Why We Exist: A Response to Jason Baldwin’s “The Commodification of LD”
WHY WE EXIST
by Victor Jih
A Response to
“The Commodification of LD”
by Jason Baldwin
Rostrum (October 2005)
It is open season on Victory Briefs. The October Rostrum recently featured an article by Jason Baldwin entitled “The Commodification of LD” purporting to critically examine recent trends in the so-called commercialization of debate. Though thinly veiled, there is no question the primary target of the Rostrum article is Victory Briefs LLC. Lest there be any doubt, Victory Briefs is the only “company” that simultaneously publishes handbooks, runs summer camps, holds “weekend workshops,” publishes the DVDs of demonstration debates that Mr. Baldwin critiques, hosts a free website with tournament results and pictures (thanks to Jon Cruz), operates a tournament in Southern California, has staff and students who sometimes like to walk around in their camp T-shirts, had a staff member dress up in an animal costume (not my idea), and had a banner ad on LDDebate.org with the phrase “Fight the paparazzi” (a joke). Mr. Baldwin clearly had Victory Briefs at least partially in mind when writing the article, and apparently finds very little redeeming with what we try to do for the forensics community.
Sadly, the assumptions and accusations that underlie Mr. Baldwin’s article are nothing new to Victory Briefs. There is a distinct segment of the community that is predictably distrustful of any form of “corporate” or new influence, and that distrust typically arises out of a lack of familiarity with what we do. The October Rostrum article, however, represents one of the first times Mr. Baldwin and those who share his views about Victory Briefs have taken their back-room complaints to a public forum. While I wish there had been more fact-checking and an opportunity to respond before the article was published, I do appreciate this opportunity now to finally and formally put to rest many of the misconceptions and rumors. It is far more difficult to address these concerns when they are relegated to private whispering. This is also an important discussion–one that should be more solidly grounded in fact.
That said, I would like to provide the following response. It is admittedly personal in tone, because–at some level–I am responding to what I honestly take as a personal attack. The article questions the propriety of Victory Briefs’ reason for existence as a “for profit” influence in the community. It is therefore important for people to understand why Victory Briefs exists. In the process, I hope to provide a counter to Mr. Baldwin’s thesis decrying “the influence of money on high school debate.”
* * * * *
First, some personal history. I am a product of old school debate. I went to Leigh High School in San Jose, California in the late 1980s, and was coached by Ms. Kim Jones, who now is the director of forensics at Bellarmine. Everything I learned about LD debate started with her. (By the way, Ms. Jones does not receive anything close to the credit or reputation she deserves. What other coach had two different students in back-to-back LD finals at the NFL National Championships in 2003 and 2004?)
I debated in the pre-Baldwin days of David Kennedy (Regis), Adam Anderson (Chesterton), Anoop Mishra (Homewood), Gwen Cooper (Miami Palmetto), and Rob Berry (Battle Ground Academy). We did not travel the national circuit and knew nothing about the Tournament of Champions. Our circuit consisted of the Loyola Marymount tournament, Berkeley, Stanford, and University of Pacific. I did decently at Nationals, and there, while waiting in the hall for the next round, met a guy from Ohio who would ultimately become the co-founder of Victory Briefs–Bob Hohman (who, by the way, is now the President and CEO of Hotwire.com). After graduating high school in 1989, I went to Stanford (with Bob Hohman) and began coaching at Palo Alto High.
In our freshman year at Stanford, Bob Hohman (the more entrepreneurial one) convinced me it would be “fun” to start our own company. Since both of us knew LD debate, that was the natural home for our efforts. We quickly created a national company (out of our dorm-rooms) publishing LD handbooks and, after two years, started a modest LD summer camp at UC Santa Cruz (1992, 1993). These were the days Mr. Baldwin fondly recalls when he himself debated for Vestavia Hills in Alabama. (I know this, because my debaters would often watch him and other times had the honor of losing to him.)
According to Mr. Baldwin, in those days the “only LD ‘product’ to exert anything like a national influence was the University of Iowa’s summer workshop.” I take issue with that statement. That may have been true for those exclusively immersed in the “national circuit” of TOC-aspiring debaters. But the LD community back then extended far beyond the “national circuit.” Victory Briefs was a large part of that non-circuit community. We took a lot of pride in the fact that we were able to help many new schools learn about LD debate, and that a different national community was forming as a result of our efforts. The internet was not a phenomenon back then, but we did our own version of news with our “community reports” in the front of each handbook. I still have the many letters of support we received from students and coaches from Wenatchee Washington to Coronado Texas to Baton Rouge Louisiana. Attending Nationals was a joy–all we had to do was sit back as coaches would come up to the table with their friends and proceed to explain why they chose our products for their students.
In terms of national influence, then, we held our own. The Victory Briefs of the old days consisted of national champion Thomas Marlowe (from Indiana), national champion Jay Steed (from North Carolina), James Mallios of Bronx and stand-up comedy fame, Priya Aiyar (who later clerked for the Supreme Court), extemp diva Cristina Rodriguez from San Antonio Texas (who also clerked for the Supreme Court), Mark Price and Ron Anafi (of Dale McCall tutelage), Jason Ciarochi (from Duncanville High in Texas), Eric Beerbohm (of Bellarmine, Stanford, and Oxford fame), and many many others. Frankly, we were both flattered and mortified when Thomas Marlowe quoted me and Ron Anafi in the national championship round! Victory Briefs is built on a strong legacy.
Victory Briefs closed its doors in 1993. I went to Harvard Law School and decided that it was time to focus on real life. After law school, I started at my current law firm and practiced law for several years. Then, in 1998, I was convinced by some other friends to resurrect Victory Briefs and bring it to the internet age. After years of absence, I missed the debate community and the reward of working with some of the most talented students and teachers in the nation. The challenge of bringing Victory Briefs back to its glory days was also exciting. Victory Briefs was reborn–better than ever.
I am very proud of Victory Briefs. I think we have assembled some of the nicest, most talented, and most dedicated staff members from every part of the country. I am proud that our handbooks are the “must have” books for LD debate. I am proud that many schools use our instructional texts for their novices and classrooms. I am proud of our website. And I am proud that last summer our two institute sessions combined had over 400 students in the Lincoln-Douglas divisions. That’s larger than any other camp in history. Thus, it really saddens me when people–and there are some–who would rather us disappear altogether. It is frustrating to have to defend our (albeit imperfect) efforts to provide an educational service and to build an inclusive, constructive community.
* * * * *
Mr. Baldwin’s thesis is that because we are not officially associated with a college or university, we must be evil profiteers. (I exaggerate slightly.) As an initial matter, the fact that an enterprise is affiliated with a university does not mean it does not seek to make money. That enterprise does seek to make money–for the school, the team, or the staff. More importantly, the notion that Victory Briefs is nothing more than profiteering and corporate exploitation is insulting in light of the true facts.
I don’t know of any other institution or camp that discloses its financial status. And I don’t feel it particularly fair that we must do so to answer baseless charges of greed. But for the record, I wish Victory Briefs made me money. I really do. It doesn’t–yet.
For the skeptics out there, we can use the Victory Briefs camp (last summer) as an example. We received tuition from students (minus discounts) of $600,000. Since we are located at the nicest and thus most expensive camp location in the country–the University of California at Los Angeles–we paid $500,000 to the university. Out of that, we paid another $98,000 to staff (which does not include me). Once other elements of the budget are added to the profit/loss statement, one can immediately see that there is no profit. As if that was not enough, we also gave an additional $60,000 in financial aid because we hate to deny anyone the opportunity to attend for financial reasons. I personally took home nothing–despite the financial commitment and the time and love to make Victory Briefs Institute the most successful LD camp nationally.
That’s only one aspect of our operations. Running a publishing company, operating a news website, covering the NFL national tournament, producing DVD demonstration debates, and our pursuing our many other endeavors all take time and resources. For those of you who do not know me, Victory Briefs is not my job. I work full-time as a partner at a law firm billing over 2200 hours a year. Thus, I pay other people (two full-time employees and many other contractors) to run the operations of the company and to do the things that I think should be done. That’s expensive. Thus, net operating deficits for Victory Briefs of $70,000 in 2002; $100,000 in 2003; $185,000 in 2004; and $120,000 so far in 2005. I doubt there is any other “company” or person in the LD community (other than Lincoln Life or Schwann’s) that has invested nearly half a million dollars in the last few years to provide a service to the forensics world. The assumption, then, that Victory Briefs is a huge corporate money-making empire is just false. Our primary focus has always been on creating a top-notch service–even if that means it’s more difficult to make money. We have not cut corners, even though a purely financially driven enterprise would have. We have not stopped giving financial aid, even though that would have been an easy way to dramatically reduce our deficits.
To be clear though: Victory Briefs is trying desperately to make money. And we will eventually (somehow). We’re trying to think of ways to expand the product line, of adding advertising to the website, of soliciting contributions, etc. that will allow us to generate revenue without compromising the service that we’re providing. But I have no personal capacity–and no desire–to become a perpetual donation machine to debate. And I think I have the right to try to recoup some of the half million dollars I’ve already poured into the enterprise. But I have never compromised and will never compromise the quality and integrity of the Victory Briefs vision in the meantime.
So why does Victory Briefs continue? Because I’m proud to have created a company that is contributing positively to the LD community. The company (at least in my mind) is built on three guiding principles. First, not everyone is part of an established juggernaut program, with experienced coaches, top-notch varsity debaters to emulate, extensive back-files to draw from, and the ability to go to the top tournaments. Second, it is important to democratize debate, to empower those who know less about the activity, to give access to those who are not in the loop, and to create a dynamic, constructive community bridging local, regional and national participants. Third, it is important to provide a way for our graduating debaters to give back to the activity. There are many who graduate from high school and want a chance to give back whether for a year, all of their college years, or the rest of their lives. Victory Briefs provides a way to keep people involved and invested in the activity. For example, both Michelin Massey and Mike Bietz (the two full-time employees of Victory Briefs) have a tremendous desire to focus their energies on improving debate. I pay them to do that on a full-time basis.
* * * * *
Some specific points:
About the Handbooks
Mr. Baldwin criticizes the publication of handbooks because students “substitute purchased products for educationally valuable work.” I agree that handbooks could be used in a way that undermines education; but I also believe that handbooks, when properly used, can enhance education–particularly for those who are not part of established programs and traditions.
First, anyone who regularly reads our handbooks knows that they are not designed to be a “substitute” for “educationally valuable work.” There are no pre-written cases or case outlines. Much of the “evidence” is not meant to be read in a debate round, but is intended to introduce debaters to a background idea or an author. The “evidence” is not “blocked” in a way that enables debaters to shortcut reading. The book is designed to be read from front to back, and provides an introduction for beginning and advanced debaters to different ways to think about the topic and a survey of some of the available literature. We do not, as Mr. Baldwin puts it, “thrive on substituting ease for effort.” We thrive instead on providing access to resources, information, and new ideas.
Our readers know this. Some teachers tell us they use the handbook for the novice debaters, to be used as an introduction to the breadth of the topic. Some teachers tell us they use it for the team to identify potential sources, and then the team finds those sources for themselves. Other teachers tell us they give the book to their advanced debaters, because they do not have the LD expertise to take their debaters to the next level or to anticipate what other more advanced debaters might be thinking about the topic. Still others tell us they use it to learn about the topic themselves as teachers, so they can then better critique their students’ cases and practice debates. Even some parents tell us they use the book to learn about the topic before going to a local tournament to judge. Some familiarity with the topic helps them better understand and better evaluate the arguments. Most debaters tell us they use the book as a starting point, or to find out what other people might be thinking about in order to better prepare for tournaments. Are there some debaters who turn to the books at the last second when they have not prepared for a tournament? Of course. But they also know they can’t just rip three pages out of the book and read it. Our product requires them to read long passages, to analyze the evidence and the ideas, and to then piece it together for themselves.
In the ideal world, every student would have an established, experienced, and savvy coach (who also runs a debate camp during the summer), have successful varsity debater teammates to look up to and to get help from, have a tradition of excellence to draw upon, and have an extensive collection of philosophy books or a nearby university library as a resource. We don’t live in an ideal world. Some students have no coach. Some coaches are learning LD debate themselves. Some schools are not near a university. There is a reason why coaches continue to purchase our products. And it is not because these coaches are abdicating their commitment to education, as the article implies.
About the Victory Briefs DVD Series
Victory Briefs also offers a DVD series of demonstration debates on the current topics. Why Mr. Baldwin finds these demonstration debates un-educational is a mystery to me. Every established debate program will have its more experienced debaters conduct a demonstration debate for the newer debaters. Every team that is trying to introduce interested students to the activity will show a sample debate. Every camp in the country includes numerous demonstration debates for the students to learn from (including both Iowa and Kentucky). And even tournaments recognize the educational value of the “demonstration” tutorials that the elimination rounds can provide (e.g. Emory).
For teams of one, students without a coach, teams that cannot go to the prestigious tournaments like Emory, or teams that cannot send any debaters to an institute, how else are students supposed to learn debate at the highest levels? For many teams, their only exposure to debate at the highest level is to qualify for nationals. And for the few that do qualify, competing at nationals is not exactly the fairest battle if that competition is their first chance to see other schools and judges from other states. (I’m always impressed by the debaters who come from states or schools that never compete nationally, and then make it to the late elimination rounds at Nationals.)
Like the handbooks, then, I submit that our DVD product is a net benefit to education. I was particularly amused by a recent post by a student, Jon Gordon, on the Victory Briefs website. Apparently, he used the DVD product to train his mother how to flow. According to Jon, “Speaking from personal experience, I know that my own mother learned to flow by watching a DVD from VB many times and practicing flowing before she attended and judged at her first tournament. While I laughed at her for watching the DVD so many times, she ultimately learned to flow better than I could at the time.” Jon’s experience is not unique. I know that we often send our own novices home with the DVDs so they can practice flowing. Our latest DVD product provides yet another pro-education benefit. Because we now produce demonstration debates for every one of the 10 potential NFL topics before the nationwide ballots are cast, we enable coaches to actually see how these topics might be debated before deciding which topics to vote for.
About the Victory Briefs Institute
According to Mr. Baldwin, “Education aims to instill some combination of skills, knowledge, and virtues in students.” Mr. Baldwin further argues that students cannot differentiate for themselves between what they need educationally and what they want. He concludes, “[B]usinesses appeal only to wants.” As a businessman, I beg to differ.
The students who attend the Victory Briefs Institute during the summer come here because they want to improve their debating. They may not know what they need specifically to improve, but they know they want to improve. Catering to that desire does not in any way mean that Victory Briefs, as a business, compromises its educational mission or ignores what students need. Our mission–for every experience level–is clear: we emphasize reading and thinking (i.e., being smart); learning how to debate strategically (i.e., learning that the quantity of arguments is not as important as quality of arguments and that committing to one logical, well-developed argument is often the best option); the importance of rhetoric (i.e., that how you explain something is frequently just as important as what you say); the role of debate as communication (i.e., that instead of complaining about judges, the excellent debater needs to learn how to reach every type of judge; the “great” debaters should be obvious to everyone); and the virtue of humility (i.e., every debater must learn to be coachable; there is something to learn from your coach even if they don’t know how to flow or don’t know what a value is).
Mr. Baldwin’s point seems to be that profit-driven institutes are more likely to cater to the “winds of LD fashion”–namely “jargon, speed, debate theory, and so-called postmodern so-called philosophy in LD.” Let me be clear, any student who wants to learn how to debate with more jargon, more speed, more policy-lite arguments, and “postmodern so-called philosophy” for the sake of being confusing probably should not attend the Victory Briefs Institute. There are other more suitable options. Despite being “for profit,” Victory Briefs has not catered to the “winds of LD fashion.” In fact, most of our instructors are opponents of the latest trends of avoiding the core conflicts of the resolution in favor of a barrage of topicality and theory arguments. That said, unlike other camps, Victory Briefs does not ignore the “winds of LD fashion” either. The best way to combat the prevailing winds is to equip students to beat the new trends. While we do not teach students to go faster, we teach them how to handle speed. While we do not advocate confusing positions, we teach students how to debate them. While we do not prefer silly theory arguments, we teach students how to dismantle them.
There is one facet of our “profit”-driven camp that Mr. Baldwin neglects. One of the aspects of the Victory Briefs Institute I am most proud of is the fact that both beginning and advanced debaters, both students from established and newer programs, both students and coaches, both graduating debaters and rising freshmen, can come together in a true community of intellectualism, comraderie, and fun. I love the fact that my debaters can go to camp and get to know the top returning national circuit debaters for the next year. Then, when I take them to a big tournament like Stanford or Berkeley or Apple Valley, they have no reason to be intimidated by the people they see–because they are people they’ve already met. My freshmen can go up to an Adwait Parker, or a Tara Tedrow, or even some of their judges, and not be intimidated. One important aspect of our vision is to break down unintended barriers of exclusion, and to empower all students to be active participants in the larger community. In short, it’s not just about money.
Ultimately, Mr. Baldwin tells coaches to “Find workshops with staff members you trust to serve as academic and personal role models. Compare costs and ask what motives drive various institutes.” Coaches have done that. And increasing numbers of coaches send their entire squads (novices and advanced debaters) to the Victory Briefs camps. Each year, the number of schools who send more than 10 debaters to our camp grows.
About the Victory Briefs Institute Staff
According to Mr. Baldwin, “private workshops are now hiring as many successful ex-debaters as possible” as part of a grand marketing scheme. “These workshops,” according to Mr. Baldwin, “are not hiring on the basis of character at all. They are indifferent to character, because character does not improve their bottom line.” It is hard not to take this argument personally, because the argument is personal. It is also false.
First of all, Mr. Baldwin’s article perpetuates a common misconception about the Victory Briefs Institute that many of our competitors and detractors like to foster–that Victory Briefs only hires the latest graduating “ex-debaters” because they are “cheap” and “can get by with saying almost anything when they talk to their friends.” The facts are otherwise. Last summer, we greatly expanded the number of veteran coaches who teach at the institute. We hired Tim Case (the coach of Celebration High School, Florida who coached the 2005 NCFL and NFL national champion). We hired Wes Craven (the coach from South Eugene High School, Oregon who coached the 2005 NFL national runner-up). We hired Kristen Ray (one of the up and coming coaches in Texas and one of the nicest people I know). We hired Murvin Auzenne (one of the established debate coaches at Strake Jesuit in Texas). We hired Chris Castillo (another up and coming coach who has worked with students at Mayde Creek and Cinco Ranch in Texas). We hired Jessica Huynh (an assistant coach for the Harker School in California). We hired Jake Gelfand (who coached one of the most successful debaters last year, Adwait Parker). We also hired Joe Vaughan (the coach of Scarsdale and one of the top teachers in the nation).
That said, we also hire many of the top graduating debaters each year. Why? Two reasons. First, it is important to stay current. Debaters who have succeeded recently (at the local, regional, and national levels) have a lot to contribute to the educational environment. Second, as an activity, it is critical that we keep each new generation of debaters involved and invested in the activity when the graduate. It is important that we identify and train the next generation of coaches. Categorically dismissing the contributions of the “young” coach is both unfair and unwise.
Mr. Baldwin’s suggestion that these “young” hires are made without any regard to character is insulting to Victory Briefs and the staff members we hired. Last year, Victory Briefs hired Andi Barsan (CA), Gagan Biyani (CA), Bryan Cory (TX), Petey Gil (NY), Justin Hinojoza (CA), Hirsh Jain (CA), Sam Kleiner (AZ), Amanda Liverzani (NV), Landon Manjikian (CA), Belinda Navi (CA), Adwait Parker (NY), Daniel Sheehan (CA), Tye Tavaras (GA), Tara Tedrow (FL and the 2005 National Champion), and Tisha Vaidya (TX). Unless Mr. Baldwin knows something I do not, I do not see how anyone can look at this list of “young” hires and conclude that Victory Briefs, as a business, is “indifferent to character.” This group of hires does not represent, as Mr. Baldwin puts it, people “who would have been deliberately not hired in earlier years.” Rather, this group of hires represents an amazing diversity of debate knowledge, an early and genuine dedication to teaching debate, and some of the “best people” I know.
About the Victory Briefs Tour
Mr. Baldwin’s article also makes a passing derogatory reference to “weekend workshops on current NFL topics,” but never really articulates the problem with such camps. In addition to the summer camps, Victory Briefs also offers a two-day workshop in late December or early January (depending on the location) on the January/February LD topic. Last winter, the Victory Briefs staff visited 10 different cities across the nation, conducting mini-camps that both students and their coaches attended. We started the tour because we recognized that not every student can afford to come to Los Angeles for two weeks during the summer. So we decided to bring the institute experience to them. At $50 a student for a two-day workshop, I can assure skeptics that the venture was not a financial juggernaut. It was, however, an educational success. Students of every level (including students from many schools that are not known as debate powerhouses) and many new coaches (or speech coaches seeking to make the transition) attended to learn more about debate in the context of the new resolution.
About the Victory Briefs Tournament
Mr. Baldwin also criticizes “one tournament operated by an LD business.” Since the only tournament that fits that description is the Victory Briefs Tournament, I will address that as well. First, Mr. Baldwin’s assumption that we hold that tournament because it is “lucrative” is demonstrably false. The Victory Briefs Tournament has only one division of one event–open Lincoln-Douglas debate. At approximately 100-120 competitors and $50 per entry, the tournament only generates approximately $5000 in revenue. The tournament is not designed to make money, because we then proceed to spend thousands of dollars to fly in, house, and feed the best judges in the country and even gave nearly $2000 in cash scholarships to the winning students. In fact, the tournament loses so much money that next year we likely will be unable to offer cash scholarships anymore.
The real reason the Victory Briefs Tournament was created is, as we tell every school that attends, to improve the quality of debate opportunities in Southern California. When Victory Briefs began its operations in Los Angeles, we recognized that LD debate was stagnating and very few schools had the interest in or resources to travel to compete against some of the smartest students in the country. To remedy that situation, and to improve the interest in debate in Southern California, we decided to create a tournament that would bring the best debaters to California. Victory Briefs draws upon its broader “corporate” presence in the LD debate world in order to attract those top debaters and, more importantly, the top judges. Last year, one coach–who is typically wary of oral critiques–commented on how much fun her debaters were having because they were learning so much from the judge critiques after each round. That’s why we continue to run the tournament. And that’s why people keep coming.
About the Victory Briefs Daily Website
Mr. Baldwin also takes aim at the Victory Briefs website. According to Mr. Baldwin, the website is rife with “campy gossip” and “insider only” jokes–all designed to “aggressively promote their staffs, their success stories.” If you have not visited the website, I urge you to read it for yourself and decide whether Mr. Baldwin’s description is accurate.
Mr. Baldwin does not fairly describe the website that Jon Cruz and many other contributors have worked so hard to build. The website provides an educational resource to debaters, coaches, and parents. As I write this article, the website features a column on the importance of “intuition while responding to confusing arguments” by Larry McGrath, a lesson plan by Stacy Thomas for debate “icebreakers,” and an introduction to the “narrative” form of argumentation. In the process of providing information, tips, news, and pictures, the website has also created a true national community. Many debaters, coaches, parents, and debate alumni visit and comment on the site. According to the latest statistics, nearly 700 different people visit the site each day. The number of visitors is exponentially greater when Victory Briefs covers the National Tournament. We get inundated with correspondence from well-wishing parents and teammates who are glued to the coverage as they see what happens to their friends and loved ones.
Jon Cruz, the LD debate coach at the Bronx High School of Science in New York, is one of the prime movers for the website. Mr. Baldwin’s claim that the website exists to “aggressively promote their staffs, their success stories” ignores all of the effort by Jon Cruz to make sure the website is fully inclusive. We have gone out of our way to feature successful debaters regardless of their affiliation and have featured interviews with the directors and instructors of competing camps. Mr. Baldwin’s further claim that the purpose and effect of the website is to promote an unhealthy “celebrity” culture is also unfair. Jon Cruz goes out of his way to feature both the successful and the less successful debater, to give equal prominence to the local and national circuits, and to combat elitism. By the way, Jon Cruz does not get paid for anything he does for the Victory Briefs website. Like many others, he volunteers his time and efforts because he believes in the website, he believes in the community, and he believes in Victory Briefs.
About Conflicts of Interest
Finally, a brief word on conflicts of interest. Mr. Baldwin points out the growing problem of judges who are biased because they may have taught a student at summer camp. First of all, this is a problem that tends to be unique to the national circuit–and not a growing problem for LD community as a whole. Second, in terms of the national circuit, this is a legitimate and self-created problem because the students who choose to attend the “national circuit” tournaments tend to want as judges many of the people who teach at camps during the summer. According to Mr. Baldwin, “this last concern about conflicts of interest is as much a problem with tournament administration as it is with money in LD.” I agree that this is a problem that should be addressed with more effective tournament administration–through better disclosure of affiliations and opportunities to strike biased judges. I disagree that this is a problem with ‘money in LD.’” The real problem is that coaches and students on the “national circuit” want a particular type of judge.
Ultimately, according to Mr. Baldwin, “People who produce or sell topic-specific LD products should not judge LD rounds at all.” If this is an indirect way of saying I should never judge again, I’m fine with that. This prophylaxis, however, is just silly.
* * * * *
Victory Briefs is not a perfect organization, but we do try to positively contribute to the LD and the larger NFL community. In his concluding recommendations, Mr. Baldwin urges coaches to limit the “influence of money” in LD debate. I argue, however, that the “influence of money” in LD debate can be positive, and I strongly believe that Victory Briefs is an example of that. Our success as an enterprise has enabled us to democratize LD debate, by making information, ideas, and resources available to greater and greater numbers of people. Our success has enabled us to create an unparalleled educational and inspiring environment every summer–with a collection of the most talented debate minds and teachers in one location. Our success has enabled us to give financial aid to numerous students, giving them opportunities that they otherwise would not have. Our success has enabled us to offer free resources on the Internet, and to help build a strong, inclusive, and diverse forensics community. That’s why Victory Briefs exists.
