Re: Mr. Penders,N/W,Novices,Crossman

["Anthony M. Penders" <apenders@seattleu.edu>]

I do think, however, that people who enter the event can have a number of
different initial reactions to it, and not everyone walks out of their
first debate, or after watching their first senior division elim. rd.
flamed up and ready to kick ass.  Some people are, gasp, slightly
intimidated by the event.  Other people differ in their reactions.  My
position is that the Northwest is going to be unable to sustain a novice
division for all people to become familiar with the event in their own way.

I hope that we can continue to field a
productive forum for all types of personalities within the event.

Anyway, since my damn name keeps coming up in this continued Crossman
discussion, let me note ONLY:

 My position is that novices can and should be taught anything and
everything their brains can handle. Including Normativity, PO-MO,
Socialism, whatever.  MY original contention, 1,000 messages ago, was that
I wanted BASIC GROUND RULES  that all sides could agree on (i.e. back to
the variety of lay critics within the CEDA community etc;) basic things
that both teams could understand and develop a framework of understanding
to work from.  For example;  do we have a plan or not?  What is Fiat?
That is the basic reason I prefer the more standardized approaches taken
by the judging community in NDT.  In CEDA, sometimes you just have to
guess.  That is not overly educational.

 I'm darn glad the conversation took
the detour it did, because these
things need discussing.  I suppose I was hesitant to disagree with the one
person who has said anything nice to me on this damn thing so far. But
Professor Crossman, I think that radical argumentation is the heart of
thought.

 Hmmmm.  I'd also like to make the argument that we as educators exist
only insofar as the students exist, and that all the theory we teach and
talk about and argue about only comes to fruition because of the debaters.
 For crying out loud, I'm a historian (y'know John Quincy Adams is my
historical idol) and I still understand that the laboratory of
argumentation theory is the debate round, and without the practical
application of theory to speech the rounds are pointless.  
When Bill DeForeest, or Jim Hanson, or Rick Peacor,(or myself for that
bloody matter) originate an argument, and work on it and convince one of
our poor helpless teams to run this damn thing (whatever it is), the first
thing we ask after the round is `How did it go?'

That is because the theory did not officially occur
until the round.  We're asking (in a
way) how did our unique take on argumentation fly?  Were we `right' or
`wrong', or is it fallacious theory, or simply can it be improved? 

All of us coaches can think we're Gods, but without the forum of the round
to express our theory, then its all mental m*st*rb*t**n.

The sum of that is that it is arrogant and anti-intellectual to suggest
there are things that anyone (novices included)  should not be taught; and
in fact that without our debaters to express theory, the educator is
basically devolved to the utter soft scientist ; inventing concepts and
names of theories to describe everyday occurrences.

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