Making debaters focus on arguments, not cards

Every time my debaters say, "I found a good card," I cringe. Is there a good argument in the card, perhaps?

I have found that my debaters, especially my beginning debaters, get overwhelmed when trying to do research to put an argument or case together. One part of the difficulty is that there are so much new information coming at them (they are learning the content about their topic); another part of the difficulty is that the structure of an argument is new to them, and so they have trouble (a) interpreting the structure of the arguments they are reading (and trouble evaluating these arguments) and (b) imagining how to use these arguments for their own case. The result is that beginning debaters tend to focus on the conclusions in a quotation, missing the arguments that get the author there, and thus essentially are guilty of an appeal to authority.

But the same thing happens, in a different way, when an advanced debater turns in a file with fifty uniqueness cards that all repeat one basic fact. I have a hard time persuading advanced debaters that a ten-card file might be the most excellent disadvantage they have seen all year. I have tried different techniques to get my point across, most notably handing a debater back a card he says is good with the instruction to highlight every argument and fact but not any claim. This can help the advanced debater who reads without reading, but it does not help the beginning debaters in the moment of research.

Rather than ask themselves, "Does this argument or fact help me?", beginning debaters -- maybe even many advanced debaters, too -- focus on whether something is "card"-able. The beginning debaters spin themselves into fits worrying about the threshold for cutting something, mostly ignoring the content. (And my injunction that, if the fact or argument is good but the author is lousy and unclear, then they should look for and will find the same fact by a better writer is completely ignored.) Direct quotation is a labor-saving device: it is easier to copy and paste than paraphrase, and it is easier to verify the claim (tag) is a correct interpretation of the author's work. But it can short-circuit the thinking process. I have been sorely tempted to prohibit my debaters from direct quotation in debating, forcing them to paraphrase, to get them to focus on the actual, essential arguments and facts they are gleaning from their research. (It is certainly a great technique for practice rounds.)

Instead, I have come up with argument sheets. I tell them that the first stage of research is merely about mapping out the terrain; they can fill in the sheet and save links or PDFs but not cut cards. Of course, I created different sheets for the three types of claims: factual (uniqueness or harms), causal (links or solvency), and value and philosophical claims. If a student is researching uniqueness for a disadvantage, I give her the first kind of sheet, which directs her to pay attention to what facts she finds, how those facts were collected by the original researcher (e.g., statistics do not fall from the sky), and what the facts mean for her claim. For example, perhaps she is making a claim about the effect of a law for her inherency. I want her to point to specific text in the law or to point to Congressmen's statements, and to recognize that each method has limits. With causal arguments, I want students to pay attention to the complexity of causation. I want them to move away from the simple, pat story or scenario; I want them to think about effects being overdetermined. The hardest arguments for most debaters to analyze are value arguments. I want my debaters to pay special attention to the broader philosophical ideas that are tied into, as well as to clearly think about what is included and what is excluded in a philosophical judgment. The idea I am trying to hammer home is that philosophical concepts are all about distinctions. (I am reminded of the old joke about a philosopher, asked how he liked his job: "I make some distinctions. It's a living.")

Below is an example of what filled-in sheets might look like.

Argument sheet (example)

After they have filled in a sheet, then we will discuss the case and organize the key ideas into an idea map or web. (I have found that they can not jump straight from reading, without note-taking, to idea-mapping.)

Finally, they go back to start to cut cards. I have found that debaters now tend to cut cards on factual claims that are shorter than before, but that are more likely to have some context for the collection or meaning of the data presented. I have found that debaters now tend to cut cards with causal claims that are longer than before -- they are trying to include more complex analysis. And I have found that debaters are now less likely to cut cards making value claims that are just conclusions. The students look a little more carefully for cards that link an issue to a big philosophical concept. Which is to say, the debaters are more thoughtful and discriminating.

Literature base

I'm going to enter into cantankerous old man territory by making this post: the National Forensic League is not doing a great job with Lincoln-Douglas topics, but it is doing a decent job with Public Forum topics. My problem is the scope of the topic literature bases. It is unreasonable (and counter-productive to education) to give students a big topic to research and little time to do it. Students learn best when they can thoroughly explore a topic and are able to prepare on most of the key arguments. Of course, because debate is a competitive activity, some opponents will always search out unusual, squirrelly arguments, but my point is that being caught off-guard should be a rare experience for debaters. If the topic is too broad to prepare and debaters are regularly caught off-guard, then the value of research and preparation is undermined.

Given that topics are used for one month in PF, two months in LD, and ten months in Policy debate, I think the literature bases should follow a 1:2:10 proportion for these various formats. In other words, the length of time a topic is used should be roughly commensurate with how big the literature base is. This only makes sense: LD debaters might prepare for four to six topics during the year, so it only makes sense that they would invest about one-fifth the research and preparation time into each one as policy debater do; PF debaters might prepare for nine to eleven topics, so one-tenth the work seems fair. How would the N.F.L. do against this benchmark?