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Posted from: 68.237.226.68
October 12th, 2005 13:31
i thought it was funny how underneath the original Baldwin article there’s an ad for a much more useful way for debater to spend money: buying pins for their seventh ruby-diamond!!!
Posted from: 198.174.17.254
October 12th, 2005 13:58
I also came to the conclusion (before seeing this) that Jason’s article was VERY clearly directed at Victory Briefs. I think it’s strange that the Rostrum decided to publich (and on some level give the sanction of the NFl to) an article by a leader of one summer institute directly attacking a competitor.
Posted from: 68.198.146.94
October 12th, 2005 13:59
“If you have every built a bookcase or baked a cake or changed a tire, you know how empowering it feels to be able to do for yourself what other people must pay to have done.”
-i would need some sort of instruction to build a bookcase, preferably from someone who is trained in the field. building a bookcase from scratch requires legitimate craftsmanship, the same way writing a strong LD case or delivering a complex extemp speech requires high-level academic skills. between my own beneficial experience at FFI and seeing first-hand how LDers on my time have improved after going to camps such as VBI and NDF, the importance of correct instruction is clear to me…i don’t know of any free debate camp…and i certainly wouldn’t want to sit in a chair built by a self-taught/poorly-taught craftsman.
Posted from: 66.14.234.65
October 12th, 2005 14:03
I think “charlie a” makes a good point. I think very few of us – whether NDF, NSD, FFI, Paradigm, etc – do this for the money. I always say, “if i did debate for money, i wouldn’t do debate.”
Posted from: 66.14.234.65
October 12th, 2005 14:06
meaning – charlie a is correct that while this article is clearly directed at just VB, the thesis effects many other institutions.
Posted from: 12.226.91.74
October 12th, 2005 14:15
I would like to see the books of “college emdorsed camps” like iowa and kndi and see if they are really non-profit. (I suppose KNDI, moreso, bc Mr. Bellus isn’t making the non-profit claim, but Baldwin makes it for him.) There’s an awful lot of “recruiting” that goes on for a non-profit camp. Likewise, I’ve been told by more than one person that J.W. has offered to “double what the other camp pays” Just because a camp isn’t making a profit doesn’t mean it is non-profit. I’ve also heard from members of certain college debate teams talking of how summer camps help fund their programs. hmmm…
To make a claim like you are making, show the figures.
Ernie
Posted from: 66.92.163.42
October 12th, 2005 14:20
Well, I don’t know that Jason was specifically angry at Victory Briefs (I think the same could be said about Dallas Debate and NSD in his mind), but the article was specific to actions taken by VB, and make no mistake about it, that’s who he attacked.
I think it’s interesting that in the first column he says the only successful non-profit institute was the “old” Iowa institute. Now, while I have nothing against Iowa, and in fact almost wound up going to school there, I think anyone associated with the institute (I’m specifically refrencing RJ here just because he’s someone I’ve talked to recently) would be the first to admit that the institute didn’t hold any sort of secret recipe for sucess, and that by virtue of being there one wasn’t going to leave an improved debater. I’m also sure Jason Baldwin’s old coach, who still runs the institute in some capacity, would say the same thing, as would anyone from pretty much any major non-profit institute in the country, or for that matter, any for profit institute in the country – no single institute holds a monopoly on “successful teaching”, and no single institute can transform a student. A student at an institute, whether it be something more traditional and structured as Iowa or more flexible (I’m not talking about debate styles here, I’m talking specifically about the layout of getting to choose classes, etc) like VBI will only learn and progress as much as they WANT TO learn and progress and put in the WORK TO learn and progress. Frankly, in making that one statement, I don’t think there’s anyone who would agree with him – there’s nothing unique about any one institute that makes it the monopoly of creating great students – it’s like saying that Harvard is the only university to produce smart students – it not only ignores competitive schools with similar academic distinctions (sorry, Victor, but I’m going to mention Yale) and it also doesn’t look at who goes there (I don’t know Harvard that well, but given the graduates I’ve met, they were go-getters – going to Harvard doesn’t equal success just because many graduates are successful).
Annyone who thinks that the Victory Briefs institute is paying for Mr. Jih’s Lamborghini is sadly mistaken. The issue in choosing staff is not one of cost – there isn’t a calculus of who can we hire for the least amount of money that perpetuates itself in any institute that I’ve attended (and I’ve been to VBI, Iowa, and Kentucky). Based on the raw staff numbers and facilities at VBI@UCLA, I’d be surprised to hear that they did much more than break even if that.
That said, I’m not going to attack Mr. Baldwin for having an opinion (or, if I remember correctly, soon to be Dr. Baldwin with a PhD in Philosophy from Notre Dame). I think people can respectfully disagree, I just don’t think he has his facts straight. I think Victor’s response makes this clear – but I’ll take it a step further on solely a personal level. As someone who cuts cards for VB, Mr. Baldwin doesn’t think that I should judge any rounds. That’s fine, he’s open to his opinion. I’m not sure if he currently coaches any students, but if he did, I wouldn’t even think about that in terms of making a decision in the round. Similarly, if I see him at a tournament this year, I will simply say hello, should the situation arise (I don’t know if he remembers me from Kentucky), and I have no problem with his writings as long as they aren’t based on flawed assumptions. To the extent he doesn’t like corporatization, that’s his opinion that he’s entitled to have – but I wish he wouldn’t perpetuate incorrect myths about VB while writing in the Rostrum. Either way, he is someone who not only had great accomplishments as a debater, but has continued to contribute in some way to academic discourse about debate – in that sense, his contributions are admirable. I just wish he’d done a bit more research and made his bias more clear at the beginning of the article (that he does work for KNDI, and he admits it in the beginning without mentioning KNDI by name), but otherwise he’s free to send in what he wants to the Rostrum, and, as the old Fox News adage goes, “We report, you decide.”
Posted from: 12.45.167.28
October 12th, 2005 14:21
I was shocked that the NFL would post an article with such a clear bias against an organization that provides such a positive service to the debate community. Mr. Baldwin obviously knows very little about VBI; otherwise, he would not have written such a hostile article. During the summer of 2002 and again in the summer of 2005, I had ten or more students attend VBI. Many of those students would not have been able to attend, but for the generosity of Victor and others associated with running the camp. Each of the above years, Strake Jesuit received literally thousands of dollars in financial aid making it possible for several students to attend that wouldn’t have otherwise been able. Since taking over the SJ program in 2000, I have sent SJ students to numerous debate camps, none of those camps has ever come close to the generosity shown by VBI. Thanks for the generosity and high quality instruction. Keep up the good work.
Jerry Crist
Head Debate Coach
Strake Jesuit College Preparatory
Houston, Texas
Posted from: 68.181.4.65
October 12th, 2005 14:31
I graduated from a very anti-VB program recently and always found one thing funny — we spent as much time with VB material as anyone else. Though we were directed away from (READ: yelled at for even considering) the Victory Briefs Institute and told to ignore VB culture, our school still purchased and relied on VB handbooks, making the topic analysis and selections from evidence required reading for the entire team. Though we were forbidden from posting/contributing to Victorybriefs.com (even for something as innocent as checking on results or congratulating a teammate), nearly everyone i knew on the team left anonymous (but constructive) comments and checked Victory Briefs daily at practice.
The biggest problem I have with this whole “VB vs. Iowa vs. NSD vs. DD, old-school vs. new-school, whatever you want to call it” debate is that adults who are supposed to be educating their students about debate skills and etiquette have been using their personal debate skills for nothing more than posturing. It seems like many coaches and program directors use official channels to forward their interpretations of debate (however antiquated they may be) and promote their friends and allies programs/methods.
To clarify, I have no affiliation with Victory Briefs. I’ve never been to their camp and only read the evidence I was told to from their handbook. What’s really important and wholly underemphasized is that they are the only people providing a unique service to LD Debate today. Let’s face it–Victory Briefs IS the modern LD community. Where else do you go for TOC updates, National Qualifiers, Topic Announcements, or Tournament Results? This is the place and Victor, Jon, and crew should be thanked for that service at the very least.
I wish I could actually come out and identify myself, but hate and blood run deep in high school debate, as this whole incident has shown us yet again. Victory Briefs — you guys do good work. Victor — as long as other coaches and programs keep up this thinly veiled civil war, I urge you to keep fighting the good fight. Hopefully some day, everyone in the activity over the age of 18 will put down their arms and get back to doing something useful: teaching debate.
Posted from: 24.16.112.123
October 12th, 2005 14:44
Sam Kleiner (CA)
*AZ
:-)
Posted from: 128.135.173.63
October 12th, 2005 14:46
With all this talk about commodification and private enterprise, I am beginning to think Jason Baldwin is working for thr Soviets.
Posted from: 128.135.173.63
October 12th, 2005 14:46
With all this talk about commodification and private enterprise, I am beginning to think Jason Baldwin is working for the Soviets.
Posted from: 71.139.181.133
October 12th, 2005 14:48
well said, victor.
well said.
Posted from: 4.130.201.148
October 12th, 2005 15:22
most of all, i think that mr. baldwin’s article is flawed in its analysis of the skills VBI aims to teach. while there certainly are “policyesque argument” lectures and “zizek and badiou” lectures which aim to address current trends in debate, i don’t recall the people giving these lectures saying “run these arguments so you can be cool and a celebrity and win lots of debate rounds.” that isn’t to say that winning was not a goal for anyone at VBI, but rather, these lectures aimed to have an intellectual discussion of the issues at hand – how arguments should be structured, the academic value of certain arguments (if you don’t think theorists engage in some kind of “topicality”/interpretational debate, you’re crazy), and the relevance of theories outside of the debate round.
moreover, in no way were kids coerced into going to these lectures — there were always lectures on persuasion/presentation, more traditional philosophy, and basic casewriting skills. all of these give VBI the ability to teach to a wide array of students, which probably fosters intellectual development better than throwing out things people already know. it’s hard to picture VBI as an institute that just shifts with the winds of LD theory or whatever metaphor mr. baldwin used.
finally, with regards to the value of debaters learning “virtues” and “skills for the real world,” some of the most popular lectures at camp dealt with those very skills. mr. jih’s lectures in particular – “advanced cross-examination” and “advanced legal reasoning” – were not solely aimed at teaching kids how to win. the former had a broader purpose in teaching reasoning and analysis skills, and the latter was extremely valuable in terms of teaching students how to look at legal cases and understand how the system works. as an aside, it also seemed to teach the value of hard work — we all had to read a 30 page article the night before, because victor would drill us with questions the next day. while this seems intimidating, this form of teaching – the socratic discussion – was both engaging and educational. to my knowledge, no other camp, “non-profit” or “for-profit” has utilized it.
that’s just my two cents on mr. baldwin’s article, i had a great time at vbi both summers i attended
john lewis
memorial high school
Posted from: 64.12.116.203
October 12th, 2005 15:33
I usually post two line “congratulations you rock etc etc” posts, but this article really upset me. As someone who is very close to a lot of VBI staff members, I’m stunned that someone could have objections to the hiring process. My ex-coach, Mike Bietz, certainly did not join the activity to become a multimillionaire. I personally learned more from him than I have any teacher, not only about debate, but how to be a good person. The staff in general encourages a relaxed approach to debate, and certainly does not advocate any sleazy tactics or an excessive use of jargon. There isn’t any evil profit motive. These people care about debate and the values it teaches kids. Bietz didn’t care if I won or lost as long as I had a good time, and took something valuable away from the activity. There are most definitely people who are overly obsessed with the win, and fetishize debaters (which is sad), but calling out Victory Briefs for causing this problem is just wrong.
As someone who is currently coached by Jake Gelfand (another coach who CLEARLY is only about the money….), I also have objections to the shots at “so called postmodern so called philosophy”. If people misrun the theories, that’s not the philosopher’s fault. VBI encourages people to read the evidence they use, and to understand it. Just because the thoughts aren’t mainstream like social contract theory doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting or educational.
Just my two cents,
Liz Scoggin
Posted from: 71.36.129.161
October 12th, 2005 15:46
I mirror everything Liz said. Of all the places someone could attack for money making, of all the businesses, one that loses money in the debate community? Bietz is right. “if i did debate for money, i wouldn’t do debate.”
Besides, of all the companies to attack, VB? From being coached by both Bietz and Jake I’ve learned so much not only about debate and philosphy in general (which makes shots about philosophy a little frustrating), but anything about destroying education so flawed I can’t believe it. From the people this “evil” company employs I’ve learned about life, and been educated beyond what most other high schoolers seem to get.
Posted from: 172.190.94.197
October 12th, 2005 15:47
Before I continue to read, I must say:
YAY VICTOR JIH!
YAY KIMMY! (Kim Jones to all ya’ll non-Bellarmine/Ex-students of the awesome nazi-type lady-person ^_^)
Posted from: 138.16.19.146
October 12th, 2005 16:19
i’m going to do something uncharacteristic and defend baldwin, at least to some extent
also to apologize ahead of time: this will be incoherent, ungrammatical, etc. – sorry bout that
i agree with people who’ve made it infinitely clear that it was unfair of him to target VB the way he has; and i’m not going to claim that other institutes out there are any more or less complicit etc. etc. | i’ve no desire to point fingers at anyone nor get into petty squabbles about guilt and innocence
similarly, i won’t say that i find parts of the rostrum article problematic (ie: the not-too-subtle criticism of “current debate trends” implicit in it) however, i think there are two VERY important issues that baldwin brings up that NEED to be addressed
the first is debate celebrity culture: i don’t think we can deny that debate has its celebrities; i dont know if its fair to attribute this to corporate influences nor do i know if its fair to say that we didn’t have debate-celebrities in the 90′s (i didnt debate then – i dont know); this doesn’t change the fact that REP is real and rampant
i have nothing against Jeb of the NDR, i honestly don’t know anythign about him; similarly I think Jon Cruz is one of the nicest people I know – but this doesnt change the fact that things like the NDR and exclusive interviews with kids who are STILL IN HIGHSCHOOL do in-fact elevate those people to some sort of celebrity status; sure – i had my interview (though it wasn’t till the end of my “career”), i had my spot on the NDR – but whatever, ya know? it doesn’t change the fact that we create a situation where highschool kids fear and worship…other highschool kids; we track the NDR to figure out who is and isn’t “good” (makes me wonder how many judges are influenced by a name on a “top X” list when trying to make the tough decision etc.)
i’m fine with post-graduation interviews; i think there’s a lot that people can share | but i think that while kids are competing/trying to get round robin invites/etc. things which SO SIGNIFICANTLY increase their ‘celebrity status’ puts some people at an unfair advantage
and even if one can’t agree with the argument for competitive advantage; there are definitly “social” problems that result from activities (even if theyre intent is entirely harmless) which make it very very clear who’s ‘succesful’; we’ve heard of Good Debater Syndrome, we know how “the Good debaters” all hang out, how people who don’t ‘get it’ are ridiculed, how we tend to privelege the testimony of the succesful over those of the unsuccesful as far as a number of debate-related things go (in round events in particular); Rep-out DOES happen; kids who don’t have rep DO get discouraged and intimidated by nothng more than names; these are realities
as long as tournament results are posted this will happen to some degree, but i think if we at least try to deemphasize the ‘culture of success’; we don’t create more celebrities than results postings already will create, that perhaps it’ll at least help to some degree (sure, i don’t have an alternative – that shouldn’t be a shocker)
PROBLEM 2: purchasing success/ the “easy way out”
i’m less concerned with evidence packs here – though i think its true that people buy them and some use them exclusively, there are also a lot of folks who don’t – and i agree that most institutes try to stress teh value of doing research
what i’m more concerned about (and this is somethign that i think baldwin doesn’t really address) is how much the “kids work”/”coaches work” ratio seems to have been DRAMATICALLY altered — i agree with jason to some degree about the value of…uh…growing tomatoes or something…ok, all kidding aside though – i think things like case writing/blocking/researching ARE where so much of the educational value of debate lies
so what’s the problem? it seems like more and more often the trend now is to have individual students “hire out” an individual coach who does the brunt of case writing/research/blocking with them – the students role in this situation obviously not being phased out (they still have to “learn” and debate the round etc.), but becoming much more passive; this isnt to say coaches cant do work, nor that college kids shouldnt be hired — i think that assistant coachship and situations where students who have no coaching at all hire someone are all good and well | but this isnt the current trend; programs with established coaching staffs are hiring first/2nd year outs to do the dirty work; the “coached by” lists in the tournament results are getting LONGER an longer
this isnt to say that kids who hire coaches are evil — its an understandable pressure, and it seems more and more like if you dont have someone writing for you your doomed to failure (everyone else is doing it!); similarly its not to say that everyone who hires a coach doesn’t work (many students put in tremoundous amounts of effort) – what it IS to say is that there are many going down a dangerous path which really isn’t all that rewarding
its also inegalitarian – i think this is one major factor where “corporatism” DOES come into play; it costs to hire a coaching staff, fly people out, rent out war rooms, etc. — not everyone has the resources to get college students to turn their assignments into ACs, to get the prep out, etc.
whatever…im rambling; just my 2 cents (though its prolly worth closer to 1)
-josh
Posted from: 68.198.158.134
October 12th, 2005 16:40
I think his analysis of the celebrity LD culture was intruiging, though I disagree with most of his arguments.
Posted from: 68.198.146.94
October 12th, 2005 16:45
in response to the “celebrity” argument:
in the documentary “spellbound” (you know, the one about the scripps howard spelling be that brilliantly follows a small group of kids), an 11 year old prodigy named georgie is singled-out as the celebrity-type. michelle wie is a teen and about to become the world’s most famous female golfer, and child tv stars have long been a fixture in our pop culture. so, when im walking around a tournament with shields (i’m a scarsdaleian extemper), it doesn’t surprise me when scores of people say “hi” to him. i’m not calling matt a child, but the concept of a child prodigy-type being fascinating to the general public isn’t anything new, and, living in a country that elevates(whether you believe it or not, many do) the mythical hero/american dream story, it’s not surprising that people are interested in greatness. although its somewhat more socially awkward than the rest of the world(awkward enough for dorktastic me to fit in), the debating community’s so-called celebrity culture mirrors larger, national trends.
even if victory briefs does promote this trend, no website is the root cause–it’s our society, for better or worse–, and the potential harms done aren’t unique to debate or more powerful than the good of spreading knowledge, the net result of technology in all intellectual matters.
Posted from: 69.249.50.38
October 12th, 2005 16:55
I think Josh’s second point addresses an important issue, but a completely irrelevant one. Victory Briefs probably has nothing unique to do with the hiring of recent graduates as coaches. I also don’t think buying a $10 evidence packet every two months should really be considered “buying wins,” especially because people who use the pre-cut evidence exclusively probably aren’t winning that much.
To the first point about celebrity culture: If someone has attracted the kind of attention to be interviewed, they probably don’t need a lot of help getting round robin invites. Also, people who may be construed as “elitist” probably aren’t friendly because they’ve shared the experience of being interviewed or photographed by Jon Cruz – “elitist” circles are most likely a product of camps and tournaments, rather than VBD. I guess we could do away with camps and tournaments though…
As far as rep-outs, yeah, the NDR is very problematic in that it quantifies success over a period of time, which means that instead of thinking as Debaters A and B as both very good, we see Debater A as # 1 and Debater B as # 15.
Posted from: 138.16.19.146
October 12th, 2005 16:58
sure – im not trying to attack VB, the NDR, etc. specifically – i think it is to some degree inevitable and i think that most of us do it in some capacity or another (those are just two of the most clear examples i could think of)
im not 100% sure what to do about it – and i agree its also a problem with american & capitalist culture; but that doesn’t make contributing to it OK nor does it mean we shouldnt a) try to figure out what we can do and b) try to make efforts to stop it
Posted from: 136.167.228.198
October 12th, 2005 17:11
Charlie-
Whether or not we live in a culture that is interested in and idolizes greatness doesn’t affect the fact that interviewing current debaters adds to the perception of greatness. Not everyone gets a VBD interview. The kids that get VBD interviews while in high school are selected. They are the ‘great ones.’ Someone else has waded through the results and figured out what accomplishments are important enough to earn an interview. Maybe your name shows up a couple of times on results pages, and maybe a few people notice. That seems like an inevitable result of posting results (which I think is a good thing, because it’s nice to know how your friends / campers are doing without calling them up individually). However, it’s a lot harder to overlook a front page interview than it is to overlook “School Name AB.” Whether or not celebrity would exist without interviews doesn’t refute the idea that interviews contribute to celebrity.
I don’t have time to elaborate any more right now, so I guess my point is: VB does a lot of good things. Interviewing people who haven’t graduated yet isn’t one of those things. (And on a completely unrelated note: “React to” was definitely one of those things, even if it was just a free article that no one talked about. I hope it will come back someday.)
Posted from: 216.165.43.243
October 12th, 2005 17:21
Let the angry comment war begin!
Talk about offensive. The next time someone has the audacity to suggest that the LD community is flawed, I say we just throw Cyndy Woodhouse and Jon Cruz into the ring to settle this in a real-world manner. After all, we’re always tagging those discursive real-world impacts to the bottom of every case, right?
I in no way desire to be labeled a victory-briefs-hater, Baldwin-nik, or old-school-debate-sympathizer, so I’ll save my responses to the response until discussions that I’m sure will ensue at Big Bronx (and other nat circuit tournaments throughout the year).
And Jon, if you’re really planning to democratize debate, how about putting me on one of those banners?
Posted from: 209.98.146.245
October 12th, 2005 17:24
I think Josh makes a couple of fairly good points, but I don’t really think he’s defending Baldwin, at least not against the criticisms being directed at him here (portraying VB unfairly).
There is some possibility that when one kids gets interviewed and another doesn’t the first kid could get a rep advantage. Maybe there should be some sort of consistent criteria for who gets interviewed (e.g. Greenhill/Glenbrooks champions) so that an interview doesn’t seem like VB’s institutional endorsement of a debater.
At the same time, I would defend the interviews simply on the grounds that they’re fun to read and I don’t think anybody takes them that seriously. I agree that that there is a celebrity culture of sorts on the circuit, but I’m not sure that it’s entirely bad. “Debate celebrities” often act as role models for up-and-coming debaters, and there’s nothing wrong with thinking “X is a good debater; I would like to be more like him/her/it.” Because debaters all value the ability to debate well, there will always be a lot of respect bordering on a little bid of fear and awe for the best debaters.
As far as “hired gun coaches” go, I agree that it’s bad to have a coach do all your work for you, but the fact appears to be that those debaters have never done particularly well. It’s true that kids with the money to hire coaches will have an advantage, but that’s true in any activity–the cost of hiring an ex-nationally-succesful debater to cut cards, write cases and fly to tournaments is way lower than, say, the cost of regular lessons with a private tennis instructor.
Posted from: 70.107.171.142
October 12th, 2005 17:29
To claim that Victory Briefs is all about making money is not only demostratively untrue (the numbers don’t like: Victor loses money!), but it also shows a downright ignorance of the Victory Briefs website, staff and products. Victor is a high powered attorney who spends a lot of time working on high school debate. I mean, it doesn’t take an expert to prove that there must be something other than money keeping these people in the activity. Victor, Bietz, Michelin, Jon and the rest of the staff have a love of learning, teaching, debate as well as the relevant subjects that debate involves. All of the products could cost more, they could be of lower quality, they could be more profitable–but they aren’t. Victory Briefs is what it is because it cares about kids learning about debate. How dare anyone attack that.
Concerning the ‘celebrity culture,’ that debate fosters, I think that there is something ridiculous about all that and I agree with Josh that maybe 17 year old debaters should not be treated like sports stars. They aren’t. However, that is NOT in ANY WAY the fault of Victory Briefs, which I think does indeed try to ‘democratize’ debate: Jon tries to take photos of everyone–not just the circuit stars, the interviewees are usually chosen according to ‘who has an interseting story to tell’ and not just ‘who is the best debate in America,” the camp has no application process so anyone can go, even if they aren’t a star, and the camp staff is HUGE, making individualized attention availible for EVERYONE, not just the top lab. So, celebrity culture may be an issue, but it’s not a VB issue, or at the very least, VB tries to avoid it. Also, I think that its pretty essential to recognize that Jason Baldwin identifies himself as the “most successful debater in LD history.” This article was not written as an altruistic warning to the debate community because in its heyday, Kentucky did the same thing (and, with their scholars program, the elitism was significantly worse!), Mr. Baldwin was that celebrity culture, and his camp tried to made profit just like the rest of them. This was nothing more than a partisan attack.
Posted from: 209.98.146.245
October 12th, 2005 17:30
“I say we just throw Cyndy Woodhouse and Jon Cruz into the ring to settle this in a real-world manner”
I second the motion.
Posted from: 136.167.228.198
October 12th, 2005 17:55
Jacob-
a) Interviews based exclusively on interesting stories don’t need to include a list of debate accomplishments
b) What non-debate student has been interviewed that wasn’t TOC qualled? If there are a few, can we at least acknowledge that
1. The student interview pool is almost / entirely comprised of people who qualled for the TOC and
2. People who don’t qual for the TOC can have interesting stories?
Not that any of this affects the *effect* of interviewing…
-Matt
P.S. – I just want to make clear that I do not in any way think that Jon Cruz (the interviewer) is elitist or anything like that. I think he does an awesome job with the site, a particularly spectacular job not just photographing circuit kids, but I don’t think any of that (or the fact that he’s a really nice guy) should prevent criticism of one specific aspect of VBD: interviewing current students.
