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Re: That oldtime Speed
Kristina claims that her and many of her teammates debate to increase
their ability to persuade and not to win trophies. While I believe this
may be true of some people, I do not think that a majority of people who
debate do it simply to improve their speaking skills. Most people debate
to win and to bring home trophies. If debate was really an educational
activity then both teams would simply state their case to get out both
sides of the issue because that would be the way we learn the most. That
doesn't happene because it is natural for people to be competitive and to
play to win.
You may think this is a harsh view of debate, that we only debate
to win, but I'm simply being honest. Everyone wants to win, it's human
nature and it is especially the nature of debate. If we didn't debate to
win then there would be no trophies, there would not even be decisions.
The only way to make debate a truly educational activity would be to
remove the judge and just have the debater present their side to each
other for a couple of hours.
When I started debating I did it because I needed the competition,
but the better I got the more I wanted to win. So my desire for winning
did not change, just the amount of winning I desired. I've seen people on
my team who "just want to win an arguement" or "just want to beat the
teams they should beat", but this doesn't mean they are doing it for the
education, it only means they have their own views of what winning is. I
think every debater debates to win, maybe not trophies, but at least to
win a round or an arguement. This is why debate is not an educational
activity. In an educational activity everyone wins, but in debate someone
always wins and someone always loses. All of us I think would prefer to win.
-mike davis
References:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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