN you lose the value of research. An example:
A team argues that a nuclear war would kill all life on the planet. They read
a card (good rhetoric, but little else) that says that very thing. The other
team makes no answer (at all) to this argument. At the end of the round, the
judge says that this failed to meet his/her standard for the relative merit
of an argument. The problem here is that the team had other answers, cards,
and scenarios but since the original argument was never denied they didn't
feel the need to extend.
All their research, discourse, etc. becomes ancillary because they didn't
know the standard of this particular judge. Sorry, but this doesn't sound
very educational to me.
Peace,
Bob Lechtreck
Bakersfield College
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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