Posted from: 70.114.9.107
October 12th, 2005 18:16
i think that jason’s article had alot of problems and i think victor dealt with them extremely well.
as i read the article when the rostrum came out, i was bit taken aback at mr baldwin’s article.
i didnt attend victory briefs ever but i value every contribution they make to the debate community and i think that no matter what mr baldwin says, mr jih’s idea of democratizing debate is probably one of the most rewarding features he has devoted the last few years (and dollars) of his life to.
props to mr jih for his work and support of vb.
also props to all the camps out there they hold similar visions for debate
Posted from: 66.26.40.201
October 12th, 2005 18:23
Just wondering, but does anyone outspokenly and fully support jason baldwin?
I havent taken a side on the issue, and I dont plan to but it does kind of seem like you’re all proving jason’s point, right? He is saying that debate is becoming commercialized but I dont think that he draws negative impacts from that. I think he draws the negativity of commercialism from his claim that debaters will be unduly influenced by money, advertising, and pressure in the debate world. It just seems to me that when all of you are posting in support of the so-called LD conglomerate that he claims influences debaters too much, that you are actually proving the assertion that he makes; that the the commodification of LD will influence debaters to an extreme level. His point is proven in that everyone posting supports the hegemon (VBD), just like he says debaters will do because of this influence and commodification. I just found that interesting.
but again, does anyone support baldwin and more importantly, did anyone actually read his full article?
Posted from: 71.139.185.66
October 12th, 2005 18:53
not openly on the victory briefs own page
Posted from: 66.92.163.42
October 12th, 2005 19:10
Maybe I have a short memory, but I don’t remember anyones comments being deleted on the basis of attacking Victory Briefs, especially when the debate is about two different articles that directly contradict one another.
People can come out randomly if they wish, but I doubt if Cyndy Woodhouse, RJ Pelliciota, Paul Bellus, Eric Palmer, Steve Schappaugh, Sam Duby, Aaron Timmons, Chase Martyn, Lee Solomon, Dan Meyers, or anyone else involved in another program were to come out an publiclly comment that their posts would be deleted.
Posted from: 68.196.115.120
October 12th, 2005 19:22
I had the same response to Baldwin’s article as Josh Marshall’s “Problem 2.” I think Jason very articulately defines the problem of “passive consumption.” The passive consumption of other people’s arguments is a) anti-thetical to education and critical thought, b) an “easy way out” (which explains why it happens), and c) inegalitarian (see Josh’s argument).
Baldwin’s article, however, incorrectly assumes that the most prominent form of passive consumption is buying and using victorybriefs. This may be speculative, but I think Jason (after attending last year’s TOC and watching rounds) sees a paradigm in today’s LD that is both distinct and drastically different from the LD he participated in. Since most rounds at the TOC conform to a paradigm that is RELATIVELY progressive (or at least uniformly more “progressive” than Baldwin-era debate), and because VB is the unifying mechanism of modern LD, this connection was the easiest for him to discern.
However, as Brandon said, students who passively consume VB are NOT successful because their arguments are public knowledge. This means that VB is more often a tool for giving novices “somewhere to start.”
The problem of “passive consumption,” however, still exists. There is still an incentive to consume the work of others because consumption requires less work, patience, or aptitude than individual production. Thus, students provide hired-coaches with a financial incentive to take ownership of that individual’s success (which entails unique, non-public research and cases). Passive consumption is obviously most atrocious when debaters are completely divorced from the case-writing/preparation process.
My claim is not that ALL coaching operates in this fashion, but there are debaters who completely rely on coaches for cases, blocks, and sometimes scripted rebuttals. As Mr. Baldwin explained, what is the point of the activity if the learning process is omitted? Winning a trophy? Having one’s name imprinted on a website?
The fact that the desire to win trumps education indicates to me that debate-celebrity IS indeed an issue; if a student wants to be debate celebrity but cannot cannot compose adequate cases and blocks (or, more likely, does not have the time or patience to grapple with debate and develop these skills), he/she will hire someone else to do the work.
So, the fact that Jason incorrectly identifies VB as the source of an issue does not deny the existence of the issue itself. Also the entirety of the blame can’t be put on students who hire coaches. Debate has holistically become an expensive (and therefore exclusive) activity, and people naturally are dissatisfied if they do not see short-term returns from their investments.
Posted from: 24.6.139.100
October 12th, 2005 19:39
random:
The problem with your argument is that it assumes Baldwin’s premises to be true and views peoples’ defense of VB in the light of its conclusion. We don’t rally around VB because of advertising pressure (especially since most of the ads for VB stuff appear on this site) or money (since, unless I’m the only one missing out, jcruz is not hooking us up with bribes), but because it does a lot of good stuff for the debate community and LOSES money doing so. Jih-unit could make a huge amount more if he just spent the time on his real job, but he’s nice enough to give is time to coach debaters, run a fun camp, give baller lectures, and even offer to pay out of pocket for vandalism done to people’s rooms. Does school pride count as “rallying around an evil capitalist hegemon”? After all, we all pay to go to school in one way or another.
re: interviews:
Am I the only one who remembers the deluge of “meet X” posts during VBI where people who weren’t even on the TOC radar were given the spotlight?
On that note, I am personally convinced that Jon Cruz knows more of the debate community (especially young’uns and non-stars) than anybody else. It’s hard to accuse the man of elitism.
Posted from: 138.16.19.146
October 12th, 2005 19:57
i dont think anyone is accusing jon of elitism; nor are we (and by “we” i mean an elite cult of genius post-communist revolutionaries) claiming that VB is the locus of capitalist pig-doggarie | but im going to agree with matt (Scarola – though i also agree with levinson lol) that interviewing highschool kids is not one of the positive contributions VB makes to the debate community | there certainly were the “meet x” posts, but i dont think they mitigate the heightened sense of importance we attach to the interview; we “meet x” when they participate on a gameshow; we give indepth interviews to van halen, hillary swank, and ghandi’s ghost
remember, i’m not trying to say that Jon Cruz is an elitist jerk – i think quite the opposite; i have a lot of respect and admiration for him | my claim is that the interviews just ought to be restricted to graduates and beyond, that one of the AFTEREFFECTS (or impacts in debate terminology) is the inegalitarian set of consequences which have been previously outlined
here’s my question:
why (with the exception of a few posters) has the overwhelming response been to focus on jason’s characterization of vb? there’ve been 20something posts going on critically assessing the example set he’s used which are doing little but chiming in with defenses already made by victor; that horse is dead, and your all preaching to the choir | how about we critically assess the PROBLEMS b/c regardless of what their source is and/or isnt, some of them are VERY real
Posted from: 71.36.129.161
October 12th, 2005 20:22
I think it’s really simple.
Jason lists four problems.
1. Desire for profit means the education is responsive to what students want, now what they need.
2. Purchased products replace real work.
3. Celebrity culture is created.
4. Conflict of interests, people vote for who they know.
I don’t know if any of this is actually true. I mean, I think it takes problems in the community and then finds things that may or may not be the cause and shows a correlation. It takes a conclusion then finds facts to support it, not finding facts that lead to a conclusion.
Anyway, some intuitive answers to these…
1. It all relies on debate being more than a game. I think debate in high school is exactly like football in high school. It is first a game and second an educational experience. That being said, it throws a lot of what Jason says off a bit. More importantly, every camp I have been to teaches me a lot about philosophy and all of that, so it’s just not true. Most importantly, it teaches me to win rounds. I learn more debating rounds, which forces me to think on my feet, than anything else. The more I debate, the more I learn. Debate camp just empowers me to help myself learn more.
2. The kids who do the for hire stuff wouldn’t work anyway. It’s not like it replaces work that would have existed. Students do not believe that the work put out to everyone is all inclusive of every argument, so they know the best are left out, so there are of course ones they can think of.
3. Celebrity culture exists throughout our society. When I was a freshman at Edina and I didn’t know what VBI was I still knew who was good on the national circuit from hearing about who won tournaments. Interviews reflect who has done well, they don’t make people do well. If there is celebrity culture it is from winning, not from the interviews. If Jason hates this the only solution is hide who does well at tournaments from everyone. If it’s about selling products more, OF COURSE! You want to buy something written by someone who knows more or is good at something. You don’t buy books on international politics written by someone who has never left a farm. Buying things from debate stars MAKES SENSE in this context. Jason assumes it’s like buying shoes from a basketball star.
4. It is inevitable when you know people. The only way to solve this would be don’t allow anyone to talk at tournaments because then you are friends with judges, and if you are friends with the judge they will more likely pick you up. However this is anti-educational because some of the smartest people in debate are the judges.
These are just ramblings, please, add to the arguments. There are a lot of things wrong with Jason’s analysis in the first place.
Posted from: 205.188.117.11
October 12th, 2005 20:25
scarola,
i agree with you on principle that the perpetuation of celebrity-making is a net negative. but, those who determine competitive ability by the receiving of an interview probably wouldn’t have a much better paradigm if the interviews weren’t around. i sincerely hope that readers understand that, although the interviewed debaters are massively accomplished, it’s a subjective standard. learning to digest interviews properly, like all of pop culture, has self-explanatory intrinsic importance. theyre not inherently bad–they’re just misinterpreted and overblown. as long as they make for fifteen minutes of enjoyable reading every several weeks, if we all keep our heads clear, i dont see any major harms.
u going back to FFI?
Posted from: 68.196.129.16
October 12th, 2005 20:26
I think Josh’s (and both Matts’) posts are the ones that raise issues worth discussing. I just want to echo Josh and ask where everyone stands on the issues of interviewing/debate-celebrity status and consumption-coaching. So please, I think VBD has won the battle as to its legitimate existence, so lets focus on the substantive issues Jason raised, becuase they definitely merit that consideration.
Posted from: 64.12.116.203
October 12th, 2005 20:34
I agree with Charlie- we seem to be doing that recently. Doesn’t happen often ;).
On the celebrity culture…aiming the problem of elitism at the “good debaters” doesn’t seem accurate. No question there is elitism in the community, but putting Tripti and Katie P. in that category by virtue of their debate ability just isn’t fair. Interviewing good debaters doesn’t seem to be much of a crime either. You don’t see ESPN interviewing the bench warmers… Although high school debate is by no means a pro sport, I think the logic behind the interviewing process still applies. Kids are more likely to learn stuff from people who do well in the activity. The “cult following” that seems to form is not because of vbd’s advertising or interviewing, but rather because debate takes itself way too seriously. People link good debating to being a good person, create rivalries etc… The community is straight out of a bad teen movie, except the homecoming king is the one with the biggest expandos. I think a solution is taking the activity for what it is- a high school competition. Nothing more, nothing less.
Posted from: 169.229.118.148
October 12th, 2005 20:51
at the risk of not taking this whole debacle seriously, where’s the prashant rai interview? i tried to subsist on the jeremy/wes interview, but one interview can only provide me (and legions of impressionable young debaters) with so much vicarious living.
Posted from: 207.28.203.228
October 12th, 2005 20:57
On Liz’s comment…Can people stop carrying their damn expandos around? Put them in your bag or something. Have the pissing contest in round. It doesn’t look cool.
Random rant of the day.
Ernie
Posted from: 71.36.129.161
October 12th, 2005 21:03
I agree with Ernie. Tubs away.
People say policy debaters use tubs because they have too many expandos to carry when in reality policy debaters realized expandos don’t look cool and so they feel the need to hide them in tubs.
Posted from: 136.167.228.198
October 12th, 2005 21:40
Charlie A -
“those who determine competitive ability by the receiving of an interview probably wouldn’t have a much better paradigm if the interviews weren’t around”
I think it would be “much better” because there isn’t a spotlight. I’m not saying that people wouldn’t figure out who is successful from watching outrounds all the time, but I do think the spotlight draws attention to people and confirms attention that may have already been there. Is a lot of the celebrity stuff non-unique? Of course. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to chip away at it. If “celebrity-making is a net negative” then limiting celebrity-making is a good thing.
+ Yes to the FFI question. You?
Liz S –
Is there any unique advantage to interviewing people while they are in high school? Can’t you get all of the benefits of interviewing “people who do well in the activity” after they aren’t competing in the activity (provided you change the “do” to “did.”)
I know my position (and I think Josh’s as well) is this:
Interviews can do good. We can learn from successful debaters, and we can learn from successful coaches. However, there is no unique benefit to interviewing kids while they are still competing that can outweigh the disadvantages of celebrity-making.
Interviews = ok.
Interviews of kids in high school = not ok.
Posted from: 67.161.33.235
October 12th, 2005 21:55
So let’s interview great sports stars once they retire. Someone in the prime of their career deserves to be recognized for success, giving credit where credit is due. Interviewing the debate greats and granting them the “celebrity status” should even weed out the amazing from the really good, specifically in terms of the character that Mr. Baldwin defines. Like Einstein, great debaters should be humbled by those before them, and all that they have yet to accomplish. Do you really expect certain people to do well at tournament after tournament, and have people be indifferent or disregard their success. Acknowledgements through things such as interviews and reports on other’s success does nothing more than give credit where and WHEN credit is due. It wouldnt make sense to give someone a trophy for anything once their prime or participation in the activity has passed
Posted from: 70.251.78.205
October 12th, 2005 22:14
I feel compelled to comment as a coach who cares deeply about education in LD and who has personal knowledge of VBI having worked there in the past. There seems to be a misperception that VBI is just a cool place kids want to go and not an educational project that adults support. Although I now direct a different institute, I send the large majority of my debaters to VBI and have been doing so since it opened its doors at UCLA. It is my camp of choice as a teacher. I often have private conversations with coaches who ask me why I send my students to VBI. It has been my experience that many people have misconceptions about the camp, which isn’t surprising given that it does seem to be a target at which it has become trendy to take aim.
No program is perfect, obviously, but I have found VBI to be a workshop “with staff members [I] trust to serve as academic and personal role models.” One of the main things I like about VBI is that it doesn’t teach that there is only one way to think about LD. Debate is a dynamic, living thing at VBI with a past, present, and future. VBI is also not just about being trendy. That has to be the biggest misconception I come across. I judge all the time, and I have often heard people complain about certain trends they associate with VBI that are actually being promoted in rounds by debaters who have never attended VBI. For example, most of the debaters I have judged in the past 3 years who are really big fans of topicality aren’t associated with VBI in any way.
In terms of VBI being some big, greedy machine, I’m sure this is silly to anybody who knows the people behind the company. Of course people want to make a living off the work they do. That said, I had a student a few years ago who attended debate camp solely because Victor let him come for free. No other camp was offering him enough money to attend. I told Victor about his situation, and without even thinking about it, Victor told me I could send him to VBI without cost. This was a disadvantaged student who struggled with school and who had a losing debate record for 2 years, not some star. His lab leader spent a lot of time just teaching him how to be a better writer. If that isn’t educational, I’m not sure what is. I also find it interesting that even though VBI has published and advertised information for some of its biggest detractors, the organization’s willingness to even be inclusive of its critics never seems to give people pause in questioning what they think they know about VBI. It efforts to include all people and all views is what makes VBI for me an educational and inclusive organization that I trust to help my students grow as debaters and members of our community.
I agree that it is important to choose institutes not just for the knowledge they possess but for what they model and the methods they use. There are certain attitudes I certainly don’t want coming home to my team. Anybody who knows me knows that I have very strong opinions on the particular issue of character. This is another reason I often choose VBI. The vast majority of people on the staff are people I respect, not just for their debate talent but for their respectful manners in interacting with other people in the debate community and for their integrity and honesty in approaching intellectual work. It is also important to not let the politics of camps pressure you into sending kids certain places but to do what is best for each student based on his/her needs. I think kids choosing camps without a coach also need to keep that in mind. Students shouldn’t go to VBI or any camp just because it is the cool place to be. No camp is right for every kid, and no camp does it all. Students need to go to the camp that will most advance their abilities, understanding, and perspectives on debate. I have found VBI to be that place for most of my students, even if not all of them. If anybody would find my experiences valuable as somebody who has had kids attend almost every major national camp in the country and who interacts regularly with a lot of the younger staff members that work at the different camps, feel free to approach me at any tournament or to email me.
Posted from: 128.12.58.90
October 12th, 2005 22:48
Liz, I think there’s two problems with your latest post that Josh pointed out earlier in his responses.
Two quotes…
“I think a solution is taking the activity for what it is- a high school competition. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Interviewing good debaters doesn’t seem to be much of a crime either. You don’t see ESPN interviewing the bench warmers… Although high school debate is by no means a pro sport, I think the logic behind the interviewing process still applies. Kids are more likely to learn stuff from people who do well in the activity”
I have issues with both stances, but I think the 2nd one is built upon the first. Unlike any “other” high school competition, debate is centered around something other than physical talent. Specifically, debate is about a contrast of ideas, and while this may sound idealistic, debate is about finding greater truths, both academic and ethical, not just picking up a ballot.
So if your first quote is wrong, the second one is also wrong, because there’s no reason that those who are successful in the activity have anything more (or less) to contribute to the public forum than the rest of the some 5000+ that compete every year in this activity. As such, I agree with Josh that more effort should be put forth to interviewing more “random” debaters around the country, surely they have something unique to contribute. I make that comment keeping in mind that I in no way think Jon is elitist. In fact, I think it’s in fact quite the contrary. I just think that sometimes the emphasis from this site is too much on success, much as Liz advocated, and less on ideas (even though the columnists links is most definitely centered on that goal).
Yeah, this message was too apologetic to be effective, but essentially Liz I take issue with your comments both because they engender elitism and because they place too much focus on ballot count, rather than sharing of ideas.
Posted from: 136.167.228.198
October 12th, 2005 23:08
Aaron-
1. An interview is not an entitlement. Just because “credit is due” doesn’t mean having your face plastered on a website is.
2. Your conception of the interview as a reward for success is *exactly* the problem. If interviews are seen as rewards, then the interviewed are publicly heralded, and the celebrity-making process is furthered.
3. Of the advantages to interviews that you define (highlight good character, humble people, giving credit when it’s due), only one (the third) has any advantage specific to time (and that was taken out in point #1). You can highlight the good character of the nice debater that graduates and then gives back to the community. People can be in awe of the successes of a particular debater *after* their career is complete. In fact, one of the reasons celebrity-making is so bad is because it doesn’t just humble people, it makes them afraid to debate the VB-selected superstar. I personally got nervous all the time when I would hit “names,” and know I debated much worse when I was in those situations. I’ve also seen other debaters flip out and assume they are going to lose, which amongst other things, makes it harder to concentrate on preparation for the round. In other words, I’m still waiting for the unique advantage that outweighs all of the harms outlined in Josh’s post.
And for the record, people DO interview great sports stars AFTER they retire.
Posted from: 70.112.45.222
October 12th, 2005 23:10
Every activity is going to have someone really good at it, and anytime there is a brilliant person there are always fans cheering for his/her sucess. In other words celebrities will always exist. So we shouldn’t try to get rid of them, all we have to do is make sure people are treated equally. For the most part, I think they are. Lets keep the following in mind:
1. usually those who know about the celebrity are deeply exposed to debate.
2. those who are exposed to debate often have debated in highschool and understand the activity quite well.
3. tournaments are increasingly offering the ability to strike biased judging.
4. Debate is an open activity, anyone can watch any round that is going on.
My argument would be something along these lines :
Those understand the nature of debate are less likely to make biased decisions based simply on how a ‘person looks’ or the ‘status’ of that person. In fact, most likely they won’t even look at the speaker choosing instead to compare ideas on the flow. They try to be as objective as they can! Because debate is so very transparent, it is also easy to weed out the imposters. Just as competitors have reps, so do judges as a result, a judge who increasingly makes decisions based on biases can be eaisly taken out of the judging pool by tournaments (or can be striked by the competitors).
There are plenty of spelling and grammer errors in the above, but i hope i was some-what coherent.
Posted from: 70.251.78.205
October 12th, 2005 23:14
I just finished reading over Josh’s posts, and as I usually do, I agree with a lot of the things he says. The celebrity culture is a problem in debate. It is true that this would happen without the internet. In the 1980s, there was still GDS. But, figuring out how to compensate for what is already a problem in the activity in the technology age is worth thinking about. There has to be a middle ground because while the interviews and internet creates celebrities it also creates community. I know that I particularly enjoyed reading Amanda Liverzani’s interview after she conceeded rounds at the Greenhill Round Robin to discuss the sexual assault of women. I had heard about it and would have enjoyed having a chance to talk to Amanda about it. The interview provided an opportunity to know her perspective on what she did, and I think it provided a voice often not herad in debate in terms of the subject matter being discussed even if the debater was becoming well-known herself. Not interviewing kids in high school would make taking advantage of moments like this impossible. In terms of the costs outweighing the benefits, maybe that is true. I’m not sure. There are also many interesting stories out there that aren’t derived from the TOC circuit. That is certainly true.
Where I disgaree with Josh is when he wrote: “why (with the exception of a few posters) has the overwhelming response been to focus on jason’s characterization of vb? there’ve been 20something posts going on critically assessing the example set he’s used which are doing little but chiming in with defenses already made by victor; that horse is dead. and your all preaching to the choir | how about we critically assess the PROBLEMS b/c regardless of what their source is and/or isnt, some of them are VERY real.”
I think the use of public forums for posturing and politics under the guise of discussing real issues has become as much of a problem, if not more of a problem, than the celebrity issue. I think this problem is perhaps even worse because the political nature of it makes it very difficult to openly and honestly discuss. To just gloss over public posturing as a mischaracterization that had some real substance behind it, is to ignore a very real problem, in my opinion. I also think the politics behind the “real issues” people raise taint any honest discussion of those issues. I can’t tell you how many threads I’ve read on different debate websites in the past year that had the pretense of discussing issues but realy were just masks for people attacking/hating each other. It makes the community either openly hostile, or even worse, silently hostile. It makes debate less fun and less friendly, both of which I think are important in and of themselves and both of which nurture education by make this academic world more inviting and comfortable. I think some coaches choose to leave debate or avoid the national circuit because of these politics more than other reasons. And, without a question, the personal relationships in debate are suffering because of this problem, and I think our relationships with each other should matter more than anything else.
Posted from: 136.167.228.198
October 12th, 2005 23:38
no one important -
Aside from commenting on the name you chose to post under: even if celebrities will always exist, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t limit the *extent* to which they exist. Just because you can’t solve a problem doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to mitigate it.
“Just as competitors have reps, so do judges as a result, a judge who increasingly makes decisions based on biases can be eaisly taken out of the judging pool by tournaments (or can be striked by the competitors).”
a. The first major problem is one of accountability. For everything other than outrounds (prelim decisions + speaker points) the single judge is the ultimate authority. Indeed, the only significant thing people know about a round that only you saw is the competitors that you saw. No one makes a fuss when debaters with rep win rounds that they didn’t see, because they have no basis for criticizing the decision. However, judges who want to be seen as “good” (so that they can judge the all-up rounds at tournaments, or just for their own personal enjoyment) have an incentive to pick up people with rep. At the Yale tournament, I dropped a debater who very much deserves (his/her) rep, and when I walked into a hallway heard: “You dropped ___?!?” If anything, judges are pressured to pick up people with rep, not drop them.
b. Strikes (at least pre-tournament strikes) don’t check. If a judge usually votes on the flow but reps out in close rounds, you still want that judge in the back of the room when you do preferencing because you don’t know that judge will be juding you in front of someone with more ‘rep’ than you. In short, if you want ‘good’ judges, you’re most likely not going to waste a strike on a flow judge who *might* rep out against you.
c. As far as outrounds go, transparency does provide something of a ‘check’. That said, when rounds get messy and judges have to look for a reason to vote, you can bet that a lot of the time they’re going to look for the easiest way to vote – for the person everyone who didn’t see the round expects to win.
d. None of this matters very much anyway. No judge says “I picked you up because I know your name.” Insofar as judges are able to rationalize their decisions, it is nearly impossible to attribute a decision exclusively to rep. Because it’s nearly impossible to isolate rep as the basis for decision, it’s nearly impossible to punish someone for voting on it.
Ms. Thomas -
Is the benefit of Amanda’s interview really that time locked? With questions that reveal what she did while competing functioning as a way to “set the stage,” wouldn’t it be possible to talk about what she did after she graduated? I definitely acknowledge that this wouldn’t be the same, but the benefit of talking about something, if truly limited to a specific time period, seems to lack the lasting impact necessary to outweigh the problem of celebrity-making. In other words, if the value is fleeting, it doesn’t outweigh, and if the value is lasting, then why can’t it wait?
Goodnight all,
Matt
Posted from: 66.108.95.140
October 13th, 2005 05:29
It’s sort of funny. On some level, I had always felt that if there were an interview with me–something, I think, that would be conducted as more of a ‘submit your questions directly to a moderator’ instead of a traditional interview–I would hope someone would ask about elitism and VBD. Jason certainly isn’t the first person to make that connection. I think the ways in which VBD is far from elitist have been spelled out already. I wouldn’t spend so much of my life maintaining this web site for nothing if I thought I were catering towards a group of people who were already the ‘top debaters.’ I come from a background that was very local, very ‘unknown,’ very non-elite. I’ll keep the stories about my direct encounters with extreme elitism as a debater for my own interview, if there ever were one.
Anyway, this whole discussion about interviewing current students (and I’m not including interviews with Jed Glickstein, John McNeil, David Lebowitz, Josh Marshall, and others that occurred at the end of their competitive careers) is something I’ve felt very conflicted about before, and something about which we’ve had internal debates.
I have tried hard not to pick “arbitrary” current students for interviews. They always had interesting stories to tell (relevance of “real world” arguments in rounds, sophomore clears at TOC, what it was like to win the NCFL, starting a debate-themed band, etc.), and I also later tried to limit the interviews to specific events (winning the Glenbrooks or Greenhill), but I realize that the segment of the debate population from which these stories were drawn was limited. (Though, for the sake of accuracy, Tara did not qualify to TOC the year her interview was conducted.) I also think it’s important to keep in mind that the bulk of interviews were conducted with coaches or with debaters at the ends of their career.
