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Re: Arrogance

On Tue, 12 Dec 1995 Pacedebate@aol.com wrote:

> >>>
>  am rather disturbed by the tone and attitude you display in this post.  I
> believe I very carefully said I am attempting to understand why educators who
> I respect higly disagree with me on speed in debate.
> >>>
> 
> I was disturbed by your post. I too am concerned with why other educators
> disagree with me on the speed issue. I welcome them engaging me in places
> like the L on this issue. The difference between you and I is that I respect
> your opinion enough to allow your debaters to speak in the manner you (as
> their coach) have chosen to teach them. Unfortunately, you don't show my
> debaters the same respect.

On one occasion at CEDA nationals, two of my debaters got one of those
fabled "California judges" when they were negative.  The 1AR started out
with something like this: "they have a lot of good arguments here, and
they can talk a lot faster than we can.  So in rebuttals we are going to
drop the off-case arguments and just cover the case arguments."  Most of
the strong arguments were - you guessed it - off-case.  The judge voted
aff and said they were much more pleasant to listen to and they had won
some of the case arguments.  [It was a father-son team, and the son was
not really eligible since he was a high school student taking a course at
a junior college, but that's a whole other story.]

Now, let's say their coach told them to debate that way.  Let's say you 
were judging the round.  Would you allow them to debate in the way they 
were taught?  [And I assume that you mean more than just "I'd ALLOW them 
to debate that way, but, ha ha, I'd VOTE against them afterwards."]  Or 
would you "impose" your philosophy on them?  Seems like if you judge a 
"fast" team against an "eloqutionist" team [as a rhetorical theorist and 
rhetorical critic, I bristled when you labeled the other position as a 
"rhetorical" approach], you pretty much HAVE to "disallow" one side or 
the other from doing what they want to.

[I have no problem making a decision in such a debate, and explaining it
afterward, but that is because I don't share your view of judging.  I
think judges are supposed to know more about debate than debaters do, and
it seems awfully difficult to decide who did the better job of debating
without the judge having some concept of what "good debate" is, even if
different judges see "good debate" in different ways.]

I've known a lot of debate people who have no problem with speed, and who 
work with their debaters to help them be fast enough to get out whatever 
good arguments they may have and to cover the opposing arguments, as long 
as the speaker is comprehensible.  But I don't think I have ever before 
heard someone say that speed is good PER SE and that they "coach speed 
debate."  That seems to be what you are saying in some of your posts.  
[But at least you seemed serious about it, as opposed to the "talking 
faster makes you smarter" posts.]  Could you elaborate some more?
References:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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