I started with the last five years' policy topics. The N.F.L. does NOT write the policy debate topics; those are written by the National Federation of High School Associations. Generally, the policy topics are just about the right breadth to spend a whole year researching. This result is probably no accident, because their process requires the topic framers to consider the literature base qualitatively, and to a lesser extent, quantitatively. To make a very rough gauge of the size of the literature bases, I typed in key terms and terms of art into ProQuest. ProQuest is a general use research database, containing both news articles and some academic journal articles, which is commonly available to high school students. I chose search terms that seemed appropriate to find the core articles of each topic. I make no apologies for the very provisional method; don't infer too much from this. I think this gives a sense of scale for comparison, but not much else.

Policy topics:

2012-2013 topic: "The United States federal government should substantially increase its transportation infrastructure investment in the United States."
Search terms: "transportation infrastructure" and ("United States" or "U.S.")
Results: 16,069

2011-2012 topic: "The United States federal government should substantially increase its exploration and/or development of space beyond the Earth’s mesosphere."
Search terms: ("space exploration" or "development of space") and ("United States" or "U.S.")
Results: 25,657

2010-2011 topic: "The United States federal government should substantially reduce its military and/or police presence in one or more of the following: South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey."
Search terms: ("military presence" or "police presence") and ("United States" or "U.S.") and ("South Korea" or Japan or Afghanistan or Kuwait or Iraq or Turkey)
Results: 17,954

2009-2010 topic: "The United States federal government should substantially increase social services for persons living in poverty in the United States."
Search terms: "social services" and poverty and ("United States" or "U.S.")
Results: 22,133

2008-2009 topic: "The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy incentives in the United States."
Search terms: "alternative energy" and ("United States" or "U.S.")
Results: 36,728

There is a wide variation from topic to topic. But the mean of 24,000 articles seems about right and a reasonable place to start from.

How do PF topics compare? They are in the right ballpark.

2012-2013 PF topics:

Sept. topic: "Congress should renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban."
Search terms: "assault weapons ban"
Results: 3,367

Oct. topic: "Developed countries have a moral obligation to mitigate the effects of climate change."
Search terms: "developed countries" and ("mitigate" or "mitigation") and "climate change"
Results: 2,546

Nov. topic: "Current U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East undermines our national security."
Search terms: ("U.S. foreign policy" or "United States foreign policy") and "Middle East" and "national security"
Results: 3,105

Dec. topic: "The United States should prioritize tax increases over spending cuts."
Search terms: ("tax increase" or "spending cut") and "fiscal cliff" and ("United States" or "U.S.")
Results: 1,200 (66,279 without "fiscal cliff" term)

Jan. topic: "On balance, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission harms the election process."
Search terms: "Citizens United" and election
Results: 3,885

Feb. topic: "On balance, the rise of China is beneficial to the interests of the United States."
Search terms: China and ("United States interests" or "U.S. interests")
Results: 5,756
Search terms: "rise of China" and ("United States" or "U.S.")
Results: 3,350


The China topic seems to be dangerously large, but the remaining seven topics have an average of 2,800, just about one-tenth of a policy topic. How do LD topics compare?

2012-2013 LD topics:

Sept./Oct. topic: "The United States ought to extend to non-citizens accused of terrorism the same constitutional due process protections it grants to citizens."
Search terms: terrorist and "due process" and ("United States" or "U.S.")
Results: 5,505

Nov./Dec. topic: "United States ought to guarantee universal health care for its citizens."
Search terms: "universal health care" and ("United States" or "U.S.")
Results: 10,696

Jan./Feb. topic: "Rehabilitation ought to be valued above retribution in the United States criminal justice system."
Search terms: (rehabilitation or retribution) and "criminal justice" and ("United States" or "U.S.")
Results: 10,546

With the exception of the first topic, they are all quite large topics. The health care topic is essentially the 1993-1994 policy debate topic! The criminal justice topic is similar to the Jan./Feb. 2011 LD topic, except that one was limited by its focus on juveniles.

What specific recommendations would I make to the N.F.L.?

First, when writing topics, please consider the size and quality of the literature base. Perhaps develop some standard statistics to gauge the size of the literature base. If the potential topic generates too many hits, narrow the topic in some way; if the potential topic generates too few hits, broaden it.

Second, please report out the statistics to us members whenever we vote between different wordings of the same topic. It would be helpful to know which version is the more narrowly worded.

Debate shouldn't be sophistry

In high school humanities, that is, English, history, and perhaps a semester of civics, ethics, or politics, a student is supposed to pick up five skills:

1. empathy for others, especially those who are different; 
2. ethical reflection; 
3. a understanding of social and/or government functioning; 
4. expository writing skills: putting together a coherent argument with evidence; and 
5. critical reading skills: analyzing texts carefully. 