I don’t get anything for conducting these interviews, so trust me, my intention is not to further some sort of agenda. This has been established by the very civil critics on this comment thread–all of whom are my friends–but I bring it up again because I don’t want to stray from the implication made against this web site from the start. In direct contrast what Jason implied in his article, the purpose of interviews is not to promote ourselves. Interviewing Aaron Timmons, Eric Palmer, and employees and directors of other programs does very little to promote our own camp. What it does do, however, is provide an excellent forum for the discussion of debate issues. (I should also note that I have offered Jason an interview in the past, which he declined.)
For now, after having discussed the issue with other regular contributors to this site–and, again, believe it or not, it’s an issue I’ve brought up before–we won’t be posting interviews with current debaters until the ends of their competitive careers. I’m not so sure of the true intensity of the “harms,” but I’d rather keep the focus on things were there is more agreement and less conflict…such as interviews with coaches and former debaters, pictures of non-circuit as well as circuit debaters, prompt posting of tournament invitations and results, and the like. (I think the vast majority of what we do is pretty good.)
Constructive criticism is always good, and I encourage it, but the overall point is, I think, that Jason’s article is neither constructive nor accurately critical because it’s based on indirect observations, incorrect information, and, I feel, unwarranted assertions about the character and drive of both the majority of the people and services provided by Victory Briefs.
Posted from: 67.53.73.42
October 13th, 2005 07:10
As a former debater and current coach who has never worked for, attended, or sent kids to Victory Briefs I think that any comments supporting this site can be seen as independent. Moreover, I have been outspoken in not liking certain things that happen on this site, like people being rude and disrespectful to coaches and fellow debaters. However, that’s more a problem with people making a public ass of themselves than it is a problem with LD commodification. I certainly don’t think it’s Victory Briefs’ fault because a jerk is a jerk, they don’t become one simply by logging into a site. I think the article unfairly characterizes this site because using the utilitarian principle I can say there are A LOT of good things on here that outweigh the bad and I only wish something like this existed when I debated.
On the subject of interviews I don’t have a problem with them even with students during their careers for one simple reason: debaters don’t get NEARLY the coverage they deserve in comparison to other high school students. When I played varsity basketball every GAME was covered by a full-length article in which players and coaches were interviewed and analyzed. That’s for a game. The MN State Hockey tournament gets an entire section of coverage in the newspaper while the State Debate Tournament (both events put on by the same organization) gets a paragraph at best for both policy and LD. Debaters work extremly hard and great accomplishments SHOULD be given the recognition they deserve, if an interview is a way to highlight that work then all the better. Moreover, I’m not sure that they lead to people being treated unfairly in all circumstances. I have judged and voted both for AND against people I’ve seen interviewed. Perhaps that’s just me but I don’t have a problem separating what I know about a person to what happens on the flow in a round.
Posted from: 216.165.14.175
October 13th, 2005 10:31
I agree with most of what has been said previously, so I’ll keep this relatively brief.
The two issues that exist — not because of VB, but in general — are coaches over-prepping their debaters and the conflict of interest between summer staffers and their students.
It is true that coaches have the potential to prepare too much information for their students, which essentially nullifies many of the educational aspects of preparing to debate. However, VB doesn’t further the problem because they’re not intended to be anything more than a primer in the topic. Speaking from first-hand experience, as a former debater from a coach-less team: while we occassionaly used the briefs, I told my novices that it was never the ultimate source of information for any topic, but a springboard to begin their research and brainstorming. I think Mr. Jih addressed this point already.
Mr. Baldwin does bring up an interesting point about judging. He takes it a little too far (e.g., anyone who writes in a brief shouldn’t ever judge), but I do think that Lab Leaders might have a conflict of interest in judging debaters that they taught. Of course, the large majority of lab leaders wouldn’t consciously be biased, but, as was keenly pointed out above, even the most respected coaches aren’t allowed to judge their own debaters in a tournament against a debater from another school. Perhaps striking lab leaders and their summer students would help eliminate the conflict of interest, although it does open the question to other issues, such as former coaches, former lab leaders, or even friends etc., judging people with whom they might have a conflict of interest. I know I’d feel sympathy or whatever for a debater of mine, even if I didn’t try to be biased.
In terms of the hotly contested celebrity status, I remember as a Freshman, before ever learning about VBD or NDR, asking “Oh… is that team/person good?” Reputation builds with recognition of success. VBD DOES post results, both nationally and locally, so people’s names and faces do tend to show up… so VBD is inadvertantly helping a tendancy of human nature further progress, but it’s certainly not their fault.
~Josh
Posted from: 134.58.253.131
October 13th, 2005 10:32
I’m truly happy to see this debate finally happening out in the open. Parts of Victor’s essay seem to imply that he has felt as if critics of VB were intentionally expressing their objections privately so as not to allow him the chance to respond, which I’m sorry for. I can only say that, as one of the critics, I have always felt that VB conducted its promotion too privately (or at least in an intentionally decentralized way) so as to prevent my side from responding. I think it’s just one of those awkward situations where we haven’t communicated openly enough with each other because we don’t think we’re ever going to agree, and, over time, we begin to partially demonize each other.
Without speaking for anyone besides myself, I will say that some of the defenses Victor offered in this essay are points I haven’t heard before. While I have always heard the line that “VB doesn’t turn a profit, so it can’t be evil”, I didn’t know Victor’s personal story as a debater. I related to it: for a time, I had planned to start a simiilar briefs company with a friend. I, too, came from a small program with no funding and an almost-yearly coach/sponsor turnover rate. I was never the best debater in the country, but I qualed for the TOC my senior year and went to a fair amount of competitive (“National Circuit”) tournaments, and I, too, didn’t like that many of my peers had large, established teams, involved coaches, school funding, etc. Sometimes, I really resented it.
I also used VictoryBriefs for some of my career, because I was a really lazy student. Whatever everyone says about a student’s ability to succeed using VictoryBriefs, I assure you: it is possible to use them and break at big tournaments. Perhaps I was just an especially capable high schooler, but despite what Victor claims, I was absolutely able to craft cases from the VB “cards” without doing any extra reading, and I could do it on the airplane, and I could succeed the next day. I had heard claims from people that I was at a disadvantage because I had a small team and wasn’t near a university library, and that buying briefs was a recognized way of overcoming (or mitigating) the disadvantage I faced. So I bought into the claims (much like the ones Victor seems to make above), and I realized that they were right. I still had to work on speaking and writing on my own, but I could get all of my evidence from VB, and I could do just as well as I would have been able to do had I done my own research. (Sidenote: I never found the topic analysis helpful. I don’t know if it has improved in the last few years, but there was seldom anything in it that I hadn’t thought of in the first hour after I found out what the new topic was. So I wasn’t relying on VB for *arguments* so much as research. The VB almost never taught me anything new about the topic; they just gave me an easy way to use my own ideas without having to read anything.)
Someone might say that my use of VB was the reason why I was never more than moderately successful in debate, and that’s the natural disincentive to use the products for actual research. (VB even claims that they aren’t intended to be used as a substitute for students’ own research, but as a student who was purchasing the handbooks, I must say that I didn’t see any clear use for them *besides* using them as a substitute for my own research.) To those people, my reply is simply that, even though high schoolers are perennially wont to externalize blame instead of blaming themselves, whenever I didn’t make it past a bid round, I never even considered blaming my use of VB for that. I honestly always saw it as my fault: a problem with my speaking style or time allocation, or whatever.
In light of the news that VB sees their handbooks as competitively inadequate (for many, if not all, debaters), I might suggest that they make that clear in a large, bold warning before they ever provide a quotation that a debater might otherwise see as a “sweet card” for one of their cases. If that seems unpalatable, perhaps they should consider not providing pro-affirmative or pro-negative quotations (which they have apparently always thought were obviously and certainly inferior to quotations that a debater finds him/herself) at all? Sure, I was in some ways an extreme slacker (and I found a strange sort of pride in making myself successful while doing as little work as possible), but that certainly isn’t uncommon among debaters of all stripes.
So that’s my personal story. I should say that by the time my senior year had come around, I finally saw the virtues of doing my own work. Doing my own research probably didn’t make me more competitively successful than I would’ve been had I kept on using VB, though; the virtues I saw were deeper and more significant (and perhaps harder for a high schooler to recognize without sage advice from instructors who themselves exhibit strong personal character and who don’t write handbooks) than simple wins and losses.
So far, I’ve agreed with what I think Jason means in his _Rostrum_ piece about briefs. I was getting what I wanted, and I wasn’t getting what I later recognized I needed. That said, I don’t think I agree with Jason’s general formulation of VB as an evil capitalist conglomerate whose businesslike nature is hurting LD. However tempting it is to demonize VB (as everyone here agrees, it is certainly not perfect) I don’t think it is the only evil capitalist conglomerate involved. I think it (and, really, almost everything we know) is more a symptom of bad things than a cause of them. (Yeah, so in my confused undergraduate philosopher haze I’ve become something of a neo-Marxist. Sue me.)
I liken VBD to something that, at least where I’m from, we call the “shiny-sheet” newspaper: a paper that essentially just features pictures from (and short articles about) galas, cocktail parties, fundraising balls, and other glamorous events and the rich people who throw them and attend them. In my area, it’s the Palm Beach Daily News and the “Notables” section of our main newspaper, but I’m sure there are examples from other parts of the country where there are large communities of socialites and philanthropists.
The shiny-sheets legitimize themselves by claiming that they give credit to people who are generous with their time and money in ways that normal people may never be able to fathom; and, in many cases, their publishers truly believe in this mission. But very, very few people read them for that. The rich socialites use the paper for political posturing and for status (some of them even hire publicists to help them get featured more), and normal people who read it do so because (1) the people featured are pretty (“shiny”), (2) they think reading it elevates their status, or (3) they want to live vicariously through the people in the pictures. In some cases, publishers of the papers give more exposure to people to whom they are connected, further establishing well-connected people as more famous (or, by implication, more generous or “better”) than the socialites with fewer connections. It’s a fascinating phenomenon.
Again, I don’t think Jon Cruz or Victor Jih have malicious intentions, but, just as on the island of Palm Beach, the debate community has very little “hard news” to report, so VBD has to create its own stories by posting interviews, photos, editorials, etc. Let’s not fool ourselves here, either: with some exceptions, the interviews and editorials don’t usually contain any debate-related (or even personal) advice that isn’t cliche (or, at least, well-known to folks who have some experience in the activity). It seems sometimes that a good 15-20% of the comments posted on this site generally are calling for “The So-And-So Interview” to be posted, and it’s usually people who are friends of the interview subject calling for the interview to be posted. They’re not going to learn anything new from the interview, because they already know what their friend thinks about debate; they’re interested in seeing their friend on VBD. Perhaps people who don’t already know the interview subject will learn something (although it isn’t likely to be much more than personal trivia, since most interviews here seem to feature more of that than real debate advice), but the people who already know more than an interview could reveal are just as excited (if not more excited) as everyone else.
So that’s my problem with VBD, and it’s why I don’t often post here. In fact, I think there have been more fake posts (that is, posts from people falsely claiming to be me) on this site than there have been actual posts from me. It’s not that (as someone above may have suggested) I fear that any of the site’s administrators will delete my posts; it’s just that, as a lot of recent theorists have noted (and demostrated), it’s a lot more difficult (some have said impossible) to criticize the existence of something while you’re immersed in it or participating in it than when you’re removed from it. I have found other fora to express my opinions on the issue. It isn’t because I like “talking behind people’s backs”, though; it’s actually that I don’t think it’s my place to come to another person’s space uninvited and start talking trash about them.
Again, though, this discussion is energizing, and I wish I had more time to post than I do.
Posted from: 165.123.147.111
October 13th, 2005 10:48
On the issue of interviewing:
Many believe that more local/non-circuit debaters should be interviewed. I agree that just because you didn’t win Greenhill or the TOC doesn’t mean you don’t have something important to say or a valuable message. Non-circuit debaters SHOULD be interviewed. However, I also don’t think it’s fair to forget that most national circuit debaters had local success prior to national success. I know of very few debaters who immediately started travelling prior to hard-work on their local circuits. Instead of saying interview less circuit kids, maybe change the focus of the interview to include:
a) how they succeeded on their local circuit and
b) how they made the transition to the national circuit
As many on the Greenhill team have said before, permutations are good. Focusing on how debaters excelled on local and national circuits provides moer insight and advice for younger debaters. Also, they could discuss how their skills used on their local-circuits helped them excel on the TOC circuit.
I took a look at the gallery of state champions. Some named popped out: Sam Kleiner, Tara Tedrow, Grace VanVoorhis, Aram Bhogosian, Katherine Preston, Matt Levinson, and Scott Brainard.
These were all state champions who I remember were on the TOC circuit. They competed on both levels and have stories about each.
On a different note:
I feel that VB has been very inclusive. I believe that students who want to take shortcuts will take them by borrowing a friend’s case or paying someone to write it. In my experience, most debaters I have seen using evidence straight out of packets (not necessarily VB’s packets) tend to have limited success. Packets are a place to start, not to finish, and if you finish where others start, you will finish early. I believe that most debaters use packets with this in mind.
Have an easy fast.
Posted from: 205.196.188.155
October 13th, 2005 12:04
Just as a disclaimer, I haven’t read more than 5% of what has been written because I have been preparing for Memorial which is tomorrow. But my main concern with a lot of the criticism of VBD is that there is virtually no way to make a website that draws interest, is useful, and promotes debate WITHOUT making some sacrifices/choices. It is IMPOSSIBLE to include all national circuit debate and all local circuit debate. It is flat out IMPOSSIBLE to not come off as elitist in some sense. People may feel that posting State champions is elitist. Seriously, I have had a lot of experience with being on both sides of the fence, from coming from a purely local over-shadowed debater to a national circuit debater, the phrase “elitism” is thrown out WAY too much and WAY too often. I don’t think there is ANYWAY to have a website that isn’t elitist based on how much I hear it being used. I think that the critics of VB ought to at the very least establish what is and isn’t acceptable, concede that there is no better way of going about things, and work to a better solution. These discussions aren’t debate cases where you draw 50 links and impacts, this is a real world situation. Thinks aren’t utopian, things are pragmatic, and I don’t see any pragmatic basis of having this useful website, estbalishment, company, etc. without rasiing these concerns. Whether it is elitism on a national circuit scale, elitism with NFL nationals, elitism with state champions, or even elitism with local circuit teams. (I come from a local circuit, elitist people exists here too-the # of state qualifications in different events validate you as a debater where I am from.) My point is simple, there is no way to not be labeled as elitist. If that is true, then what we should do is work to better solutions to the problem. It hurts my heart to hear criticism of any actions Jon Cruz does because he works to incorporate parts of debate he knows nothing about; regions of debate he has never been; and debaters he doesn’t know (of).
Aside from that, I think it is silly to associate the commericialization of debate with VB because VB is a reflection of individual’s interest. Local circuit kids are VERY into VB whether or not they will be interviewed. DEBATERS fuel the commercialization of LD. If VB didn’t exist debate would still be commercialized. Does LDDebate.org add to the commercialization? It is taboo to post a tournament invitation in the tournaments forum unless it is a national circuit-type tournament. This goes along with what I was saying before, instead of pointing the finger and blaming (I think it is silly to associate VB with causing the commercialization of debate anyway), why not work with VB in changing the DEBATER’S perceptions of debate? The main reason I have a severe disrespect for Mr. Baldwin’s criticisms is that he is (ironically enough) making ivory tower insults to debate without working WITHIN the current rends of debate to change debate in a more beneficial way. I seriously doubt that VB would be opposed to taking suggestions from Mr. Baldwin or anyone else who criticizes.
I know I haven’t directly repsonded to things being said, and after Memorial this weekend I will probably take a better stance, but those are a few of my concerns.
Posted from: 68.198.156.87
October 13th, 2005 12:53
I think an important reason why briefs aren’t useful is that THEY ARE PUBLIC! One way I have used victory briefs (both the topic analysis and the cards) is to help me write blocks. If someone uses a card in a brief, then anyone has access to it and can prep it out.
Furthermore, when kids hire coaches to write cases for them, they don’t understand the case fully, meaning they may not recognzie the intellectual and strategic nuances of the case. Very few judges will vote for a case that a debater cannot explain in CX. Even on a strategic level, running someone elses cases is bad, because you may not realize that the two sentence spike right below the criterion can help you remove six neg responses. An individuals who writes their own cases recognizes the intent of each and every sentence, while a person who gets cases from someone else does not.
Finally, why is Jon Cruz up at 5:29 in the morning posting on VBD!
Posted from: 69.249.50.38
October 13th, 2005 13:15
These time stamps are based on Pacific Time, which of course is another example of how Victory Briefs ruins the debate community – East Coast debaters have to do extra math to understand what time a comment was posted!
Posted from: 128.135.173.63
October 13th, 2005 13:43
new inclusive results headline format:
Andrew Garvin wins TOC
OTHER EQUALLY NICE AND INTELLIGENT PEOPLE GO 1-6 WITH A BYE!
Posted from: 205.173.47.254
October 13th, 2005 14:15
Fuming with anger:
Jason’s argument is almost entirely personal, ad hominem attack. He attacks the character of a group of people. I mean, he just says they are bad people who shouldn’t be teaching others. I mean, it’s as though the Rostrum had allowed me to publish an article that said, “I don’t want to say anything specific about Jason Baldwin, but, well, you all know what kind of a person *he* is. Wink wink.”
Jason’s perspective is the same as any conservative traditionalist: The way that I do things/did things is *the* way to do them, these other ways are ipso facto illegitimate.
Jason’s rant about character angers me the most. “Character” is a code word, like “family values.” It’s deployed to imply that there is a particular set of behaviors that have previously been determined by some unspecified standard to be the right ones, and that people on the other side of this divide are deviants.
I take this highly personally and I object to the use of the Rostrum as a forum because of its exclusive nature. Victor should submit his response and if they don’t publish it, shame on them.
And on top of that, I am astonished by the degree to which this comes off as simply a partisan tirade. A lengthy paragraph at the beginning lauding the perfection of one camp, followed by three pages demonizing another. Why, it’s an advertisement as much as it is a screed!
And as long as Jason is hurling accusations about who is arrogant and cruel in debate, someone should ask him about Glenbrooks finals his senior year. Specifically, ask him about the “Meredith Merry-Go-Round.”
STILL fuming.
Posted from: 66.14.234.65
October 13th, 2005 14:34
as a disclaimer, i only speak for myself. the opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of victory briefs llc, victor jih, mike bietz, or anyone else affiliated with this company.
there are a few issues i would like to add to this discussion. i hope that you’ll take a second to read this posting.
first, victor jih is one of the most generous people ever. his patience, diligence, and kindness do not receive enough kudos in this or any other forum. he debunks the stereotypes many people like me have about corporate attorneys. his role model is the reason why victory briefs is what it is today. his capacity to inspire people to act in a similarly selfless ways is why victory briefs is able to do everything we do. this is why i think it’s odd that victory briefs is criticized in such a fashion because i see victor and victory briefs as inextricably linked.
on the same token, i acknowledge my bias. i realize that most people may dismiss this message as “he works for victory briefs full time — of course he loves it.” that is true: i love my job here. i have two great bosses, have the opportunity to live in a beautiful place, and the ability to practice yoga everyday.
nonetheless, i hope to talk a little bit about why i believe in what we do as opposed to simply going along with the party line.
(1) the handbooks. for those of you who do not know, i am the primary person who has edited and compiled the handbooks since the november-decmeber nfl handbook of last year. whenever i put the books together, i want for people to get a very solid basic understanding of the topic with good analysis and evidence.
is it possible for you read the overviews and develop cases exclusively from reading the handbook? of course you can. that is no secret. much in the same way reading bowie and simon’s accounts of a given philosophical subject area can (and has been) enough of a place from which you can write a case, we try to offer an educational piece of material specifically geared toward this insular community.
is it a good idea for you to do some “o.r.?” plainly, the answer is yes. (in my day, which is definitely the old school, o.r. = original research). i don’t think anyone thinks that universal “passive consumption” is good. what i don’t think we agree upon is what avoiding purchasing a handbook actually means for debate students and teachers.
the reality is that finding the material our people often find can be tough for students and teachers inexperienced with research. they don’t know what an evidentiary citation should look like. the briefs provide many examples. they don’t know what a good card should look like. the briefs provide many examples. they don’t know where to begin. the briefs provide several places to start.
final issue with the books. if you read the books and have a suggestion, please tell me. it’s not like they go on deaf ears — i take them in all the time and try to integrate what i hear for the very next book. i really want your suggestions! if you like the book, tell me what you like. if you hate the book, tell me what you hate. if you think something’s missing, tell me what you feel like i should include! my work email is attached to this message.
i know that the books aren’t platonic (yet), but i strive to make every book the very best it can be. please give your feedback. if you just don’t want to buy any brief book, that is your right. i like to think, though, that my work isn’t meaningless and love your feedback.
(2) celebrity culture. a 16 year old named michelle wie just declared herself a professional golf player. 17 year old o.j. mayo is a hyped up kid from cincinatti who is supposed to be the next big basketball thing. our nation relishes success. we are even more enamored and simply impressed by young people who are able to perform exquisitely under pressure.
how do i know about these people? besides being a huge sports fan, i read the internet. i go to espn.com and see stories about both of these kids right now. instead of hating on their brilliance, i laud it.
the other issue is that this generation of young people is the most okay with being in public ever. from your first home video debut exiting your mother’s womb to ornately orchestrated elemtary school continuation ceremonies now made into dvd; from cell phones with cameras in the pocket of every 12 year old to all sorts of photos and personal information posted to sites like myspace.com, young people today feel fine with their lives being on display.
for better or for worse, that is who we are as americans. that is what information technology has given us. we are connected to each other because we can share information at unparalleled speeds. vbd is a similar forum wherein people can tell their stories. it’s a places for people to be celebrated for their successes AND their participation in something that is unheralded in traditional mass media.
it by false analogy that people place quotation marks around our stories. simply because they exist on a website for a smaller media company does not make the presented images and narratives less worthy of note. they are just different stories and different images than the ones most often consumed by society at large. i find great comfort in our function in that regard.
anyway, this posting is already too long and i have more work to do. i don’t mean to simply “preach to the choir” in posting here. after all, i know that many people of other faiths still read the vbd ;-) in all seriousness, if there’s something you feel is wrong with victory briefs that we can fix, tell us. we’re not so really bad.
michelin massey.
Posted from: 66.26.40.201
October 13th, 2005 14:43
Mr. McGinnis,
You have got to be kidding me. First you say that Jason is attacking you/VB personally but there is no mention of you or VB in the article, so dont get high on yourself just yet; further, thats just how you interpreted the article. This is where your argument is flawed, like that of many debaters; because Jason attacks certain aspects or things that VB does, you assume it is talking about VB personally, which is ridiculous. Whats worse is that you say how terrible it is to attack someone or a “great” organization personally, but then you attack Jason very personally. Thats just sinking to his level which you imply is low for making such attacks, so whats your position on this? It seems to me that it is “It was wrong for Jason Baldwin to attack VB personally… and Jason Baldwin is a bad person because…”. That either makes you a bad person too for attacking him as a person, or you dont stand for anything because you contradicted yourself. So what is it?
Its just like a debate round nowadays; you’re saying “I stand for blah blah blah and my oppnent stands for crap; but if you dont buy my position, I will contradict it to argue against crap.” Essentially you are just making yourself look silly for not actually saying anything. So I am just wondering, what is it that youre trying to say? I am seriously interested. Thanks
Posted from: 67.80.159.197
October 13th, 2005 15:29
what happened in Glenbrooks finals Jason’s senior year?
Posted from: 129.62.32.51
October 13th, 2005 15:57
There’s a name in business for what Baldwin’s been up to these days… a planning strategy called “guerrilla warfare.” The usage is pretty self-explanatory.
When firms from the periphery of a market are desperate for some shot at unseating the industry leader, they resort to small, aggressive attacks.. often designed to carve niches into the market to be seized and taken from the leader. For a guy so disgusted by commodfication, it’s thinly veiled hypocrisy for Baldwin to reintroduce arguments about what camps students should and shouldn’t go to. But how could such a charitable saint be involved with such profiteering? That’s the wrong question. Grabbing market share has nothing to do inherently with making profit. It may be motivated by something as vain as having one’s ideology attached to the market trend. Clearly Victory Briefs hasn’t engaged in marketing according to some insidious profit motive. I’d like to think those who work for Victory Briefs and advance the institute’s cause do so due to a sincere *belief* in that cause. So why is it unreasonable to view Baldwin’s nostalgic restoration of Kentucky-fried-debate as merely an attempt to more vigorously position his firm? In the best case, neither he nor Victory Briefs could be blamed for commodification insofar as both make contributions to the market without profiting as institutes. In the worst case, they would both be guilty of “commodification”, but the term would be renderened entirely meaningless.
I think all of the substance Baldwin presents has been answered thus far by others and reduced to its incoherent parts: (a) a groundless historical narrative from a very particular/jaded perspective, (b) uninformed, incorrect, and generalized assumptions about the LD community, and (c) a total failure at expressing either the importance of that which he arbitrarily claims to be a disadvantage and zero unique or competitive solutions. I suppose if you want to return debate to some prehistoric virtue, you should immediately abandon the expectations for good argumentation (all the while dishing propaganda in the guise of social concern).
