To be able to use Tabroom, you have to set up a legit account as either a coach, student or parent/judge. Even with an account, you can’t observe a tournament without getting the permission of the tournament director (and schools involved) because every debate room is a private link on the NSDA campus. They tightly control who gets that link and can bounce anybody who isn’t supposed to be there.
Parma, OH (a suburb of Cleveland).
How are competitions handled with large teams? It looks like we might get about 20 students interested, but clearly you can’t have that many students all on stage at every event.
I can think of two non-compelling arguments against this approach. One is that the debater and the researcher will need very good confidence and trust in each other, so there isn’t blame attached to losing a debate. Another is that this splitting of roles requires two people to learn the debate evidence – the researcher who I guess learns everything and filters it down to a manageable amount, and the debater then has to learn all that manageable amount and have it at their fingertips.
I probably had it wrong, it was 55 years ago after all.
Depends on the event. In a Speech event, the competitors are divided up into flights, usually referred to as rooms. Because you know, they are. Not more than 6 to a room and with an optimal distribution of schools between rooms. The judge ranks each speaker on a ballot, which is returned to tabulation. The kids are shuffled and they do it again. For the 3rd round, 1 room is packed with the students with the best scores. Ideally they don’t know which room this is. Then they get awards based on their scores. Multiply this by a dozen events (just in Speech) and you can see why coaches drink!
For Debate, the teams get plonked into a bracket like March Madness. After each round they are reseeded by record. Before too long (6 debates) you’ll will have a very nice bell curve of records. You give trophies to the Top However many. You buy the hardware winners ice cream on the way home and spend the next 2 weeks working with the teams that went 1-5.
Once I read Aristotle’s treatise on Rhetoric. I figure it does not get much more basic than that, as far as learning the ropes. But then practice makes perfect. I suppose a big part of the ‘research’ would be writing actual speeches, and that everyone gets to do that?
Aristotle is totally useless (except in LD.) Modern Competitive Debate isn’t about Truth. It’s about Winning.
Sure, you need some evidence, you can’t go in blank. But for me, debate is about making an argument - the evidence supports that, but what matters is the quality of the argument from that evidence.
I.e. one of the most fun things to do was take your opponents’ evidence and show how it actually supported your case better.
There is lots to argue about there but I’m struck that it’s very factual. You can get into the interpretation of evidence but it’s going to come down to wrangling over facts. Whereas motions like “Resolved: We should defund the police” or “Resolved: The Arts are a more important target for funding than the Sciences” gives lots of room to bring in facts but is ultimately about values and priorities which seems to be me to offer a much meatier debate, and one in which there is no “right” answer.
(None of which is to say there’s a right or wrong way to do debate, of course - I’m just interested in the different ways to approach the same activity).
Former NFLer here. Yeah, that was one of my favorite jokes…
I did CX debate in the late 80s in Texas. We competed in NFL and UIL competition as well as district and regional stuff. It’s a pretty nice activity - my senior year, the topic was prison overcrowding, and my partner and I chose electronic monitoring (ankle bracelets) as our solution. Funny as it’s pretty much as we predicted: low level criminals and parolees would use them.
Debate/speech culture is weird. I was a nerd… but not that much of a nerd. I went to an inner-city school and most of us wanted to become better speakers, or become lawyers. In the more affluent schools, there was a cult of debate. We ran into the weirdos running “squirrel cases” (absurd and bizarre arguments) and rapid fire/speed debate/flooding. Those two tactics really ruined the fun; they essential used gimmicks and not the actual art/structure/tactics of debate.
I ended up judging debate for a few years after HS when I was in college. I actually enjoyed this; after the debate you would bring the teams up and tell them what worked, what didn’t, and how they could improve. I found the students really relished this. I typically found as much positive and would give them something to work on. I remember excoriating a team because they ran a squirrel case, used rapid fire - and were complete assholes to the other team. Any of those things are annoying but all together, I had to remind them that they weren’t going to sway a judge by being obnoxious.
I really enjoyed the research aspect of debate. We used to get “brief books” that had cites and evidence to be used in arguments, but I would go to the university library to find “new” stuff.
We also had the other speech events, like extemp and oratory. I did extemp and placed in district, I think. As a CX’er I remember coming in second place a few times with my partner. She was a good speaker… so good in fact we’re still partners (married 24 years, debate partners 32 years ago). :)\