Monday, November 21, 2005

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy of High School Debate

How I listened to two high school debaters and nearly lost my mind.

There are some aspects of high school debate, as it exists these days, that can drive you crazy; if you listen too long. I warned you about this a while back. Now, after the second iteration of Cross-X, it’s time for you to hear, as Paul Harvey would put it, the rest of the story....

When I argued debate in ‘68, the discourse was polite, succinct and followed a form of logic that anyone with a good high school education could understand.

Over the last 40 years, things have definitely changed. Nowadays, you walk into what amounts to a swirling maelstrom of ideas and data thrown out at the speed of sound. It’s not so much that I’ve slowed down. Rather, it’s that the protagonists are working on what amounts to ‘speed’. In the Army, we’d call it going into ‘burst mode’. The words come out faster than any commercial announcer telling you the ‘fine print’ of the offer you just heard about to buy a new home for only one dollar. But not as coherent, because these kids don’t make a living doing this sort of thing....yet....

So, consider yourself in a room with some bright young kids-cum-attornies who speak at a rate that will cause you to reconsider your not having had a bad drug habit; speed would help here. Now, throw in Douglas “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” Adams as the coach for one of the teams. What you get is a discussion of an alternate universe where....now get this....if we do not support President Bush’s renewal/extension of the Milk Subsidy program we’ll ultimately end up in “nukular” war against the Communist Chinese. And this would be a worse thing that the original resolution’s issue of merely altering the powers of the Patriot Act.

The train of thought for this particular mind-bending/altering experience was along these lines:

• If Bush loses this legislative effort it will adversely affect his prestige.
• Prestige is important when dealing with the heads of the Communist Chinese government.
• The US will lose its edge over the Communist Chinese.
• The Communist Chinese will adopt a more aggressive stance in world affairs. This against US interests.
• The Communist Chinese will invade Taiwan.
• The US will defend Taiwan.
• The Communist Chinese will use nuclear weapons against the US.

Et voila! [Please pardon my French.] There you have it—in a nutshell; which is where it belonged.

First I was there listening to the Affirmative team describing their plan to modify the Patriot Act and next think I knew I was in the middle of Armageddon. The worm-hole conveniently provided by the Negative team. And all they used was milk!

I’m not sure how this alternate universe of debate materialized. It could not have been out of nowhere. However, based on some of the things I’ve heard coaches saying, the blame might be laid at the feet of these ‘debate camps’ that are run during the Summer [off season]. I hear they employ a lot of college debaters as part of their training staff.

I’ll have to look into these.

More on that later.....

Less...