The one comment I would make is that Mr. Baldwin is highly selective about the characteristics he would ascribe to a ‘virtuous’ debate community. For some people, virtue is a matter of clean language and prude disposition. For others, honor and fidelity. For still others, charity and hospitality. Institutions are not all things to all people. They incorporate a set of priveleged virtues into their organizational mission, their project. The chief distinction between a number of summer institutes is not the degree to which they successfully adhere to their mission, but the missions themselves. In other words, the tension here seems to be not in the presence of virtue, but in the virtues emphasized. I believe Victory Briefs had always been committed to a number of virtues, including the diverse and inclusive ethic that has saturated the community in recent years in the midst of changing times. Victory Briefs does not, as it were, make debate the way it is. Students do that. Coaches do that. Judges do that. People do it. Victory Briefs wants to bring as many of those community members and contributors to the table. We have striven to reward committment, include voices, encourage dialogue and friendship, offer a comprehensive and fundamentally sound education, and do so in a way that not only serves the community, but builds the community. I don’t need to outline the ways in which these priorities have been realized time and again thanks to Victor Jih’s unmatched hospitality and the committment of teachers and students alike. The students and teachers have already done that. I realize that these virtues threaten a certain mode of indoctrination. I do not believe that they are mutually exclusive with an emphasis on fundamentally sound skills, careful research habits, and high-level thinking. Victory Briefs has continued to demonstrate as much with the students who leave our camp and dominate elimination rounds at tournaments.
Baldwin would like folks to think that debate is all about preparing students for their future education and the real world. Well sure, so is everything. To the extent that overly efficient (cheap) techniques are partially rewarding in debate, they are also partially rewarding in the real world. They don’t come out on top typically, but they do alright. That a good lesson for students (and institutes) to learn, and it will be learned unavoidably because the market plays out in education much as it does in the real world.
Baldwin should also read up on some of that detestable critical theory (I know, I know.. it’s a funny idea) before unleashing the mundane and meaninglessly vague commodification arguments. They amounted to… “this seems like it has to do with business… children have been commodified!” Maybe Baldwin is more clever than we think and engaging in a parody of poorly run critical arguments. Perhaps we’ll get a message in a week saying, “see! my article was something a student from victory briefs would write! wasn’t it horrid!” That would be neat and win many more brownie points than the pseudo-leftist pud the article would represent if taken seriously.
/ b
Posted from: 68.198.156.87
October 13th, 2005 16:16
Dear Wowed Debater,
First, Mr. McGinnis never claimed that he was personally being attacked, but that the character of other’s was being attacked.
Second, the implication was that Jason Baldwin was criticizing Victory Briefs because it is the only group that does everything mentioned in the article (see the top of this article if you don’t believe me).
Third, the objection was to Jason attacking people’s character because they work for companies like Victory Briefs. Mr. McGinnis is decrying Jason’s actions, not his character, which is a distinction you are not making.
Fourth, your last argument makes no sense. If you stand for one thing, and someone stands for something else, how are you contradicting youself by saying the other person’s theory is wrong?
FIfth, if you are going to make personal comments against someone by calling them “silly”, have the guts to post with your own name, not “Wowed Debater”.
So I too am just wondering, what is it that you’re trying to say? I am seriously interested. Thanks
Posted from: 67.83.100.72
October 13th, 2005 16:54
Out of personal financial issues with going to camp, i checked in to all of them and found that VBI actually was one of the cheapest out there.. Not knowing much about how wonderful it is, that was one of the reasons i chose it and it was the best decision I have ever made. It is obvious for anyone who knows Victor, Jon, Massey, etc that these are the most dedicated people out there who care about making this community better, not soley just a profit.
Having teammates who went to some of these other camps that choose teachers based on character, etc., my friends have said the only thing they really got out of their camp was remembering the strict curfew.VBI taught them much more.
Posted from: 207.200.116.196
October 13th, 2005 17:01
I realize my bias in writing this, as I am coached by Victor Jih and Mike Bietz, but I have to interject my opinion here as reading the response to Jason’s article really angered me. I didn’t get a chance to read the article as the rostrum is not distributed at my school/debate team, so I’m just going on what Victor said in response and what others have been saying.
I think what Jason’s saying might have a perfectly legitimate reason in his mind, and that’s fine. But before he widely publishes an article slandering an institution, he should check the facts. I’m not familiar with the numbers associated with Victory Briefs, but I do know that it was not a profit-making venture for Victor.
Victor is one of the most generous people I know. He stays with this activity, as most people do, because he really cares about it and the educational value students can derive from it. If he really wanted to make a profit in his free time, he would be working extra hours and his firm. He doesn’t have to coach debate, but he does anyway. In fact, he surrenders his weekends to travel with Archer/Brentwood or attend practices, often valuing the education of his debaters over his personal welfare (case in point: he has stayed up all night working on lawyer-related things and come to debate practice anyway, just because he wanted us to be able to work through case positions or discuss the resolution even more). I think the entire debate community as a whole is lucky to have him. He sets a great example of success mixed with humility, as anyone who meets him can attest.
But addressing the issue of celebrity in the debate community: while it can be a little frustrating to see the same names and faces on VBD or in the interviews, there’s a reason why they’re there. They have worked hard and succeeded in the activity, and for that they should be admired, not slandered. Liz is right, debate does take itself too seriously. Celebrity worship does occur, but that’s not Victory Briefs’ fault. They’re not represented as Gods, but rather people who have something to say about the activity.
I also think that these interviews are actually helpful in inspiring new debaters to work harder at the activity. A teammate last year said that one of her debate goals is to be successful enough to score a Jon Cruz interview, and I think that’s the attitude people should take towards them: something not to be resented but something to strive towards.
Overall, I’m upset that Jason would write off Victory Briefs as such a horrible institution without considering the facts. But that’s just my opinion.
Posted from: 207.200.116.196
October 13th, 2005 17:01
I realize my bias in writing this, as I am coached by Victor Jih and Mike Bietz, but I have to interject my opinion here as reading the response to Jason’s article really angered me. I didn’t get a chance to read the article as the rostrum is not distributed at my school/debate team, so I’m just going on what Victor said in response and what others have been saying.
I think what Jason’s saying might have a perfectly legitimate reason in his mind, and that’s fine. But before he widely publishes an article slandering an institution, he should check the facts. I’m not familiar with the numbers associated with Victory Briefs, but I do know that it was not a profit-making venture for Victor.
Victor is one of the most generous people I know. He stays with this activity, as most people do, because he really cares about it and the educational value students can derive from it. If he really wanted to make a profit in his free time, he would be working extra hours and his firm. He doesn’t have to coach debate, but he does anyway. In fact, he surrenders his weekends to travel with Archer/Brentwood or attend practices, often valuing the education of his debaters over his personal welfare (case in point: he has stayed up all night working on lawyer-related things and come to debate practice anyway, just because he wanted us to be able to work through case positions or discuss the resolution even more). I think the entire debate community as a whole is lucky to have him. He sets a great example of success mixed with humility, as anyone who meets him can attest.
But addressing the issue of celebrity in the debate community: while it can be a little frustrating to see the same names and faces on VBD or in the interviews, there’s a reason why they’re there. They have worked hard and succeeded in the activity, and for that they should be admired, not slandered. Liz is right, debate does take itself too seriously. Celebrity worship does occur, but that’s not Victory Briefs’ fault. They’re not represented as Gods, but rather people who have something to say about the activity.
I also think that these interviews are actually helpful in inspiring new debaters to work harder at the activity. A teammate last year said that one of her debate goals is to be successful enough to score a Jon Cruz interview, and I think that’s the attitude people should take towards them: something not to be resented but something to strive towards.
Overall, I’m upset that Jason would write off Victory Briefs as such a horrible institution without considering the facts. But that’s just my opinion.
Posted from: 128.12.58.90
October 13th, 2005 17:18
Dave-
If you’re going to criticize articles as ad hominem and personal, don’t respond in kind.
Examples:
“Jason’s perspective is the same as any conservative traditionalist”
-those titles mean absolutely nothing except for the negative stigma attached to them.
“I take this highly personally and I object to the use of the Rostrum as a forum because of its exclusive nature. Victor should submit his response and if they don’t publish it, shame on them.”
-This directly contradicts your paragraph DIRECTLY before it about “character.” This is because you proscribe a certain type of behavior for Rostrum to abide by DIRECTLY after criticizing the notion that there are said codes.
“And as long as Jason is hurling accusations about who is arrogant and cruel in debate, someone should ask him about Glenbrooks finals his senior year. Specifically, ask him about the “Meredith Merry-Go-Round.””
-If you’re going to suggest, as you did at the beginning of your post, that you’re above petty games and “personal attacks,” don’t directly contradict yourself by doing the same thing that you so vehemently accuse Mr. Baldwin of being guilty of.
Maybe your furious anger inclined you to make these posts. I think a more constructive and less emotional type of response would be the one that Victor set forth to do at the top of this page…he sets forth arguements presented by Jason, and then refutes them. This is a much better idea than some posts on this board, much like your own, which merely attacks Mr. Baldwin in the EXACT same manner that you criticize. We all should try to keep these boards much like our activity – centered around rational discourse and a contrast of ideas.
Posted from: 65.220.226.253
October 13th, 2005 17:25
My old coach, a VB employee, and good friend, Michelin Massey invited me to see what has been discussed on this issue. Disclosure: I have previously been employed by Victory Briefs, and I was actually was a co-director on the first VBI@UCLA summer debate institute. I also was a graduate of the University of Kentucky Fellows Program and University of Iowa summer debate programs. I feel like I bridged both the environments in this discussion and can comment; conveniently, I only have a few itches to scratch.
First, I’ve distanced myself from debate and do not consider the 1997-2001 years to be the golden age of debate, or my life. What I did every weekend wasn’t the ideal form of debate. How my coach worked with me wasn’t what all coaches should do with their students. I used Victory Briefs research, and researched independently. Some of my old friends, especially Michelin, probably remember how many cases I wrote, how many books I scoured, and how many libraries I visited.
What strikes me, though, is that when I think of the level of argumentation and the amount of reading I did, I still am impressed with some of the work done by today’s high school students. Perhaps Jason forgets that when he debated, he was only in his teens. Kids that age just stumble sometimes, don’t make a sensible argument from time to time, and bite off more than they can chew in some debates or with some cases or resolutions. Jason may have been very strict in his choice of arguments and the structure of his responses and delivery, but I can’t imagine that 1992 was a different universe. I watched NFL demonstration debates from previous years, and saw kids make mistakes or not make any sense, even though they participated in a 1994 debate world: Claire Carman’s final round opponent in the that year’s NFL final comes to mind. The “protection of rights,” a frequent value at that time, was as nebulous and poorly researched in 90% of debates as some post-modern positions today. It’s easy to lose sight that you — as a judge — are in your twenties, or thirties, or forties. These high school students are performing well above the average and still conducting research well above what would be expected of people their age. They do their best and sometimes fall short, and so did we. A lot.
While the depth isn’t noticeably different from earlier years, the breadth of research areas and styles certainly has. Having witnessed instruction at the Victory Briefs programs, I can say that it is the most open and flexible institution of all the camps or companies that existed during my time. They have classic LD discussions that accompany “so-called” post-modern modules. Demonstration debates pull from a diverse set of staff members or students, and each lab leader has considerable autonomy in the design of his/her program, depending on student needs or academic level. To say that they push one philosophy or type of debate, or are responsible for it, seems to me to imply that Jason hasn’t actually attended a day of VBI. Maybe he should. It’s really fun.
Second, I was a University of Kentucky Fellow, and Jason was our lead instructor along with some other debate greats. The concept here, I think, was that we were highly advanced debaters with a lot of experience and needed to compete with and collaborate with equally accomplished peers to advance ourselves. I immediately laughed when Jason brought up this concept of “debate glamor,” having experienced the UK Fellows program. Why?
(A) I’m sure Jason remembers, but Fellows were divided up into the labs, which included non-Fellows, but somehow we felt different. We lived together at the camp, and not with the other students. We were “invited” to the program by JW Patterson based on exceptional competitive performance during the third year of high school. We were photographed sitting casually around a tree, and that photograph — not the entire camp photo, though I’m not sure there was one at all — was published in the Rostrum with our names and schools listed. We were even on the camp’s ivory direct-mail brochures. Unfortunately for my ego, this has been the only modeling job for which I have qualified during my 22 years.
(B) Funny enough, I remember one Fellow was a two-time Fellow by my senior year, which didn’t make too much sense given his sheer experiences relative to other great competitors who were not Fellows. Of course, he attended a historically very accomplished program, and this seemed to qualify him for the Fellows program. It seemed very related to the historical and political position of one’s school. Like major round robins, exclusivity on such a small scale requires a lack of objectivity. How can you pick the 8 ‘best’ juniors in the country? Making sure the hot-shot programs are represented is one way.
(C) The University of Kentucky was the first LD debate program during my debate experiences to use the *accomplishments* of its Fellows to market the program, in addition to their mugshots. “UK graduates have placed first or second at these tournaments,” was a frequent slogan. This seems to be a hyper-competitive strategy of Victory Briefs, according to Jason. who I hope has not made a down payment on a glass house recently.
(D) The University of Kentucky is a university, if I’m reading the name correctly. In agreement with Victor, this didn’t seem to stop them from using my name — and my classmates’ — to promote their interests. Another university, Jason’s beloved University of Iowa, commenced their “Senior Philosophers” program shortly after Kentucky began to show some traction. I’m sure Jason would agree that it’s one thing to be a celebrity, and another to be labeled a “philosopher,” which was a bit over the top. Competitive pressures caused them to do this, because they’re trying to lure students with marketable records who would otherwise — at the time — go to Kentucky. University debate camps — just like university admissions offices — operate very much like businesses. Even Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote a piece in the New Yorker about my alma mater’s admissions policies and their representing a simple marketing strategy:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/051010crat_atlarge
(E) It’s my understanding that VBI has a more advanced second session, too. Of course, just to emphasize the difference: anyone can apply to the second session, and financial aid is given in many cases. VBI recognizes the accomplishments of all its students, not just its walking student advertisements, in its marketing collateral. Results note all VBI graduates and results include regional and state tournaments, not just national circuit juggernauts.
This is not to say that Jason is to blame for the Fellows’ fabulous photo shoots and the use of their names and likenesses to promote the camp. But Jason should know better than to say that VB’s innovation in the debate community was to shed spotlight on competitively successful debaters. In many ways, without a Fellows program and with an emphasis on all VBI graduates, theres a lot more integration of senior debaters and a fondness shared by VBI graduates for each other, not just for the celebrities.
Finally, I’ve known Victor and many of his staffers since at least 1998 or so. Of all the contributors to the debate community, there has not been a person more personable and detached from competition and debate glamor as Victor Jih. If I remember correctly, he teaches but does not judge (educates but does not decide competition), he makes no money on Victory Briefs, and . Luckily, however, he has a sense of humor and light-heartedness that also allows him to relate to students and understand how best to communicate with them.
**
Get off your high horse. If it weren’t for people like Victor and his staff, who work tirelessly and at a loss, the debate community would look a lot more like the debate community to which I was introduced. That is: obsessed with historically successful programs and the egos of coaches rather than students, limited in its structure and acceptable set of “fair” arguments, and accessible only to far fewer students.
Posted from: 66.26.40.201
October 13th, 2005 17:37
To Salil:
“First, Mr. McGinnis never claimed that he was personally being attacked, but that the character of other’s was being attacked.”
-This helps to support my point even more. The fact is that he isnt even defending himself, rather he is defending the character of others and he still feels the need to sink to level that he just execrated so that he can feel like he said something in response. Why does he need to make attacks on Jason’s actions/character when he is not involved and also when he cannot prove the link between Baldwin’s criticisms and Dave’s claims of personal attacks on people he knows.
“Second, the implication was that Jason Baldwin was criticizing Victory Briefs because it is the only group that does everything mentioned in the article (see the top of this article if you don’t believe me).”
– Is that so? So youre telling me that victorybriefs is the only group that runs an insistitute? that has students who wear its t-shirts?- this is just plain ridiculous anyways. Here you are saying that they wear t-shirts but I in fact wear my institute’s t-shirt but I’m not recognized for that. Youre helping prove Baldwin’s point with all this evidence! he says that the commodification of LD creates this popular, commercialized debate hegemon, and youre proving that true because you recognize it and no other deabte organizations!
– Secondly, he isnt addressing the fact that “if one organization encompasses all of these negatives, I hate it”; he is advocating that those aspects of commodification are wrong. You seem to overlook that so that you can claim attacks on VB.
“Third, the objection was to Jason attacking people’s character because they work for companies like Victory Briefs. Mr. McGinnis is decrying Jason’s actions, not his character, which is a distinction you are not making.”
– You claim one argument against Baldwin but claim the opposite in support of Baldwin. Baldwin is in fact attacking the actions of anonymous groups and not the chracter of such groups. You ignore the distinction there and state that he is attacking peoples’ characters but when you wish to defend Dave, you claim that the opposite (that he is attacking actions, not character) is true. Again, take a position; a logical one.
“Fourth, your last argument makes no sense. If you stand for one thing, and someone stands for something else, how are you contradicting youself by saying the other person’s theory is wrong?”
– You arent necessarily doing that. What I pointed out was that in this case, Dave is necessarily doing that. Now, please attack what I actually said, not a nuance that you twisted from the wording. I am standing for something while you stand for blippy, independent responses, none of which address what I am saying.
“FIfth, if you are going to make personal comments against someone by calling them “silly”, have the guts to post with your own name, not “Wowed Debater”.”
– Well, if you think that I am getting personal by claiming that someone’s argumentation reflects on them as being silly, then fine, I guess I am getting personal. However, I hardly think that stating that someone’s actions make them SEEM silly makes me a horrid person who attacks other for no reason and without discipline.
– Ahh, how easy you make my arguing Salil. You tell me to use my own name, but why would I do that on the so-called “debate hegemon” that is VB, especially when I am agreeing with an opposing view? This just goes to show what Jason is saying; I am not willing to show my real name because I do not want the debate hegemon that is VB to see my name, remember it, and drop me since so many VBI staff judge and have such a strong connection to VB.
Now, this wasnt all that fun or educational (hmmm, like recent debate) because you contradicted yourself and made arguments for your opposition. Now I have told you my position; that I believe that everything that Dave said is flawed in some way and therefore cannot be considered important or noteworthy. However, I still havent figured out exactly what it is that you stand for; dave mcginnis? victorybriefs? I am obviously less interested, but still need closure; your position is…?
So I too am just wondering, what is it that you’re trying to say? I am seriously interested. Thanks
Posted from: 66.26.40.201
October 13th, 2005 17:43
matt, preach
Posted from: 68.37.189.157
October 13th, 2005 18:06
My views on debate are all just based on objective observance/participation within the activty. My arguements will reflect the plethora of topics from within this discussion which did not necessarily have anything do with the article presented.
First though – thank you Victor Jih – Jon Cruz – Aaron Timmons – Michelin Massey – Mike Bietz – Sam Duby – and Bill Cooper *my coach* for making debate such an incredible experience so far. That was not in any particular order of importance. The people mentioned were recognized because of the contributions that have made to the activity and/or for the way they have influenced my passion for the activity.
On elitism:
On average – there will always be a top echelon group of debaters. I think it’s most likely just statistically true. I don’t care what the earlier arguements were – debate will always be elitist. I think the celebrity culture is a biproduct of the inclusiveness of the community – which we all want.
We are one big community. Communities have their leaders. Communities also follow the trends of their leaders. I could be wrong – but I don’t think elitism is a problem. Quite frankly, I’ve always enjoyed the elitism in debate – the celebrity culture is kinda cool. Freshman year, watching Doug Lieb caused me to become addicted to the activity -what a showman. Last year, watching and talking to David Wolfish motivated me to work as hard as I do now.
I do not think there are anything wrong with the interviews made by Jon, especially noting the content. Let’s be honest. Does Jeremy talking about proving his nerdiness really intimidate debaters? Is it SO BAD – if we acknowledge those debaters that achieve the success we all want?
Debate is a national activity – just like any sport. We all knew about LeBron James and how he was going to go straight to the NBA – hell – that’s really interesting. I find it interesting to read about interviews involving the stars of our intellectual activity. We’re no sport, but we’re as competetive as they come. Any competetive community creates celebrities. It’s natural. I think it is something more to embrace and enjoy rather than criticise. Rather than become angry with the creation of celebrities within the activity, I encourage supporting each other, regardless of success, but I also realize that debaters which work exceptionally hard deserve to be recognized. They deserve to be distinguished from the rest of the pack.
I’ll be candid. We all enjoy success. The motivation for many debaters is that they obtain recognition from an activity they put so much effort into.
The conclusion I draw is two-fold:
a) Elitism is a good thing
b) VBD is probably somewhat elitist according to definition, but that is simply the result of putting pictures with names. I would know who Matt Shields was even if VBD never said his name, however, VBD just happened to allow me to see his picture a lot. That’s because he wins a lot. This is not a result of VBD being elitist. That’s a dumb assertion. Look at the pictures on file and the interviews made at VBI. Reference the numerous attempts Jon makes to introduce *unknowns* to the activity are ALL OVER. Also, the interviews taken at VBI are of many people that do not have bids. This is significant because it shows that Jon is not elitist, but rather just – likes people.
Maybe good debaters get the most attention because they work the hardest? Maybe good debaters often are on VBD because they are good people as well? I’ve yet to see an interview of a debater that was not a positive role model.
On “Corporation” )VBI – UNT – NSD – NDF – Iowa – w,e,:
To those that criticise it because it is inaccessible to those lacking the funds:
a) Financial aid is available
b) Kids can watch rounds and learn what VBI kids learned
c) Younger debaters can always ask older ones tips
d) Watch taped debates. Ok – it costs a couple bucks. I think this is something any administration can afford – so hush.
e) That doesn’t mean the progression of the activity should be sacrificed. When I say progression, I do not mean it in the sense of “progressive” debate. Rather, progression means that status-quo debate is almost an equal balance between substance and strategy. Debate is valuable for its critical thinking on two levels. First, it addresses intriguing political questions. Second, it forces student to think strategically. VBI is an institution which promotes the trends of debate created by the people which participate in it. Everything is a suggestion, not a command.
It is all one big cycle. Debaters come up with new cool and effective ideas. These ideas win big rounds. These ideas becomes explored and inroduced to more debaters at VBI. In this way, VBI (along with every other debate workshop) actually DECREASES the inaccessibility of the activity by proliferating new strategies all over the country through the use of seminars, lab groups, and topic packets. People from different regions interact with each other and as a result debate changes.
I’ll be blunt. If some kids don’t want to watch the best debaters debate – that is NOT A GOOD REASON TO CRITICSE VBI – NSD – UNT – NDF – IOWA – or WHATEVER. That is NOT a good reason to eliminate the institutions that MAKE DEBATE BETTER.
Want to learn theory??:
a) watch rounds
b) read forums
c) think
d) talk to other debaters
Want to learn post-modern philosophy like the other debaters??:
a) Go to your library. If the book ain’t there – have em order it.
b) Ask your coach to purchase books for the team
c) Go buy it yourself.
On profiteers:
HAS BALDWIN MET THE PEOPLE THAT RUN THESE CAMPS?! IS HE AWARE OF HOW INTELLIGENT THESE PEOPLE ARE AND HOW THEY COULD SPEND THEIR TIME MAKING TON OF MONEY IN ANY OTHER OCCUPATION. At some point – my arguement ends with an assertion that can only be proven by meeting certain people.
These are good people. Baldwin – fuck off.
Josh Meah
Posted from: 68.196.115.120
October 13th, 2005 18:26
“I think the celebrity culture is a biproduct of the inclusiveness of the community – which we all want.”
?
Posted from: 65.25.226.156
October 13th, 2005 18:27
Capitalism is so much better than communism/socialism.
Posted from: 65.29.23.139
October 13th, 2005 18:38
http://gazetteextra.com/gerke101305.asp
Posted from: 68.198.150.207
October 13th, 2005 18:40
Let me start by answerig the question rasied earlier in the thread concerning if there are people who agree with Mr. Baldwin’s article out there. I would say that there are most likely many people out there who would find a lot to agree with from Jason’s article. I personally agree with most, but not all, of what he has to say. I think the reason you don’t see a lot of comments reflecting that is due to the fact that most people who would agree with this article are probably not regular readers of VBD.
Before I begin, let me say that I believe that both Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Jih are well intended individuals who I sincerely believe care greatly about the activity. It is clear that they have vastly different views about what is best for the activity, views which are clearly incompatible. It would be impossible for both to be correct in their views, which logically means one of them is in all likelihood espousing a viewpoint which must be wrong to a very significant degree. Nevertheless, I would hope that in this discussion both sides can view the other as misguided rather than malicious. I believe it is a lack or loss of perspective that is responsible for the promotion of practices that I personally find detrimental to the progress of the activity. This lack of perspective is something which I believe we all are guilty of at times, and while I believe it is important to speak out against it; I also believe it is important to recognize that in doing so one is not attempting to impugn the moral character of those he disagrees with.
Before I actually address the substance of the discussion, I think I should disclose that I am a member of the staff at both the Iowa and Samford Institutes, as well as a member of the LDEP.
I believe that VBD provides a valuable service to the community, one that I enjoy myself. I agreed with those who felt interviewing current students was a practice that is problematic, and applaud Jon Cruz for his decision to end the practice. I do not believe that all of the effects of VBD are positive, but I do believe that the positives outweigh the negatives. I also firmly believe that the intentions of those running the website are good ones, and whatever negative effects have been brought about from it are completely unintentional. My only problem with VBD is that I do believe it has contributed to a culture where camps have begun behaving more like businesses that happen to have an educational aspect, then educational institutions that happen to have a business aspect.
