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• Monday, April 10, 2006 06:09 AM

  This isn't Real Debate

  I couldn’t relate to this description of debate in the slightest and I’m wondering if other readers felt the same. The “debaters” discussed in the piece sound clever and quick-witted enough, but they’re really engaging in dueling oratory. That’s not the same thing as debate.

  So, here it comes. When I debated in high school and college (late-80s/early-90s) I had to walk five miles to school with several bankers boxes strapped to my back, through the blinding snow, and uphill (yes, both ways). Our judges judged our debates based on our evidence and arguments (not on how pretty or witty we sounded). To get this evidence, I, my partner, and everyone else we competed with had to read high-brow stuff like Foreign Affairs and Dissent to find the best and latest doomsday scenarios. I remember routinely staying up well past the point of serious sleep deprivation to “cut cards” (assemble the evidence in a useable format). I remember begging my parents to send me to the extra-long session of the summer debate institute. I remember the deep camaraderie. I remember how all my conversations had something to do with debate (“I hear Glenbrook North is running a new disad”) – well, almost all of them (“do you think that girl from round 2 was cute?”). The debaters and coaches I knew centered their entire existence on the activity; it was all-consuming. Does anyone else have similar memories?

  For the record, I credit whatever success I have in my current career (university professor) to my debate experience. I learned it all from debate: library research, argument construction, argument evaluation, public speaking, etc. I doubt, however, I would’ve learned the same skill-set (or anything for that matter) from the “debate” described in the article, which sounds a lot like “Lincoln-Douglas,” “Parli” or CEDA in the 1980s -- the styles of U.S. debate that are/were universally mocked by the real debaters.

  —temperance Read temperance's other letters
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