It has always seemed to me that doing competitive debate does a really good job teaching a student all but the first. However, I have grown more concerned as I age that what debate teaches is very deep but misses some topics. I haven't become a gray-haired proponent of "cultural literacy" in my dottage: I still think that because debate topics are current, they are inherently more interesting and relevant to students than fusty old treatises. If you think high school students ought to read Aristotle and Plato fully, then I'm not your man. I believe they're far more likely to enjoy learning a little philosophy in order to apply it to current controversies. No, my concern is that, while it is good that debaters learn a lot about their topics, they are missing a few key ideas they ought to be taught specifically. My key recommendation is that second-year debaters take some kind of general critical thinking course that fills in these gaps.

One area I've written about before is logic. It is shocking to me that debaters would not know Toulmin's model, how to model definitions with Venn diagrams, or how to model causal arguments with Ishikawa diagrams. While it's not necessary to get into the complexities of propositional logic and truth tables, the basics ought to be covered.

Another area I've mentioned before too is statistics. Debaters are woefully uninformed about how statistics are collected and interpreted. To be blunt, they'll quote just about anyone, whether or not the method makes a lick of sense. Nothing too much is required: just a little knowledge about sampling methods, sources of sample bias, how to understand different correlational studies (like regressions), and how to understand experiments.

But where I think debaters come closest to outright sophistry is on critical arguments. Critical authors can shed light on complex issues. At their best, debaters quote these authors' anthropological, cultural, economic, and psychological investigations to unpack the standard assumptions most public policy authors approach a topic with. The critical authors can help all of us get behind the positions to see how our assumptions and values shape what we believe and advocate for. At their worst, debaters quote these authors to confuse and bury their opponents under a flurry of ten-cent words.

Why is it that outlandish impacts rule the day in policy debate? This is a bit of an overstatement. But I might argue that the development of critiques was probably driven by outlandish brink-based impacts. Many critiques re-introduce linear impacts into the debate round, i.e., endemic problems that are worsened by the plan. For example, racism exists before the plan, but plan makes it worse. Yet no judge would vote for this argument stated as a simple linear disadvantage. Add on the ten-cent words about critical legal studies and it's a go. The problem for debate theory is that the voting issue on a critique brings in a lot of philosophical and debate theoretical baggage: Is the judge voting against the Affirmative's discourse? Or is he voting against the Affirmative because the false assumptions identified by the critique show the case's logic is suspect (e.g., racist arguments undermine a civil rights plan)? Or is the judge simply voting that the critique's "impact" is bad (e.g., racism bad), like a linear disadvantage?

I believe many critiques only work by stringing together a theoretically inconsistent position: the link is about the topic itself, almost a counterwarrant (a guaranteed link, no matter what the plan actually does, e.g., attempting to improve women's literacy in Africa is based on sexist assumptions); the answer to comparative arguments is about pre-fiat, in-round discourse; and the implication is about real-world, post-fiat, non-comparative assessments of the critiqued impact. I can see some truth in the criticism that critiques are utopian counterplans: even thinking about the topic leads to racism -- just look at how the Affirmative speaks -- but by rejecting this, we can magically live in a world where racism is alleviated. Anyway, back to the main point:

If critiques are just bringing in linear impacts, why not just cut straight to running a linear disadvantage? The answer is that deprived of all the hoopla and sleight of hand (of critique theory and the critical author's fancy words), I believe a linear impact would never win a round.

Part of my solution is to teach every debater in a critical thinking course and to grind to a halt the competitive advantage of poorly-argued critiques. If a debater knows how to construct an argument, she can hammer away at the gaps in a critique. If a debater has a good sense of the basic flavors of philosophy and recognizes a nihilist argument when he hears one, great. Furthermore, many debaters go on to be judges, so getting this basic knowledge in them early is important.

But the second part of my solution is to ask judges to (a) stop rewarding sophistry and (b) recognize that linear disadvantages ought to win sometimes. This is not a theory problem or a rules problem. There is nothing that says linear disadvantages are weak. It is not a problem in the topic literature -- debaters are usually stretching the literature as it is. I am skeptical of the "literature checks abuse" argument. Most debaters' positions are undercut by their own authors; no one thinks the horrible impact scenarios are very likely. We the debate community need to recognize that:

     impact = mag x (duration) x prob / timeframe.

Humans are bad at estimating probability. But debaters and judges ought to make an effort to do better. Unfortunately, as it is, we've decided between offensive and defensive arguments that defense never wins. Never.

If debate could keep critiques straightforward and bring back good old-fashioned linear disadvantages, I would have a lot more confidence saying to other humanities teachers that competitive debating does indeed teach social/governmental knowledge, expository writing skills, and critical reading skills. As it is, I worry that we're doing our own thing that's becoming too divorced from reality.