Wikipedia defines commodification as the transformation of what is normally a non-commodity into a commodity, to assign economic value to something that traditionally would not be considered in economic terms. I bring up this definition to point out that there does not have to be a profit motive in order for commodification to occur. For example, a private school is in all likelihood a non-profit organization. This does not mean that such schools are not engaged in the commodification of education. I think most reasonable people would agree that this is not in itself a bad thing, but also agree that there are dangers when such commodification is taken too far. One of the major responses to Mr. Baldwin’s article seems to be that Victory Briefs does not make a profit. However, since there is not necessarily a link between profit and commodification, this does nothing to prove that the actions undertaken by Victory Briefs and others have not contributed to the excessive commodification of LD. In fact, I would argue that if you read the article carefully, it becomes apparent that Jason is not saying that the real problem is profit itself, but rather the transforming effect that the pursuit of profit can have on the thing being sold to achieve it. I would go further and say that when Jason refers to the “business” of LD, he means business in the sense of something which competes in a market to sell its products, rather than simply something which is attempting to make a profit. At one point in the article he even talks about how non-profit institutes have also begun to give into the competitive pressures that the excessive commodification of the activity has created. Furthermore, Jason never actually says that any commdofication of education is unacceptable. What I think Jason is saying is that there is a danger inherent in commodification, especially in a field like education; and if we are not careful that commodification can have very harmful effects. For clarity let me quote the relevant passage:
“Let me be clear that I am not condemning the profit motive as such, nor am I suggesting that everyone who is now making money off of high school LD is implicated in each of the following problems. I am simply pointing to problems with the growing commercial culture in LD. The most serious and general problem with business in debate is not unique to debate; it is possible in any educational domain and, really, in almost any human practice. The problem is that the end pursued by a business (profit) may threaten the ends properly pursued by the practice in which the business operates. Education aims to instill some combination of skills, knowledge, and virtues in students. There is always a risk that for-profit education schemes will compromise the proper goals and standards of a discipline in order to be more popular with consumers and hence more profitable. Although profit and excellence can pull against each other in any domain, the danger is especially acute in education because the potential consumers are, by the nature of the situation, not equipped to distinguish wheat from chaff. A defining feature of studenthood is not knowing what one needs to know. Most students know what they want, but few students know what they need. Wants can compete with needs, but businesses appeal only to wants.”
The increasingly competitive nature of the market for LD camps puts pressure on ALL camps to give students what they want, as opposed to what they may need. It is a pressure we have faced at the camps I teach at. In fact, two years ago when I had one of the more experienced labs at Iowa, much time was devoted to discussing if the practices that I encouraged the students to pursue because of their educational value would put them at a competitive disadvantage. Most of the students did not disagree with me that the practices I was encouraging them to pursue were sound educationally, yet many were honest enough to say that they would not utilize them because they believed if they did that they would lose. These students were amongst the finest that I have ever taught, and for anyone to say that they didn’t care about the educational value of the activity would be silly. It was clear, however, that these students also cared about competitive success; and even I could not begrudge them for doing what it takes to win. Who I can and do begrudge are the adults in this activity who define what is competitively success. In my mind, this includes both the judges who directly decide who wins, as well as the institute instructors and coaches who lend credibility to practices through their positions of influence.
I often hear these individuals rationalize the practices they promote as educational, but my years of experience as a coach, but more importantly as a teacher, make it increasingly hard for me to buy these rationalizations. I wouldn’t accuse anyone who is willing to devote time, energy, and resources to this activity of not caring about education. I will accuse them of caring more about winning than about education, which in my mind is unacceptable. I doubt anyone could be a big part of this activity and not care about education. What is unfortunate is that far too many people don’t seem to stand for education, but rather they stand for winning. Furthermore, many of the arguments that are advanced to prove the supposed educational value of current practices are downright silly. The biggest problem with them is that they are completely non-comparative. They basically say if I can show any educational benefit to the practice I am promoting then that justifies it. This simply doesn’t hold up under scrutiny however. If I were to show movies in my government class everyday, I am confident that my students could derive some educational value from them. I believe they would be able to learn something. This is by no means an adequate justification for such a course of action. While certainly I believe that there are some things to be learned from watching movies, there would also be tradeoffs involved, and opportunity costs to consider before I could ever conclude that this was an appropriate course of action. I ultimately would have to view such a choice based on its overall impact to determine if the benefits are worth the cost. I don’t see that happening in people’s assessment of the direction LD has taken. While I think it would be a stretch to say that there is no educational value to be derived from current practices; that is by no means is a justification for such practices. If such practices diminish the educational value of the activity, then in my mind they should not be encouraged. This is not to say that LD was ever perfect, or that we should strive to return to what it once was. There has and most likely always will be room for improvement in the activity. The problem many of us see today is that the activity is not moving forward, it is moving backwards. Those things that should have been removed from the activity to help improve it (speed, jargon, sophist game playing, etc.) are now held up as the virtues to which the activity should strive. (I would go further into this, but I feel that this is another discussion altogether.)
In the final analysis, my position is that the ultra competitive business like environment that permeates the LD community has harmed the educational value of the activity. This is a sentiment shared by many people, but certainly not all. I find comfort in the fact that many experienced, adult, full time educators share my view on this issue. I think those who disagree with this view are well intentioned, but I believe they lack the proper perspective to make an objective judgment about the true nature of their actions, or about the actual state of the activity. This is certainly not a horrible, evil flaw. I know that I often struggle internally with the tension I see between the competitive desire to win and doing what I know to be educationally sound. The problems that exist today in LD are not the fault of any one organization. There is plenty of blame to go around, certainly enough that some must come the way of people like myself, as well as the institutions I have worked for. What disturbs me is the ease with which many people seem to dismiss any notion that they too have taken actions which whether intentional or not, have led to detrimental effects on the activity. In defense of such people, I might suggest that we should hate the game and not the player. The problem seems to be that the player was the one who decided to play the game in the first place, and it seems those players have no moral qualms about playing that game. How wonderful that these players have found a perfect world in which giving people what they want is no different from giving them what they need, or at least a world where they can convince themselves of that. Please forgive those of us who find that just a little too good to be true. Let me end with the following two ideas:
1. There is nothing wrong with debate camps being like businesses in certain ways, but they should not be like other businesses in every way. There should be a unique and discernable difference.
2. It is not enough to care about education in this activity, one must actually stand for it. There seems to be far too little of that out there.
RJ
Posted from: 68.196.115.120
October 13th, 2005 18:40
“These are good people. Baldwin – fuck off.”
That was totally unnecessary. I think it’s sad that people become ultra-defensive when reading Jason’s article. Whether or not the references to VB are accurate, Jason DOES touch upon larger issues with debate that are worthy of intelligent, rational discussion. Refute his argumentation on an argumentative level–don’t insult him and blow him off because he has a contrasting opinion. Ignoring Jason’s advocacy because it upsets you is anti-intellectual in its own right.
Posted from: 24.211.155.46
October 13th, 2005 18:45
I support VBI’s efforts and I think they come out of a genuine love for debate and a desire to enrich the community. Mr. Baldwin seems to overlook the fact that reading the so-called “elitist” interviews and the tournament results, looking at the photos of everyday debaters enjoying themselves, discussing philosophy at length…these are FUN. Don’t know about him, but I joined debate to have fun.
That being said, I think we should take this opportunity to 1. reflect on what VB does for the community and 2. unsubscribe to Rostrum (just kidding!). VB certainly does a lot. On the other hand…you know, as a friend of Iowa, I do think VBI should be a little less susceptible to passing trends–such as this whole policy-effect. The only complaints about VBI that I see as legit (and which Mr. Baldwin failed to articulate properly) are that its students often lose the resolutional forest for the trees, that they become preoccupied with jargon, “cool” kritiks, performance affs, and the like. This is by no means a unique flaw of VBI. Let’s not even blame VB. I think all of us need to reflect on ourselves as debaters. After all, VB is all about us: what we do and how we do it. My point here is…instead of blaming VB for causing the corporatization of debate, for corrupting us all and turning us into spreading K-hacks, we should examine and improve our outlook on debate. Let’s show Mr. Baldwin he’s wrong. We’re not trend-following toadies. We know what the resolution is and we’re going to debate it, straight up, the good always-in-fashion way.
Thanks y’all.
Jim.
Posted from: 68.198.150.207
October 13th, 2005 18:48
Let me start by answerig the question rasied earlier in the thread concerning if there are people who agree with Mr. Baldwin’s article out there. I would say that there are most likely many people out there who would find a lot to agree with from Jason’s article. I personally agree with most, but not all, of what he has to say. I think the reason you don’t see a lot of comments reflecting that is due to the fact that most people who would agree with this article are probably not regular readers of VBD.
Before I begin, let me say that I believe that both Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Jih are well intended individuals who I sincerely believe care greatly about the activity. It is clear that they have vastly different views about what is best for the activity, views which are clearly incompatible. It would be impossible for both to be correct in their views, which logically means one of them is in all likelihood espousing a viewpoint which must be wrong to a very significant degree. Nevertheless, I would hope that in this discussion both sides can view the other as misguided rather than malicious. I believe it is a lack or loss of perspective that is responsible for the promotion of practices that I personally find detrimental to the progress of the activity. This lack of perspective is something which I believe we all are guilty of at times, and while I believe it is important to speak out against it; I also believe it is important to recognize that in doing so one is not attempting to impugn the moral character of those he disagrees with.
Before I actually address the substance of the discussion, I think I should disclose that I am a member of the staff at both the Iowa and Samford Institutes, as well as a member of the LDEP.
I believe that VBD provides a valuable service to the community, one that I enjoy myself. I agreed with those who felt interviewing current students was a practice that is problematic, and applaud Jon Cruz for his decision to end the practice. I do not believe that all of the effects of VBD are positive, but I do believe that the positives outweigh the negatives. I also firmly believe that the intentions of those running the website are good ones, and whatever negative effects have been brought about from it are completely unintentional. My only problem with VBD is that I do believe it has contributed to a culture where camps have begun behaving more like businesses that happen to have an educational aspect, then educational institutions that happen to have a business aspect.
Wikipedia defines commodification as the transformation of what is normally a non-commodity into a commodity, to assign economic value to something that traditionally would not be considered in economic terms. I bring up this definition to point out that there does not have to be a profit motive in order for commodification to occur. For example, a private school is in all likelihood a non-profit organization. This does not mean that such schools are not engaged in the commodification of education. I think most reasonable people would agree that this is not in itself a bad thing, but also agree that there are dangers when such commodification is taken too far. One of the major responses to Mr. Baldwin’s article seems to be that Victory Briefs does not make a profit. However, since there is not necessarily a link between profit and commodification, this does nothing to prove that the actions undertaken by Victory Briefs and others have not contributed to the excessive commodification of LD. In fact, I would argue that if you read the article carefully, it becomes apparent that Jason is not saying that the real problem is profit itself, but rather the transforming effect that the pursuit of profit can have on the thing being sold to achieve it. I would go further and say that when Jason refers to the “business” of LD, he means business in the sense of something which competes in a market to sell its products, rather than simply something which is attempting to make a profit. At one point in the article he even talks about how non-profit institutes have also begun to give into the competitive pressures that the excessive commodification of the activity has created. Furthermore, Jason never actually says that any commdofication of education is unacceptable. What I think Jason is saying is that there is a danger inherent in commodification, especially in a field like education; and if we are not careful that commodification can have very harmful effects. For clarity let me quote the relevant passage:
“Let me be clear that I am not condemning the profit motive as such, nor am I suggesting that everyone who is now making money off of high school LD is implicated in each of the following problems. I am simply pointing to problems with the growing commercial culture in LD. The most serious and general problem with business in debate is not unique to debate; it is possible in any educational domain and, really, in almost any human practice. The problem is that the end pursued by a business (profit) may threaten the ends properly pursued by the practice in which the business operates. Education aims to instill some combination of skills, knowledge, and virtues in students. There is always a risk that for-profit education schemes will compromise the proper goals and standards of a discipline in order to be more popular with consumers and hence more profitable. Although profit and excellence can pull against each other in any domain, the danger is especially acute in education because the potential consumers are, by the nature of the situation, not equipped to distinguish wheat from chaff. A defining feature of studenthood is not knowing what one needs to know. Most students know what they want, but few students know what they need. Wants can compete with needs, but businesses appeal only to wants.”
The increasingly competitive nature of the market for LD camps puts pressure on ALL camps to give students what they want, as opposed to what they may need. It is a pressure we have faced at the camps I teach at. In fact, two years ago when I had one of the more experienced labs at Iowa, much time was devoted to discussing if the practices that I encouraged the students to pursue because of their educational value would put them at a competitive disadvantage. Most of the students did not disagree with me that the practices I was encouraging them to pursue were sound educationally, yet many were honest enough to say that they would not utilize them because they believed if they did that they would lose. These students were amongst the finest that I have ever taught, and for anyone to say that they didn’t care about the educational value of the activity would be silly. It was clear, however, that these students also cared about competitive success; and even I could not begrudge them for doing what it takes to win. Who I can and do begrudge are the adults in this activity who define what is competitively success. In my mind, this includes both the judges who directly decide who wins, as well as the institute instructors and coaches who lend credibility to practices through their positions of influence.
I often hear these individuals rationalize the practices they promote as educational, but my years of experience as a coach, but more importantly as a teacher, make it increasingly hard for me to buy these rationalizations. I wouldn’t accuse anyone who is willing to devote time, energy, and resources to this activity of not caring about education. I will accuse them of caring more about winning than about education, which in my mind is unacceptable. I doubt anyone could be a big part of this activity and not care about education. What is unfortunate is that far too many people don’t seem to stand for education, but rather they stand for winning. Furthermore, many of the arguments that are advanced to prove the supposed educational value of current practices are downright silly. The biggest problem with them is that they are completely non-comparative. They basically say if I can show any educational benefit to the practice I am promoting then that justifies it. This simply doesn’t hold up under scrutiny however. If I were to show movies in my government class everyday, I am confident that my students could derive some educational value from them. I believe they would be able to learn something. This is by no means an adequate justification for such a course of action. While certainly I believe that there are some things to be learned from watching movies, there would also be tradeoffs involved, and opportunity costs to consider before I could ever conclude that this was an appropriate course of action. I ultimately would have to view such a choice based on its overall impact to determine if the benefits are worth the cost. I don’t see that happening in people’s assessment of the direction LD has taken. While I think it would be a stretch to say that there is no educational value to be derived from current practices; that is by no means is a justification for such practices. If such practices diminish the educational value of the activity, then in my mind they should not be encouraged. This is not to say that LD was ever perfect, or that we should strive to return to what it once was. There has and most likely always will be room for improvement in the activity. The problem many of us see today is that the activity is not moving forward, it is moving backwards. Those things that should have been removed from the activity to help improve it (speed, jargon, sophist game playing, etc.) are now held up as the virtues to which the activity should strive. (I would go further into this, but I feel that this is another discussion altogether.)
In the final analysis, my position is that the ultra competitive business like environment that permeates the LD community has harmed the educational value of the activity. This is a sentiment shared by many people, but certainly not all. I find comfort in the fact that many experienced, adult, full time educators share my view on this issue. I think those who disagree with this view are well intentioned, but I believe they lack the proper perspective to make an objective judgment about the true nature of their actions, or about the actual state of the activity. This is certainly not a horrible, evil flaw. I know that I often struggle internally with the tension I see between the competitive desire to win and doing what I know to be educationally sound. The problems that exist today in LD are not the fault of any one organization. There is plenty of blame to go around, certainly enough that some must come the way of people like myself, as well as the institutions I have worked for. What disturbs me is the ease with which many people seem to dismiss any notion that they too have taken actions which whether intentional or not, have led to detrimental effects on the activity. In defense of such people, I might suggest that we should hate the game and not the player. The problem seems to be that the player was the one who decided to play the game in the first place, and it seems those players have no moral qualms about playing that game. How wonderful that these players have found a perfect world in which giving people what they want is no different from giving them what they need, or at least a world where they can convince themselves of that. Please forgive those of us who find that just a little too good to be true. Let me end with the following two ideas:
1. There is nothing wrong with debate camps being like businesses in certain ways, but they should not be like other businesses in every way. There should be a unique and discernable difference.
2. It is not enough to care about education in this activity, one must actually stand for it. There seems to be far too little of that out there.
RJ
Posted from: 68.196.115.120
October 13th, 2005 18:57
“These are good people. Baldwin – fuck off.”
That’s entirely unnecessary. I think it’s pretty sad that people become ultra-defensive when responding to Jason’s claims. Whether or not Jason is misguided in his understanding of VB personnel (and I think he is), he DOES touch upon larger issues that are worthy of intellignet, rational discussion. Labeling Jason’s article as blasphemous and attacking him on a personal level is anti-intellectual in its own right because a) people abstain from logical counter-argumentation and b) the implication is that anyone who criticizes VB or the status-quo debate culture is a bad person who should be shunned and “fuck off.” Debate is about CONTRASTING IDEAS and the use of argumentation to determine a correct answer. Alternative opinions ought never be excluded a priori in a debate forum, even if you find them personally troubling.
Posted from: 24.7.101.82
October 13th, 2005 19:04
Something that amuses me is that even when debaters aren’t in debate rounds, we all still sound like debaters. Posts are formatted into arguments, numbered, have clear claims warrants and impacts, and generally look like they’re seeking a ballot. Because I’m not feeling like much of a debater, this will be a story.
On the last night of VBI 2005, Victor mentioned that someone had been stealing the eyeholes out of the rooms. I had been doing it all camp, but had never considered it to be more than a dumb prank. To Victor it was one of the only things that had gone wrong at camp. After fixing the eyeholes, I approached him, rather scared and apologized for the temporary destruction I had caused. In many ways, I thought he would be upset and “hold a grudge” against me for years to come. Rather, I think he understood that I was simply proving the immaturity of my years, taking actions without thinking about it.
My point is rather odd, but I’ve thought often about the huge conglomerate operation that is Victory Briefs. I’ve often joked that it’s a hegemon, that will eventually control all things debate. I think that people dislike large corporations because they’re mean though. Victory Briefs doesn’t fit that bill. I attended VBI for three years, on scholarships each time. Every year I went I learned different lessons, the most important of which was how to leave high school debate with a soul. VBI strives to make sure it’s kids have a good time, learn a lot, and yes, come back for more. Is that really such a terrible thing though?
Posted from: 24.7.101.82
October 13th, 2005 19:06
Something that amuses me is that even when debaters aren’t in debate rounds, we all still sound like debaters. Posts are formatted into arguments, numbered, have clear claims warrants and impacts, and generally look like they’re seeking a ballot. Because I’m not feeling like much of a debater, this will be a story.
On the last night of VBI 2005, Victor mentioned that someone had been stealing the eyeholes out of the rooms. I had been doing it all camp, but had never considered it to be more than a dumb prank. To Victor it was one of the only things that had gone wrong at camp. After fixing the eyeholes, I approached him, rather scared and apologized for the temporary destruction I had caused. In many ways, I thought he would be upset and “hold a grudge” against me for years to come. Rather, I think he understood that I was simply proving the immaturity of my years, taking actions without thinking about it.
My point is rather odd, but I’ve thought often about the huge conglomerate operation that is Victory Briefs. I’ve often joked that it’s a hegemon, that will eventually control all things debate. I think that people dislike large corporations because they’re mean though. Victory Briefs doesn’t fit that bill. I attended VBI for three years, on scholarships each time. Every year I went I learned different lessons, the most important of which was how to leave high school debate with a soul. VBI strives to make sure it’s kids have a good time, learn a lot, and yes, come back for more. Is that really such a terrible thing though?
Posted from: 24.127.127.185
October 13th, 2005 19:08
To answer Josh’s question “HAS BALDWIN MET THE PEOPLE THAT RUN THESE CAMPS?! IS HE AWARE OF HOW INTELLIGENT THESE PEOPLE ARE AND HOW THEY COULD SPEND THEIR TIME MAKING TON OF MONEY IN ANY OTHER OCCUPATION.”
Yes, he has met several of the staff members…because he was our lableader years ago.
As much as I respect Jason because he did instill in me positive values mentioned in his article, I am in complete support of the Victorybriefs organization. VBI has given me the opportunity to emphasize the importance of logic, rhetoric, research and friendship to students in the same manner he has done for me.
For that, I thank Victor.
Jessica Huynh
USC 2007
The Harker School Asst. Coach
PS- The only ad hominem that should be made against Jason, is that he’s a fighting Irish. USC is going rock Notre Dame tomorrow (in football for those of you who don’t know). :)
Posted from: 209.98.146.245
October 13th, 2005 19:22
“I am not willing to show my real name because I do not want the debate hegemon that is VB to see my name, remember it, and drop me since so many VBI staff judge and have such a strong connection to VB. ”
Funny how none of the other people on this thread seem all that worried about getting dropped by pro-Kentucky judges. Maybe because (a) they realize that the people on the other side of the debate are, by and large, decent, rational and intelligent people who don’t base their decisions in round on arguments on debate websites and (b) they’re not goddamn pussies.
Post your name or shut up.
Posted from: 209.98.146.245
October 13th, 2005 19:52
“‘These are good people. Baldwin – fuck off.’ That’s entirely unnecessary. I think it’s pretty sad that people become ultra-defensive when responding to Jason’s claims. Whether or not Jason is misguided in his understanding of VB personnel (and I think he is), he DOES touch upon larger issues that are worthy of intellignet, rational discussion. Labeling Jason’s article as blasphemous and attacking him on a personal level is anti-intellectual in its own right because a) people abstain from logical counter-argumentation and b) the implication is that anyone who criticizes VB or the status-quo debate culture is a bad person who should be shunned and “fuck off.” Debate is about CONTRASTING IDEAS and the use of argumentation to determine a correct answer. Alternative opinions ought never be excluded a priori in a debate forum, even if you find them personally troubling.”
I don’t necessarily support or condemn Josh telling Baldwin to fuck off, but I think there’s nothing inherently anti-intellectual about it for several reasons: (1) It’s not ad hom. “Fuck off” means “stop doing what you’re doing” means (in context) “the criticisms you’re leveling are wrong”. He’s criticizing Baldwin’s actions, not Baldwin as a person. It’s a strong way of putting it, but it’s clear from the rest of his post that Josh’s disagreement with Baldwin’s arguments are similarly strong. (2) Josh doesn’t use the “fuck off” to avoid engaging Baldwin’s arguments; he uses it only after a long and very detailed critique of them. (3) If you believe, as it seems many people on this thread do, that Baldwin’s article wasn’t a good-faith attempt to discuss the issues surrounding LD businesses but a thinly veiled attack on a competitor you’re not under an obligation to pretend otherwise. In this case, Baldwin’s article is not just factually wrong but reprehesible, and reprehending him in clear, concise and unambiguous terms is perfectly reasonable.
Posted from: 129.62.32.51
October 13th, 2005 20:21
RJ–
Baldwin’s link:
“There is always a risk that for-profit education schemes will compromise the proper goals and standards of a discipline in order to be more popular with consumers and hence more profitable.”
1. VBI doesn’t profit. To the extent it is definitionally “for profit,” this term can only be used in the most loose of senses… and would fail miserably at actually linking to Baldwin’s disadvantages.
2. On ‘commodification’, to assign economic value to something is to assign it value as capital in terms of some kind of exchange scheme.. so assuming we run with the academic juggernaut that is Wikipedia (is this the emphasis on sound research we hear so much about from Baldwin and the ‘LD Education Project’?), it’s fair to say my point remains: either.. neither VBI nor Baldwin’s organization fosters a commodification effect… or they both do but in a sense that is absolutely without gravity.
3. Baldwin talks about the disads to mixing profit and education but isn’t comparative at ALL. How else ought educational institutions, for example, remain accountable to the consumers and their needs. Baldwin’s alternative is a ‘planned economy of education’ in which a clique of elite coaches and tournament directors decide on the bottom line. Virtuous debate gets defined by… Baldwin and people who happen to agree with him. I don’t think it’s especially outrageous to encourage students to take ownership of their education and work with instructors to achieve self-managed goals. There are obvious limits to this, but limits imposed by common sense across a broad field of educators… not limits articulated by those with a narrow agenda. Planned economies deliver the same 1961 car model in East Germany until 1989. I suspect unilaterally planned curricula would deliver 1994 debate wisdom to the students of 2005. Teachers are teachers for a reason; they do possess some expertise. But they are not thusly qualified to speak for every student. Without a feedback loop, educators will be at a loss or on a soapbox. A market for camps enables students to take a cooperative and democratic path to their education–I’d like to think there’s a middle ground here, that we are not letting the patients run the asylum. But we are treating students with the mutual respect demanded in education.
There’s good debate, there’s bad debate. A dynamic market will experience a little bit of both.. some days more than others. Debate fascism is not the answer.
b
Posted from: 209.253.119.2
October 13th, 2005 20:27
Aww, revisionist history to advance your own cause is always fun, isn’t it? I think the references to communist regimes are hilarious; and fitting. Build up a history of past glories (Iowa as the only legitimate debate institute in the history of ever) and then situate yourself as the champion of the people oppressed by the dominant modes of production (haha, as though Michelin trapped in a little office could ever be characterized as such) in order to lead a failing institution back to glory. A little anecdotal evidence on the rise of “celebrity” in debate…
A decade ago (I am so old), when I debated and Victory Briefs was not operating, debate idolatry was still rampant. In fact, the very group that seemed to be driving the phenomenon was the Kentucky Debate Institute which published the pictures of their select group of Debate Fellows. Each summer the results of the fellow debates were sent out routinely to the Ld-l listserve along with inside jokes from the camp which only perpetuated the cult of the fellow. While this is by no means an indict of Kentucky (after all, they got rid of the practice, either by choice or because they couldn’t attract top notch fellows anymore), to say that the rise of debate celebrity is a new phenomenon perpetuated by VB is ridiculous. I’d argue that in any activity that recognizes winners and losers, the trend is inevitable. This is especially true when pompous debaters like to refer to themselves in the third person as the “best debater ever” as Mr. Baldwin himself was known to do. Admittedly, the internet might facilitate the growth of the trend on a larger scale, but then the ld-l was just as worthy of blame as VB. If you assume that results will be reported sans Victory Briefs (as they were during VB’s hiatus), then VB might actually be helping to solve the problem by highlighting non-circuit debaters as well.
