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Learning as an aquired process

Uv,
I rarely interject on this network and when I do, it is only after much 
consideration and thought.  My original purpose in subscribing to this group, 
was to gain a better understanding of the CEDA society and it's members.  
Blatant attempts to admonish the NDT community, like your message, are some of 
the reasons why the union between debate communities will be long in coming.
When I started on this discussion group, I had the hope of primarily examining 
the military intervention topic from the value perspective.  Unfortunately what 
I have gotten is a lot of mail from people who just bicker constantly, about the 
most mundane issues.  Regardless of what three little letters preface the word, 
"debate," we are all cut from the same cloth.  For a moment, think of how crazy 
we are to want to research our free time away, to work on arguments at all hours 
of the night, to get on vans or on planes and go places...to debate.  It doesn't 
matter if the issue is Hasty Generalization or the Kritik--we are all advocates 
of rhetoric and argumentation.  Yet if you scan through the last issues of the 
group, there are very few (but very good) argumentative issues--it is like 
opening the door to the kindergarden romper room.  
I think all the forms of debate are unique and everyone has legitamate reason to 
prefer their own format of the event.  At the same time I think it is quite 
important to strive for a greater connection between the events.  Petty 
bantering about whose program is better and what level of competition is better 
does ZERO for either event and frankly, is boring to read.
So there it is Uv, a NDT debater's perspective on the discussion group and the 
choice of topics on the network.  Some people, like Prof. Strickland, would have 
you believe the voice I use is a Darth Vaderesque duplicate being broadcast from 
Waco--he's wrong.  I share the concerns of the multi-polar debate community, I 
just think it is time to move on and dicuss other issues and discuss them in a 
friendly manner.  If people think I'm out of it, so be it-I don't pretend to be 
some stoic, Rhetoric warrior on the horizon of knowledge, but if people disagree 
with me I'd rather you backchannel me and we can hash it out that way.

It's only life after all,
Dick Pineda
Baylor University
Richard_Pineda@Baylor.edu
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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