I have become the dinosaur I used to hate...

or, in a nutshell, I have become an old man. It's not that surprising, for any of you all that have known me, I've somehow managed to be an old man while simultaneously being almost legendarily immature. But the realization of my age is something that has found itself permeating into my addiction- debate. I have become a dinosaur- one of those old dudes that just can't stand most of the things I see going on in the activity....
...i will preface this entire conversation with the relative increase in skill set among debaters. Most debaters are substantially better than they were in my day. The ability of the average, middle of the road debater to make and execute strategy has increased probably 5 fold from my last days as a high school debater, and good high school debaters today are able to walk into college rounds and win immediately, which was pretty much unheard of in the day (a freshman walking in and being in the quarters of a major tournament was pretty much unheard of, and it happens frequently enough now that it's not that big of a deal). But this skill set has a loophole in it- most of it is merely cosmetic. Debaters have gotten better at playing the board game that is debate, but they have, for the most part, fallen off on the "debate" part of it- the part where there is a free exchange of ideas, where there is a give and take, where people have to actually come up with things on the fly, that part of debate has died, along with the afro, capri pants (and good riddance- who in the hell told women THOSE would be a good idea- i'll make my legs look short and my ass look fat, dudes will LOVE THAT) and the preference for light-skinned blacks over us dark skinned brothers (sorry Tribble). What in the hell are you rambling about, black man? Well, let me clear my throat...preface- I will only give one of these at a time, as I really don't have the time to vent all of the vitriol I have for



1) Debate simultaneously over-relies on the line-by-line while it's debaters ignore the line-by-line. For those not familiar with debate, the concept is quite simple- when people say stuff, generally, it's a good idea to have something to say that provides a direct response to that claim- as you would in even a general conversation. However, the over-viewization (clearly, not even close to a word) of debate. Sometime awhile ago, somebody smarter than I am, but clearly lacking in foresight, decided it would be a good idea to make sure students were prepared in all instances with not just ideas of arguments students would need to make (as had been since the beginning of debate as an activity, and probably introduced by Dionysus Alexandrnus, who figured it would be a good idea to predict arguments his opponents would make, and then prepare answers to those claims). Good idea, as the hardest part of debate is when something unexpected happens, and you need to adapt and respond to those claims. But what you may read as the one of the most difficult aspects of debate, I read as one of the most valuable skills in debate. And it's a skill we're, for the most part, teaching out of our students. The easiest example of this is in theory debates- debates about debate, but also debates about debate, where, ironically, debate almost invariably goes to die. This is because, those of you that have watched these debates clearly knows, theory debates are ones most people feel are prepared for entirely off site- this implies that most of the answers are thought about and written at home, and then just read, usually at top-speed, with almost no regard to what your opponent actually says: you hear conditionality bad, you reach, immediately, and grab conditionality good, with no regard to what is actually being said in the debate. If they only said conditionality good, with no nuance or trickeration, then you have no problem. However, if they say, further down the flow, conditional PIC's are uniquely bad, you'll lose, and Dave Register will steal a win from you...
...but while all of this is going on, the community has a lot more of a focus on the importance of the line-by-line. flowing on a laptop has, in my mind, changed the way we evaluate debate. I think most kids type as well as they write, and so the days in which debaters just flat out miss arguments has decreased substantially. But the implication of this isn't necessarily better debates, as one of the scenarios that is unexpected is rounds where less mistakes are made earlier in the debate, the more rounds where the last rebuttal has to actually make the correct decision, which would be problematic if so many debates were not prepared through the last rebuttals. The last two speeches are where arguments are synthesized, where you have to make the crucial decisions in the debates, where the true debating happens. But instead, students read pre-prepared blocks, and just shove the square peg in the round hole, and hope nobody notices. All the more frustrating is it's all done on word processing, which facilitates a world where it's possible to craft each last rebuttal specifically, by attempting to craft the pre-made rebuttal into one that applies in a given debate- but they just don't....
...maybe I'm just salty as I'm seeing the smart debater choose to be the over-prepared debater, not recognizing the smart debater can resolve the achilles heel of the over-viewized debater- the situation when someone makes an argument you're not ready to answer...