In the minds of our detractors, VB has always been associated with circuit debate. B
ut the majority of the people who buy our products and come to our camp are not circuit debaters. These same people are the ones that are most prone to express their thanks for the products VB provides because it provides access to students that aren’t blessed with the resources Mr. Baldwin was lucky enought to have at Vestavia. As such, I can only believe that VB has been, and always will be, inclusive. The only folks that seem to forget that are the ones that define themselves out of the VBI community in order to propagate their own agenda. I find it especially telling that many of these folks came from once storied programs that have since been displaced by the spread of successful debate that VB has facilitated. I wonder where Mr. Baldwin suggests you should go to camp to learn the “right” way to debate?
Reifying the patriarchy as always (shout outs to James Logan),
Adam
Posted from: 68.198.158.134
October 13th, 2005 20:52
“Jason Baldwin, more real than real. Superreal.”
-”Cool Memories IV”
Posted from: 68.123.122.9
October 13th, 2005 21:27
this is more of a war than a discussion.
Posted from: 65.81.132.53
October 13th, 2005 21:30
this has nothing to do with the content of the thread, but im pretty amazed that i just read a post that had a detailed defense of the phrase ‘fuck off.’ im pretty sure that’s rock bottom.
Posted from: 209.98.146.245
October 13th, 2005 22:10
Thank you :)
Posted from: 68.161.5.29
October 13th, 2005 22:34
i read through the article on the rostrum last night, when a friend who completely agreed with it sent me the link. in all honesty, i was horrified by it, and by my friend’s enthusiastic endorsement of Mr. Baldwin’s arguments- he hadn’t attended camp at VBI, he doesn’t read the VBs, or purchase any other VB products of course. i feel like a lot of people have such hatred of VB because they identify it as the primary institution of the elitist debate hegemony, without actually getting to know the people involved in the company or the services it provides. i’m the first person to acknowledge that it is easy to feel like a disadvantaged outsider in this community sometimes- i come from one of those proverbial coachless schools where my team basically taught itself to debate by groping around in the dark and hoping that those around us would be kind enough to shed some light on the often intimidating and confusing world of LD tournaments.
this past summer i finally attended VBI session II and i have to say it was the most valuable two weeks of my life that i have ever spent doing anything related to debate. not because i suddenly learned any secret instructions for winning the toc, or made sinister connections with those who have judged me (and presumably will continue to), or because former amazing debaters did research and wrote cases for me. i found that, contrary to my initial misgivings about going to camp, the vast majority of my instructors did not emphasize winning but good debating, and as we all know the two are not always equivalent. i can’t speak for session one, but i thought that session ii was incredibly educationally valuable to me, not only in ways relevant to debate but to the rest of my life as well. and contrary to Mr. Baldwin’s accusations, every single one of my instructors enjoined us to read the literature of whatever ideas we wanted to run. we were taught, as i personally have always believed, that in the end success would come from knowing our arguments, understanding the round, being smart, and debating well- not through tricks, spead, obfuscating the issues, or any other such tactics. moreover, my experiences at VBI did not increase the awe i felt of “national circuit” teams, judges, and debaters- on the contrary, i realized that this elite, exclusive group existed more in my mind than in reality, and that there was no need to be intimidated by anyone.
i feel that victor and others have already done an excellent job defending victory briefs itself. what i found personally most offensive about the article was the implied attack on the students who purchase the VBs or attend camps. Mr. Baldwin never seemed to consider that high school debaters might have the ability to think for themselves. He implies that because all of us are interested solely in winning, we will listen eagerly to anyone who has managaed to do so in recent history and complacently accept whatever it is they advocate, and we will lazily snatch up any evidence offered to us and throw it into a case without any understanding of what it says. I find this incredibly insulting. I would like to win, certainly, but I also believe there are other important things that may be achieved in debate- learning, thinking, finding new ideas, manipulating them, communicating them- the things that hooked me about the activity in the first place. though i certainly respect the opinion of anyone who was successful at major tournaments against extremely talented debaters, i don’t hang on every word they say as if god were dictating a holy scripture. i’ve been debating four years now, and i realized within the first month that everyone has a different idea of the right way to debate and what the activity ought to be. just because i attend camp doesn’t mean i lost all maturity, independent thinking skills, or moral compass. i listen to what different people have to say, weigh their conflicting opinions, and draw my own conclusions as to what’s right. isn’t that what debate is supposed to teach us to do in the first place?
and yes, my team often purchases vbs. there’s two reasons for this- first, we don’t have a coach. and like victor pointed out, there’s no one to teach us how to debate, tell us what others may think of the resolution, or guide us in our research. victory briefs are great for that. i would no more make a case by clipping cards from the victory briefs without any further reading or thinking than i would use sparknotes plot summaries and analysis to write an english paper without reading the book, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a very legitimate purpose to either publication. second, reading the victory briefs is an excellent way of getting an idea of what a lot of our competitors will be running.
of course there are debaters that are lazy. there are people that write their cases from the VBs just as many of my fellow students do their only reading at sparknotes.com. I know people who have hired others to cut evidence for them or write cases. I abhor this as unfair and detrimental to the activity in innumerable ways, as i abhor many of the current “trends” in the debate community that victory briefs for some reason gets blamed for. but i think it’s ridiculous to put the responsibility for these actions on the people at victory briefs or other such institutions. they are amazing, intelligent, and just plain good people, and they have been so incredibly helpful to me personally and to the community as a whole. more than that, it’s not their fault that some debaters abuse the services that they provide. we may still be high school students, but we are old enough to think and judge for ourselves- as debaters we are trained specifically to do so- and the responsibility for our actions, good or bad, belongs on our shoulders. it is disrespectful to us as people to argue otherwise.
Posted from: 66.87.88.5
October 13th, 2005 22:40
I really support VBI/VBD and everything the entire VBI Staff does for this community. Thank you very much for your very, very generous efforts (time, money, etc).
Just incase anybody is wondering – Word Count on this forum (just comments): about 31,800.
Posted from: 24.12.29.32
October 13th, 2005 23:22
Pretty much everything I have to say has been covered by the previous 100+ posters. I just wanted to note that as staff at Iowa this year, I haven’t received any emails or communications from the camp directors or staff that we intentionally got Jason Baldwin to hail our greatness or whatever in the Rostrum. So far as I know, Jason’s comments re:the University of Iowa’s camp are completely unsolicited, meaning that any irritation with this article shouldn’t be directed at Iowa. Jason also isn’t a member of our staff, and hasn’t been for the four years I’ve either attended or taught there. Before anyone jumps on me for being partisan, I’ll also toss out that I taught at VBI for two summers (and loved teaching there) and also went there as a student (and clearly liked it enough to come back as an instructor). I just want make sure that everyone is clear that this article is not affliliated with Iowa’s camp in any way, shape, or form.
That being said, I think Victor and everyone else behind VB are good, well intentioned people, and I think the points raised about celebrity culture are interesting and well worth discussing. Jason Baldwin’s comments about this realm of our community are (in my opinion) helpful, as I haven’t really seen many thoughts on celebrity creation, though there’s little denial that it happens (and did when I was competing as well). But nearly all of that has already been said, so I won’t comment on it further.
Posted from: 68.229.62.8
October 13th, 2005 23:22
wow, long
Posted from: 24.12.29.32
October 13th, 2005 23:34
I forgot to do this in my last post because I’m rather tired, but
1)Thank you to Jason Baldwin for your kind comments about Iowa’s past. While I was never there in the “golden era,” so to speak, it’s always nice to hear past accounts of an institution that you’re a part of
2)If you really liked Jason’s article for some of his insightful comments, that too would be falsely attributed if you were to tie it to Iowa in some way. Though I think that he raised some very important issues, Iowa (just as it deserves no anger) also deserves no applause for Jason Baldwin’s insights.
Posted from: 66.92.163.42
October 14th, 2005 01:26
I appreciate RJ and Chase Martyn commenting. I appreciate reading a diversity of viewpoints – if it’s a viewpoint constructed on firsthand experiences or even just a general view of the activity, then it’s a valid opinion (RJ and Chase), even if it’s highly critical of VB. If it’s a viewpoint based on biased assumptions (either towards Baldwin or VBI), then it’s really not worth the time taken writing it, because I don’t think anyone’s going to read it and care (I’m speaking about comments).
What I do find troublesome, and I’m sounding way too much like Duby and AT here, is people who aren’t putting their names to posts. I judge in the Northeast as a tournament hire – I probably have watched 18-20 rounds on this topic, and I only remember four or five of them specifically (I have the flows to the rest that would jog my memory, but I mean in general). I’m embarrased sometimes when people know who I am and I don’t know who they are – normally, it winds up being a teammate of a person I do know from judging them a previous weekend, etc.
Do people honestly think that I’ll drop you if you disagree with Victory Briefs? I think that implies two phenomena that just aren’t true:
1) That I’ll remember who posted what on here, and that it will emotionally effect me so much that I’ll keep a “grudge” and
2) I’ll remember who this person is when I judge a round where I’m given initials like Cary Academy XY – do you really think I’ll say to myself “damn, I need to teach that person a lesson for criticizing VB”?
I mean the only (legitimate) reason I can see for anonymity is fear of backlash. I’m just wondering if this fear of backlash is justified. I mean if someone were to come up to me and say I think you have a conflict of interest in judging this round, I’ll listen to them, and figure out what to do from there – but I certaintly won’t hold it against them. I, like 90% of the people who judge debates, have a life outside of debate as well. Why would I create a grudge within the system?
There was a coach who angered me at one point in my debate career; about a week later, I had already forgotten what the issue was, and had someone apologize to him for me in case I acted unprofessionaly. He, too, had apparently forgotten the issue. I don’t think we’d have ever taken it out on each other’s students; but after a few days, it almost becomes like the competitor who comes up to you and asks you what you thought of their social contract case that they ran in Round 4 flight A at Wake – wait, I was in North Carolina? Oh yeah… Without pulling up the flow on excel, I have no clue what that round was like. Similarly, I think the concept of long-held grudges is ridiculous – I’d rather hear from people using their names rather than pseudonyms of Anon or Wowed Debater.
Before anyone posts anything about me being up at 4:30, realize I’m an early riser (normally out the door by 6:30AM, rarely awake to 10:30PM).
Posted from: 66.92.163.42
October 14th, 2005 01:32
I appreciate RJ and Chase Martyn commenting. I appreciate reading a diversity of viewpoints – if it’s a viewpoint constructed on firsthand experiences or even just a general view of the activity, then it’s a valid opinion (RJ and Chase), even if it’s highly critical of VB. If it’s a viewpoint based on biased assumptions (either towards Baldwin or VBI), then it’s really not worth the time taken writing it, because I don’t think anyone’s going to read it and care (I’m speaking about comments).
What I do find troublesome, and I’m sounding way too much like Duby and AT here, is people who aren’t putting their names to posts. I judge in the Northeast as a tournament hire – I probably have watched 18-20 rounds on this topic, and I only remember four or five of them specifically (I have the flows to the rest that would jog my memory, but I mean in general). I’m embarrased sometimes when people know who I am and I don’t know who they are – normally, it winds up being a teammate of a person I do know from judging them a previous weekend, etc.
Do people honestly think that I’ll drop you if you disagree with Victory Briefs? I think that implies two phenomena that just aren’t true:
1) That I’ll remember who posted what on here, and that it will emotionally effect me so much that I’ll keep a “grudge” and
2) I’ll remember who this person is when I judge a round where I’m given initials like Cary Academy XY – do you really think I’ll say to myself “damn, I need to teach that person a lesson for criticizing VB”?
I mean the only (legitimate) reason I can see for anonymity is fear of backlash. I’m just wondering if this fear of backlash is justified. I mean if someone were to come up to me and say I think you have a conflict of interest in judging this round, I’ll listen to them, and figure out what to do from there – but I certaintly won’t hold it against them. I, like 90% of the people who judge debates, have a life outside of debate as well. Why would I create a grudge within the system?
There was a coach who angered me at one point in my debate career; about a week later, I had already forgotten what the issue was, and had someone apologize to him for me in case I acted unprofessionaly. He, too, had apparently forgotten the issue. I don’t think we’d have ever taken it out on each other’s students; but after a few days, it almost becomes like the competitor who comes up to you and asks you what you thought of their social contract case that they ran in Round 4 flight A at Wake – wait, I was in North Carolina? Oh yeah… Without pulling up the flow on excel, I have no clue what that round was like. Similarly, I think the concept of long-held grudges is ridiculous – I’d rather hear from people using their names rather than pseudonyms of Anon or Wowed Debater.
Before anyone posts anything about me being up at 4:30, realize I’m an early riser (normally out the door by 6:30AM, rarely awake to 10:30PM).
Posted from: 66.92.163.42
October 14th, 2005 01:40
I appreciate RJ and Chase Martyn commenting. I appreciate reading a diversity of viewpoints – if it’s a viewpoint constructed on firsthand experiences or even just a general view of the activity, then it’s a valid opinion (RJ and Chase), even if it’s highly critical of VB. If it’s a viewpoint based on biased assumptions (either towards Baldwin or VBI), then it’s really not worth the time taken writing it, because I don’t think anyone’s going to read it and care (I’m speaking about comments).
What I do find troublesome, and I’m sounding way too much like Duby and AT here, is people who aren’t putting their names to posts. I judge in the Northeast as a tournament hire – I probably have watched 18-20 rounds on this topic, and I only remember four or five of them specifically (I have the flows to the rest that would jog my memory, but I mean in general). I’m embarrased sometimes when people know who I am and I don’t know who they are – normally, it winds up being a teammate of a person I do know from judging them a previous weekend, etc.
Do people honestly think that I’ll drop you if you disagree with Victory Briefs? I think that implies two phenomena that just aren’t true:
1) That I’ll remember who posted what on here, and that it will emotionally effect me so much that I’ll keep a “grudge” and
2) I’ll remember who this person is when I judge a round where I’m given initials like Cary Academy XY – do you really think I’ll say to myself “damn, I need to teach that person a lesson for criticizing VB”?
I mean the only (legitimate) reason I can see for anonymity is fear of backlash. I’m just wondering if this fear of backlash is justified. I mean if someone were to come up to me and say I think you have a conflict of interest in judging this round, I’ll listen to them, and figure out what to do from there – but I certaintly won’t hold it against them. I, like 90% of the people who judge debates, have a life outside of debate as well. Why would I create a grudge within the system?
There was a coach who angered me at one point in my debate career; about a week later, I had already forgotten what the issue was, and had someone apologize to him for me in case I acted unprofessionaly. He, too, had apparently forgotten the issue. I don’t think we’d have ever taken it out on each other’s students; but after a few days, it almost becomes like the competitor who comes up to you and asks you what you thought of their social contract case that they ran in Round 4 flight A at Wake – wait, I was in North Carolina? Oh yeah… Without pulling up the flow on excel, I have no clue what that round was like. Similarly, I think the concept of long-held grudges is ridiculous – I’d rather hear from people using their names rather than pseudonyms of Anon or Wowed Debater.
Before anyone posts anything about me being up at 4:30, realize I’m an early riser (normally out the door by 6:30AM, rarely awake to 10:30PM).
Posted from: 68.37.189.157
October 14th, 2005 02:42
matt levinson wrote:
“These are good people. Baldwin – fuck off.”
That’s entirely unnecessary. I think it’s pretty sad that people become ultra-defensive when responding to Jason’s claims. Whether or not Jason is misguided in his understanding of VB personnel (and I think he is), he DOES touch upon larger issues that are worthy of intellignet, rational discussion. Labeling Jason’s article as blasphemous and attacking him on a personal level is anti-intellectual in its own right because a) people abstain from logical counter-argumentation and b) the implication is that anyone who criticizes VB or the status-quo debate culture is a bad person who should be shunned and “fuck off.” Debate is about CONTRASTING IDEAS and the use of argumentation to determine a correct answer. Alternative opinions ought never be excluded a priori in a debate forum, even if you find them personally troubling.
Fair enough. I apologize.
Posted from: 208.54.95.129
October 14th, 2005 06:02
I think it’s fair to attack the means in which Jason chose to attack VBI, I don’t think it’s fair to attack Jason. There’s no reason to do an ad-hominem, because frankly he attacked an institution and a “trend” in debate, but he never says these are bad people. If you look at the end of the article, his advocacy isn’t excommunication; it’s use your wallet. So I definitely think using obscenities is uncalled for.
Posted from: 147.9.197.146
October 14th, 2005 06:06
I really hope this is paragraphed, because I’ve divided it on my page but the preview is showing it as one big mess. Apologies if it’s not broken up!
Since we’re disclosing conflicts, I’ve worked for Victor since the spring of 2001; I’ve instructed at VBI for 3 years, but in 2 prior years I worked at a different institute. I never attended VBI (it wasn’t around when I was in HS), but I send as many of my students to VBI as I can every year, and will continue to do so despite the shenanigans.
Building on the posts of Adam, David & company, I just had a few things to add…
Debate elitism and celebrity has existed ever since I went to my first tournament in 1999, and I have no doubt way before then. Adam and David speak from greater experience, but I think we can all agree that an activity predicated on competition will do something inherently to elevate those who succeed over those who don’t.
The relevant question, in my opinion, isn’t whether debate elitism EXISTS per se in the world of the VBD and VBI, but rather what the elitism is like NOW versus what it was like BEFORE VBD and VBI. It’s convenient for folks like Josh, Matt, et al. – who primarily debated in the era of VBD and rampant lddebate.org use – to say that debate is elitist, etc. etc.; the problem is that they have little or no point of reference from the days before comprehensive internet coverage and a camp like VBI.
Matt should especially remember that, during his freshman year of high school, he wrote a March/April topic analysis and submitted it to Victory Briefs. Even though Matt hadn’t qualified to the TOC or attained any of the ostensible requirements to be part of the “in” crowd…Victor published his topic analysis on the early Victory Briefs website.
More broadly, in the days when all starry-eyed debaters could read was a line on hsdebate.com/archives/results; we only knew the names of the successful, but not the faces or the personalities.
I believe that the unspoken barrier between the good kids and the bad kids was fostered by lack of familiarity and intimidation.
You could log on to hsdebate.com and read “Westwood TC” or “Hendrick Hudson NG” on countless tournament results postings, without ever knowing Tommy or Noah’s face, their personality, or that they’re actually very nice people. The problem was that no one other than their friends really knew them, and kids were too afraid to approach them because of their mysterious celebrity
The top debaters knew each other through elimination rounds and “Fellows” programs, but that point has already been proven. Debate by its competitive nature segments the most successful, the relevant question is what effect on that culture VBD has.
It’s very hard for Mr. Baldwin to comment on this issue, in my opinion, because he was almost always a member of the “in crowd.” He came from the most dominant program of his day under the tutelage of one of the wisest and most powerful coaches in the activity. He was successful from his freshman year on, amassing one of the most impressive records in LD history. I think a more apt commentary on elitism from that time would come from the Montgomery Academy novice or the Homewood F debater who saw Mr. Baldwin in the cafeteria in between rounds.
“Holy schnikes, is *that* Jason Baldwin?”
Even when I was in high school, those of us who hadn’t yet broken into the group of successful, well-known debaters segmented OURSELVES because we were unfamiliar with the celebrities and didn’t want to look silly in front of them.
What VBD does is break down those barriers by eliminating uncertainty and lack of familiarity, and shows the self-conscious that the seemingly infallible elite are pretty self-conscious themselves. VBD shows those intimidated by the upper crust, and the elite themselves, that both groups have a lot in common that should exist independent of tournament record. In my opinion, interviewing Jed Glickstein & John McNeil shows they’re just two really friendly and very smart guys who are merely shy, not arrogant and dismissive. These interviews discuss things other than praise for accomplishments, and make those who have been idolized from the beginning of LD time accessible to others.
Nowadays, you see the top kids interacting with those who aren’t as successful. Five years ago a top debater would come out of a round with a kid he/she just spanked and they’d part ways as quickly as possible; partly because the lesser debater was too afraid to talk.
Now that VBI has infiltrated the more traditional elitism, I think anyone who has spent a considerable time at debate tournaments over the last few years would recognize that phenomenon to be waning. Good debaters come out of rounds in conversation; partly because they have learned that teaching those less experienced makes the activity grow (thanks to institutes which teach accountability like VBI), and partly because the barrier of unfamiliarity and intimidation is breaking down. Hundreds of people per day read VBD and see interviews where these infallible, unstoppable debate forces reveal that they’re actually humble, friendly people who make mistakes like everyone else.
The camp environment at VBI has changed a lot of traditional elitism as well.
When I attended the Iowa institute before my senior year of high school, the “senior philosophers” never attended the same lectures as the rest of camp (now at VBI everyone can take the same modules), the staff rushed off to their private dining room (VBI staff eat with *all* students, not the top kids only), and there was very little cross-instruction: the SP teachers very rarely taught non-SPs (VBI staff teach modules and judge students outside their lab’s level frequently). I can’t speak from experience about the Kentucky institute, but I think David’s points are very well taken.
The other much unsung contribution VBI has made to promoting inclusiveness in our community is in Victor’s mission to *directly combat* the financial obstacles facing students who otherwise couldn’t attend camp at all. Often those this affects most are the less-successful students whose programs lack the resources to travel extensively and conduct thorough research. But I can speak from experience here, and in direct comparison to Mr. Baldwin’s efforts at KNDI.
After my first year of coaching, I had two students – juniors – who qualified to the TOC. They were both invited to the Fellows program at KNDI, but had spent so much money on travel during the year that attending camp without financial aid was prohibitive. We repeatedly petitioned KNDI to help make their attendance possible, but KNDI refused to provide aid. Luckily, it was also the first year of this incarnation of VBI. Victor was kind enough to curb their tuition expenses so they were able to attend camp and save money for travel the next year. Had it not been for the emergence and generosity for Victory Briefs, they would not have attended a debate camp.
So what are we left with? The pre-VBD era in LD subsisted on misunderstandings, lack of familiarity and intimidation about/with the top debaters. VBD and VBI integrate the successful, the emerging, and those without opportunity.
We shouldn’t forget what the community was like *BEFORE* the emergence of VBI and VBD; if we can have some perspective and compare LD life before and after Victor’s generous contributions through this enterprise so many of us have been a part of for years. Is elitism *post*-VBD at all more rampant than in Mr. Baldwin’s era?
Hardly. VBD and VBI bring students together and break down the unintended barriers of unfamiliarity and intimidation that foster LD elitism in the first place.
Posted from: 66.193.5.99
October 14th, 2005 09:17
Michael,
I have met you before and I nearly 100% sure that you have an idea or know exactly who I am. However, I do not think that everyone should know who I am. Like you say, a biased opinion is not a valid opinion. I agree but I do not want one of those biased opinions who is so loyal to VB to get offended by my comments that were biased neither way; they were simply attacks on McGinnis’s silly arguments against Jason Baldwin which I found to be glaring. I understand that there are some institue staff (DO NOT ASSUME VBI everyone; thats how some people attack my observations) that have decided to vote for the debater that attended his/her institute before the round has ever started, however I wish to appeal to the logic and reason of each and every judge. Moreover, I believe that even a judge biased towards a certain group or institution can be logically and reasonably convinced of an argument or position, and I would still like to win that judge’s ballot if possible. That is my first reason for not posting my name.
But secondly, I think that you’re actually aiding Bladwin’s point here. He tells us that some groups have become intellectual (in terms of debate) hegemons that dominate popular thought in the debate world. If you apply this assertion to VB which can easily be argued so, I would be alienating and hurting myself socially in the debate community by posting anti-hegemonic arguments on the hegemon’s own website. If you really think that I should do that… then too bad. I neither wish to alienate myself as “the opposition” nor to get dropped arbritarily, thus I wish to conceal my identity. If you wish to discuss this further, you can certainly contact me for I think that you know who I am. Just wanted to explain myself. Thanks
Posted from: 67.189.79.172
October 14th, 2005 10:36
Victor Jih, I thought your response was very well done; most of Mr. Baldwin’s attacks against Victory Briefs addressed fears, real and imagined, in the idea of a corperate debate program. I think, from the information you gave, your program could not be considered corperate-for-profit. So while your “company” is not implicit in the problems Mr. Baldwin speaks of, I still think that those problems will exist in any “for-profit” debate program.
By the way, your response reminded me very much of Nixon’s Checkers Speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkers_speech). Did you think of that, particularly the finnancial disclosure, when you wrote your response? Because the process you went through was almost identical.
Posted from: 149.68.58.245
October 14th, 2005 11:09
Victor Jih is not a crook.
Posted from: 192.251.125.40
October 14th, 2005 12:54
Wow. What a tempest in a teapot! A couple of things I’d like to chip in as they haven’t been addressed or fully addressed.
A) If you are a member of the NFL, then your dues help to publish the Rostrum. If you, like me, were disgusted by the very partisan and inappropriate tone of Mr. Baldwin’s article, then certainly you should consider writing to the Rostrum and presenting your viewpoint IN A REASONABLE AND RESPECTFUL manner. You will not win brownie points with the NFL by telling them to ‘f#%@ off’. However, if 40 or 50 send emails expressing their shock and disappointment, I believe they will think seriously about printing articles like this in the future. The only email I could find online was: nflrostrum @ centurytel.net.
B) In terms of the accusatory aspect of the article, I have to say that Victor did a phenomenal job of defending his organization. When I first came back to debate two years ago, I admit to being a bit suspicious of Victory Briefs’ newfound power. However after getting to know the people in the organization and realizing they certainly did not create the attitudes that I was annoyed by, I became very thankful for the website, the tournament, and the briefs.
I think the major problem with the article is that, as Charlie noted, Mr. Baldwin falls into a correlation/causation fallacy (so ironic, is it not?). Since the only two other organizations that would fit Mr. Baldwin’s critiques are both one year old or less (Dallas Debate and NSD), if indeed there is a causal element, it had to have been spread from VB. While there have been many trends in the activity that I am fervently against (many of which have been simplified or misinterpreted by others, but so be it), the problems which Mr. Baldwin picks out here cannot truly be shown to have sprung from the VB business model. So let’s look at those individually.
1) Money plays too much of an element in debate: Certainly Josh Marshall makes a good point that buying coaches creates inequality (as well as conflict of interest problems, but we will get to that bone later). I think at some level it is problematic that richer students have access to more camp instruction, more coaching resources, and more tournaments. But since socialism isn’t coming back to the US (until the next great depression), the only way we can combat that issue is to offer scholarships to needy students. Obviously VBI is the biggest proponent of this, although Iowa and other camps I’m sure make allowances as well. VB staffer John McKay did more to raise money for needy LDers than anyone that I have seen in my eleven year experience with debate, and this was done primarily through the VB website. Either way, the problem of this kind of elitism has to do with the power of rich individuals, and not the kind of corporate influence that Mr. Baldwin takes affront to.
The only corporeal powers in the debate community are schools, which certainly maintain certain advantages over one another. However Mr. Baldwin is not discussing this problem or how we can remedy it, leaving Victor’s response about how briefs and DVDs can create equality as the only contender.
In terms of institutes wielding influence for financial gain, I have spoken to other camp leaders about the financial burdens of running camps. The only camp I have experienced where the executive staff seems to be gaining some measurable benefit from the camp (i.e. dinners out, etc.) is SNFI, not VBI. Since they find it above themselves to recruit students for their camp, I guess they can’t be accused of commodification either.
Endgame: I guess we can put up with the capitalists a little longer.
2) Passive consumption of ideas: Matt Levison makes some excellent points regarding this. I think we are all pretty clear as a community that we think individual and original research are important goals. People who win rounds do not come out bragging that they didn’t write their own cases and their cards were ‘totally swiped from those vb dudes’. No, the accusations of copying and laziness tend to come from other people, and can certainly taint the reputations of debaters if it is believed they are true. As far as solutions, I don’t think there are any. We cannot make people prove they wrote their own cases. We cannot make some brightline as to when coaching becomes tooling (I’ve done both and I can’t tell the difference oftentimes). If some people are getting success they don’t deserve, that is very sad, but that is REAL LIFE, as Babb points out. Sometimes life sucks.
Endgame: Paris Hilton is not famous because of her undeniable talents. Jed Glickstein is.
3) Celebrity culture is bad, Fiddy told me that: Perhaps some day when we have our first debater stalker case, this could be an issue. Seriously, I agree that elitism is daunting to younger debaters. I have coached teams that felt like nobodies in both the local Dallas circuit and the national circuit, and I pushed my students very hard to overcome their fears of good debaters by trying to make friends with people outside of their school. I yelled at them to watch rounds and complement the debaters, to befriend other young debaters, to ask their judges for critiques, to try to connect in the social circle. It takes WORK to become socially known and have friends in debate. No website can magically give someone friends. If you want to be popular, you have to earn it and work at it. You may not have the coolest circle of friends in the debate world, but if you and your 12 homeys can chat between rounds, that’s pretty cool. So the solution to ending elitism is for you (yes, YOU) to go out and meet people, keep talking, keep making friends.
And yes, VBD rewards successful debaters, and yes VBI has top labs. But David Vivero totally beat me to the punch when it comes to the Kentucky Fellows pot-meet-kettle. I think the fact that Jon Cruz took the insightful and constructive criticism on these comments to stop doing interviews while students are in high school shows their willingness to try to combat perceived elitism. I applaud your decision, Jon, and I think it’s a good idea for one reason Matt and co don’t mention: it minimizes hurt feelings. Debaters in school who don’t get interviewed are going to have their feelings hurt, whether they admit it or not. And while those of us who are in college or in the real world can shrug and say, we didn’t get interviews, we’ll live, that can be a little harder on teenagers who are already facing peer pressure, parent pressure, college pressure AND debate pressure.
Endgame: Elitism is all in the mind. Like my invisible friend Martina, who won the Glenbrooks tournament in my mind. And Jon Cruz didn’t take her picture. Bastard.
4) Conflict of Interests: This, I agree, is an issue. It is not an issue caused by commodification of debate. It is an issue caused by having a relatively small, incestuous community. It is caused by coaches who dislike judging and hire other people to do it for them. It is an issue caused by debaters and judges not drawing adequate boundaries. Certainly some of these boundaries are difficult. At CNDI as a lab instructor, I taught every single student there with two other people, for 12-14 hour days. We ate with them, judged them, talked with them, played frisbee with them. I could see why we shouldn’t judge them. At SNFI as a lab instructor, I taught only one group of 20 kids, for only about three hours a day, and were forbidden to eat with them or be too friendly. I don’t feel that I knew any of them enough to have a conflict of interest. Where is the line, then? I don’t know.
Another issue that Mr. Baldwin brings up is that students will be hired on to camps and then be judged by people who are their employers/coworkers. If they have been hired by someone, that person should not judge them, period. If they are going to be their coworker, in a camp with over fifty people on faculty, some of whom hate each other, is that going to matter? Again, I don’t know.
A third issue is writing briefs/cases/doing one off coaching. I don’t think writing a brief about a position you like in any way biases you for or against positions in general. We all have opinions, at least if someone wrote a brief their opinion is public and thus MORE likely to allow the debaters to adapt to that judge, making the round MORE fair. I have written resolutional analysis and posted it free on .org, does that mean I can’t judge the topic at all, just in case someone read my analysis?
If, on the other hand, you write a case for a specific debater, it would be a huge conflict of interest to judge them. If you prep someone out for every outround at Greenhill, you should not judge them at St. Marks. If you coach someone on the internet, you should not judge them. These are pretty obvious and clear standards of clean judging. Not everyone follows them. Perhaps there should be stricter standards if these come to light (maybe throwing a debater out of competition and pulling the judge from the pool, and either not paying them or taking away their school judging credits, would do the trick?).
Lastly, there is the issue of friendliness. As someone often accused of being ‘too friendly’ with debaters, I can say that I have learned where to draw that line. If I feel that I like someone enough to no longer be impartial in a round, I stop judging them. I have done this with certain debaters since 1999. Judges should not be afraid to ask to be struck from individual students (no good tab room would deny you this) and students should likewise explain such situations to their coaches so that they are not expected to use up strikes just for being well liked. Sure, that could be abused by some people (“oh, yeah, I know I called them a ninny on vbd, but they’re my BEST FRIEND!!!”) but I think if the coach believes there is a legitimate conflict of interest, and the judge, coach, and tab director all discuss it, allowances can be made.
Endgame: A big issue that needs its own thread.
5) Debate has become student-centric, yo: This is the biggie. This is, I think, the underlying fear that drives Mr. Baldwin’s essay – that adults have become superfluous to the activity. This is a very legitimate fear. Mr. Timmons did some number crunching at the Greenhill tournament regarding mutual preference to determine that yes, debaters want younger judges. And the success of VBI and other camps shows they want younger lab leaders, too. I think Mr. Baldwin’s sole insightful comment in the entire article is that ‘Most students know what they want, but few students know what they need’. This is absolutely true. However, the implications he draws from it, that businesses like vb exploit this lack of judgment to gain profit, are clearly ($250,000 worth) up bulls$&t creek.
Nevertheless, I think at some level debate has shifted toward an activity where debaters get what they want too much, and adults like me who feel underappreciated and powerless to do anything about it. Too often this powerlessness is harnassed into conservative posturing that further alienates them from the community. Those of us who try to bridge the gap end up hitting our heads against posts by young people who are at best infuriatingly immature and at worst egotistical bullies. And yes, those people are very much the minority in the community, but they are a very vocal minority. The presence of that small group makes adults like myself question the wisdom of giving any student too much power or choice, which means that sadly, in the eyes of many tournament directors and older coaches, all debaters are being lumped into one category with a few mewling brats.
So there is a tug of war going on, between adults who are overreacting to student-centric debating because of the toxic minority, and the students who are overreacting to adult conservatism because they feel like they are being treated like idiots. Yay generational struggle. Sadly, this struggle has reached a rather acute level in the community today, and the formation of the LDEP shows that the adult side is ready to fight back with some real ammunition (in disclosure, I did email to join that organization, but haven’t heard back, and if it exists merely to support Mr. Baldwin’s posturing, I will quit).
Ultimately, there are two possible results. In one, debate continues to become more student-centric, which means less adaptation to judges and more gamesmanship, because who in power wants to be told no? In the other, coaches and judges take a stronger hand in the activity and it returns to the ‘good old days’ of four or five years ago. If the first option prevails, many students will be happy, but it will be a short lived joy. The community would collapse, because schools would abandon the activity. Maybe the coaches would turn to Public Forum (gag). Maybe they would create some new Philosophical Debate (could be fun, in a stabbing your eye with a plastic fork kind of way). But LD would die. If the second option prevails, the vocal minority of students will throw hella tantrums, accuse everyone and everything of being fascist jerks, and storm off to the corner. Then everyone else would get over it and have a real debate community again. Cue the ‘much rejoicing’.
Note (and I should have explained this earlier) that when I talk about student-centric debate, I don’t mean the option that vbi gives people to choose their own modules at camp. That is awesome. The ability to choose their own curfew, however, is something I’m not so hot about at vbi. I think that’s the difference between treating students like intelligent teenagers and treating students like intelligent adults. Students are NOT adults, even though they may be ridiculously intelligent and mature (and you guys are). But judgment is something that takes years to learn (I still haven’t, and man, does my job history show it). And to truly learn and mature, a person has to be denied things. They have to be told to do things they don’t want to do, or don’t see the point of. That is how people acquire discipline, and discipline is an essential part of survival in the real world.
Sure, a debater can be a smart kid, and they can read lots of Zizek and Baudrillard, and they can speak really fast and sound cool, and they can strike judges they don’t like and win lots of tournaments, and at the end of their career, they will be smarter. But they will not be wise. Wisdom requires discipline and self-sacrifice. And while it is absolutely true that after people get to college/the real world they will either learn discipline or fail utterly, but I think that the debate community offers a unique opportunity to instill those values (gah! she said values! RED STATE!!!) now. Certainly that’s why I stayed involved in the activity for ten years, and even more certainly, the lack of discipline is why I’m doing very little in it now. I sincerely hope the debate community can get that value back. I do not have a magical solution as to how it will, but I can promise that vitriolic, misapplied rants like Jason Baldwin’s, or even nicer rants like RJ’s that pillow talk about ‘education’ but mean ‘power’ are not going to do it.
Endgame: I dunno, I quit debate and everyone’s going to flame me anyway. Drink Dr. Pepper!
Posted from: 67.171.247.178
October 14th, 2005 13:13
I love daryn more than I love taffy. And I’m a man who loves his taffy.
Posted from: 24.16.112.123
October 14th, 2005 13:14
(1) the people featured are pretty
So that’s why I haven’t been on VBD…. :(
Posted from: 205.167.47.1
October 14th, 2005 15:01
I agree with pretty much everything Daryn said except for her last point.
I made this argument in my no-longer-upcoming VBD interview (haha, how ironic), but since that’s no longer going up, I want to make it here.
I think that is a misevaluation of the data to say that if we let students “get what they want,” THEN DEBATE WILL GO AWAY FOREVER AHHH.
I think the more plausible scenario is similar to the way Daryn predicts the other option to turn out. Some old coaches will scream and yell about “those darn kids” that are “ruining debate,” then, as Daryn says her option would work out, “everyone else would get over it and have a real debate community again. Cue the â€much rejoicing’. ”
I mean seriously. Schools are going to stop funding debate because debate becomes faster? Every teacher in my school who has seen the way fast debate works have been impressed, not deterred. Schools are going to stop funding debate because there is discussion of alternative philosophical perspectives? Please. English departments would rejoice if they knew that certain authors were being discussed by high school students in an intelligent and mature fashion. Let’s not kid ourselves by asserting that “debateland will dissappear!” if the “students” get what they “want.”
Also, I think, while there is a correlation between age and judging paradigm, there is no such causation. For example, I’m pretty sure that Anjan Choudhary and Michelin Massey are both some of the most preferred critics in the nation. As someone who many characterize as one of the “students” who wanna bring down the house, or whatever, I know I’d love to have them in the back in any round. Andy Charrier, Nick Coburn-Palo…It’s not like it’s the OLD PEOPLE VERSUS THE NEW PEOPLE WWE CAGE MATCH AT SMACKDOWN XVII.
As far as discipline is concerned, I’m not really sure what Daryn is talking about. Are we speaking, discipline in the way students debate (stylistically)? discipline in the way students act towards judges? discipline in the way students conduct themselves in hotels at nights? I guess I’m just confused…what is this “discipline”?
In the end, I don’t think that any of Daryn’s predictions about what would happen if debate kept on its progressive trend hold much weight at all.
But everything else she said I agree with. :)
Posted from: 24.20.200.89
October 14th, 2005 15:05
I never attended VBI, and if Jason Baldwin walked into my house wearing a shirt that said “Jason Baldwin” I wouldn’t recognize him. One thing however that I find interesting is the general consensus that the discontinuation of student interviews is a good thing. I appreciated the fact that Josh Meah (who I also have never met) acknowledged the value of the student interviews on the level of amusement. I like reading the occasional interview because they’re interesting and enjoyable; the same reason I like watching Dan Patrick grill Shaq on SportsCenter’s “Budweiser Hot Seat.”
The benefits of such interviews from an educational perspective have been a little better articulated. I think interviews can be valuable as educational tools. David Wolfish’s interview, for example, shed light on approaches to theory that I hadn’t really been exposed to. Both current and former debaters have valuable insights, but the reason that I would rather read an interview of a current debater is because I find people my own age who are currently participating in debate more interesting than people who aren’t my peers.
It seems that a few objections to student interviews have surfaced (and maybe I’m missing some).
1) That student interviews are intimidating to opponents.
I don’t really think this is problem. Shaq’s SportsCenter appearances might intimidate opposing players, but that’s not ESPN’s fault. It’s up to the players to overcome their fears and work a little harder to try take down the “celebrities.” Likewise, it’s up to the interviewees to deal with the targets that inevitably go on their backs due to their success and exposure. Additionally, Pat Fitch’s post outlines pretty clearly how interviews in fact make successful debaters more approachable.
2) That student interviews put pressure on judges to rep out.
Once again, the athletic interview applies. Referees are responsible for making fair decisions in games even when big name players are involved. In fact, to say that media coverage of competitive events should be restricted because of a possibility of bias almost comes across as patronizing because the implication is that the officials are inadequate and incapable of making responsible decisions. In any competitive activity, there are pressures on officials/judges. It’s up to those judges to deal with those influences. When a basketball ref let’s Jordan travel blatantly, nobody places the blame on Sports Illustrated. Debate shouldn’t be any different. The fact that some judges might not be able to handle an interview with the rugged Jeremy Schifberg isn’t a reason for Jon Cruz to discontinue the practice entirely.
3) That interviews hurt peoples’ feelings.
I’ve yet to run across a debater that would be seriously hurt if their career ended without an interview. I’ve been friends with Jeremy for a long time. We’ve competed a little bit in our activities. Though I sometimes feel jealous of his success, his VB interview did not hurt my feelings or make me feel bad. It’s not like I’m especially mature either, I’m sure most other debaters are even harder to offend than I am. Basically, I think the positives of student interviews outweigh the possibility of hurt feelings, especially because most debaters can deal with it anyway.
Sorry about any spelling/grammar issues.
Posted from: 167.206.203.14
October 14th, 2005 15:24
wait, the prashant interview isn’t happening any more??
Posted from: 24.107.9.104
October 14th, 2005 15:28
(I’m not really interested in the VBI Good/Bad Debate just wanted to clarify something)
I might not be understanding something. But non-profit just means at the end of the day whoever the owner or share holders are don’t walk away with cash.
You can be a non-profit and still:
have revenues much higher than expenses that you reinvest in the institution.
charge a higher tuition than competitors
pay staff more than the competitors
waste lots of your revenue on stupidity
pay people to post online
The fact that KNDI or anyone does or doesn’t do these things doesn’t mean that any other for profit institution doesn’t do these things in the same manner than KNDI does. Especially with debate institutions, non-profit just means their books are structured a little differently and the government categorizes it differently when looking at taxes. As a student you’d never be able to tell one way or the other unless the institution decides to make that information public.
Does anyone know how I can get 4 free pages of advertising in the Rostrum?
Sam Duby
Posted from: 24.6.251.224
October 14th, 2005 15:31
It isnt being posted because he is currently competing.
Posted from: 24.211.155.46
October 14th, 2005 17:53
Stephen-
I included each of your points so I could respond to them:
Baldwin’s link:
“There is always a risk that for-profit education schemes will compromise the proper goals and standards of a discipline in order to be more popular with consumers and hence more profitable.”
1. “VBI doesn’t profit. To the extent it is definitionally “for profit,” this term can only be used in the most loose of senses… and would fail miserably at actually linking to Baldwin’s disadvantages.”
Just because VBI doesn’t profit does not mean that it is not driven by a profit MOTIVE. It is this Jason is claiming is harmful. In that sense, your argument that VBI doesn’t profit proves nothing. That is not to say that I completely agree with Jason’s claims. In fact, I do not. Profiting from something should not be viewed as proof of bad intentions. (This also means that someone taking a loss should not necessarily be viewed as having good intentions. Almost any business is going to have to take a loss at first in order to profit later.) I do agree with Jason that the profit motive can be dangerous when taken too far. I also agree with him that those dangers are especially acute in a field like education. I differ from Jason in that I don’t feel that the profit motive is uniquely more harmful than the other non-financial personal motives at play in a competitive market. I don’t think there has to be a link between commodification and profit. If Victory Briefs were a non profit organization and operated exactly the same way it does now, I would still suggest that certain things it has done have contributed to the excessive commodification of LD. In fact I already agreed that many of the non-profit institutes have also contributed to this problem. I object to people attempting to improve this activity by turning it ever more into something that can be bought and sold, something which sadly ALL camps are doing. I think people believe they are doing this for the right reasons, and to an extent they probably are; but I can’t help but think that they are also driven by competitive desires as well. This can lead them to lose perspective about what is truly important. My fear is that this leads to the EXCESSIVE commodification of LD. To respond to something you said below: I believe every institute contributes to commodification, I am not sure they all contribute to the harm of excessive commodification. I am not suggesting we completely end commodification, just that people in positions of influence ought to recognize the dangers of excessive commodification and act with a deliberate sense of restraint to try to curb them. I think every institute could do a better job of this. I don’t see a whole lot of evidence that they are doing it right now. That belief is only further by the way in which people refuse to even acknowledge the harmful effects of excessive commodification. I am more than willing to hate the game and not the player; but not if the player themselves is not willing to hate the game.
2. “On â€commodification’, to assign economic value to something is to assign it value as capital in terms of some kind of exchange scheme.. so assuming we run with the academic juggernaut that is Wikipedia (is this the emphasis on sound research we hear so much about from Baldwin and the â€LD Education Project’?), it’s fair to say my point remains: either.. neither VBI nor Baldwin’s organization fosters a commodification effect… or they both do but in a sense that is absolutely without gravity.”
I responded to the substance of what you have said here above. (To summarize: your point does not remain because it ignores the distinction between any commodification and excessive commodification.) As for you attacking me for using Wikipedia to define a term, I am disappointed that you would stoop to making ridiculous arguments in a snide manner. You never actually advance a substantive argument against that definition- you never claim that it is wrong or inaccurate, or does not help to clarify the ideas we are discussing. In fact, you are willing to accept the definition and move the debate forward. Yet in spite of that you feel the need to chatise me for using Wikipedia. We ought to assess the value of a definition based on its functionality in creating an adequate framework for discussion, not based its source. Hence I fail to see how my use of this definition represents poor research. Too bad this isn’t a timed rebuttal where I would probably be forced to drop or undercover this. Then you could extend it and pretend that you had actually made a good argument.
3. “Baldwin talks about the disads to mixing profit and education but isn’t comparative at ALL. How else ought educational institutions, for example, remain accountable to the consumers and their needs. Baldwin’s alternative is a â€planned economy of education’ in which a clique of elite coaches and tournament directors decide on the bottom line. Virtuous debate gets defined by… Baldwin and people who happen to agree with him. I don’t think it’s especially outrageous to encourage students to take ownership of their education and work with instructors to achieve self-managed goals. There are obvious limits to this, but limits imposed by common sense across a broad field of educators… not limits articulated by those with a narrow agenda. Planned economies deliver the same 1961 car model in East Germany until 1989. I suspect unilaterally planned curricula would deliver 1994 debate wisdom to the students of 2005. Teachers are teachers for a reason; they do possess some expertise. But they are not thusly qualified to speak for every student. Without a feedback loop, educators will be at a loss or on a soapbox. A market for camps enables students to take a cooperative and democratic path to their education—I’d like to think there’s a middle ground here, that we are not letting the patients run the asylum. But we are treating students with the mutual respect demanded in education.” There’s good debate, there’s bad debate. A dynamic market will experience a little bit of both.. some days more than others. Debate fascism is not the answer.
Your argument that a free market approach will maximize the educational value of the activity is highly problematic. As anyone who has studied a little economics can tell you, education is a prime example of a market failure because it has huge spillover benefits. In other words, the benefits of education accrue to many people other than those directly involved its exchange. Since the actors in this exchange only consider the cost and benefits to themselves, resources will be under allocated to the production of this service in an unregulated market. This is why education is considered a quasi-public good and is commonly provided by the government.
In the market for LD the benefit most of the students are seeking is winning, education is almost entirely a spillover benefit. This means it is not factored heavily, if at all, into their considerations. (At least in a market for more general education the consumers are actually demanding education itself, just not as much as would maximize the benefits to society as a whole.) Since education in the LD market is purely a spilllover benfit, the only way to ensure an optimal amount is produced is to have an outside source interfere to correct that market failure. This does not require a planned economy, simply a modified market system. Your argument that any regulation of a market will inevitably create bad results is only true of a product that has no spillover benefits. This in not the case in the LD market, which is why myself and others believe there needs to be intervention to correct the market’s failure.
I also feel your comment about debate fascism is off base. Not every aspect of life is served well by democracy. The military and the Federal Reserve come to mind. Almost all educational institutions in our society are in fact intentionally structured to be undemocratic. Even though they are subject to some level of democratic accountability, that is not their essential nature. Academic freedom, the idea that the instructor is given great discretion in deciding what to teach, is decidedly undemocratic. Yet I think most people tend to view it as an important part of good education. What I am trying to say is that I am not really sure why a more democratic framework for this a activity is necessarily good. You seem to make an ends based claim for why it is. It is a claim I don’t find very compelling, however, because I do not share your view of those ends. You find current debate practices to be good, I don’t. I am not sure how that can be resolved. I find it intriguing though that you claim to defend a democratic vision of the activity, but also seem to support the belief that we should strive to have only certain types of judges. The idea that only people of certain qualifications should make decisions seems very undemocratic to me. So does endorsing practices that cause the activity to only be accessible to people with specialized knowledge. My argument is that the way to make the acitivity more inclusive is not to find ways of sharing that specialized knowledge with a greater number of people, but rather encouraging practices that shape the activity in a way that one does not have to have that specialized knowledge to participate in it meaningfully. I believe the guidelines set forth by the LDEP are a good starting point. I also think we must go even further and get rid of even some of the more traditional coventions as well. Among these are the value premise and criterion, line by line analysis, and the requirement for a negative case. I also believe judges should take notes rather than flow (at least in the traditional sense that the word is used.) A reasonable and intelligent person should be able to participate in this activity as a competitor or judge without having to attend an institute, or without purchasing a handbook and dvd first. Only on that day will LD be the type of inclusive activity it was created to be in the first place.
Posted from: 24.211.155.46
October 14th, 2005 17:58
everyone scroll down to the bottom of this page and look at the link VB has to the “Previous Entry” …
Previous Entry (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER HANDBOOKS AND DVD NOW AVAILABLE!)
Of course, VB totally doesn’t commodify. They’re hella legit. Right.
Posted from: 69.231.82.221
October 14th, 2005 19:43
dear “me,”
i don’t think the argument was ever that victory briefs does not “commodify.” i think the core argument from victor has always been that victory briefs is a service that helps to democratize debate among other productive things. we ask that you pay for our services to help introduce you to the topic — that is true. if you don’t want to purchase our products, that’s unfortunate, but ultimately okay; we do offer a free service called the vbd, which you definitely use (probably daily).
this website costs money.
our office space costs money.
my bills cost money.
if your argument is really that because victory briefs sells briefs that we make debate a “commodity,” then i guess every company that sells educational material to students, teachers, and schools “commodifies.” to the extent that we feel like providing information for the community and a forum for discussion, i hope you’ll excuse my posting to let people know who do like what we produce that they can help keep the lights on.
om shanti shanti shanti.
michelin massey.
Posted from: 71.36.129.161
October 14th, 2005 21:22
I’m not letting Amit take all the blame for the eyeholes. I didn’t know he ever went to Victor and told him. It’s largely my fault as well because I started with turning his around and from there it went on.
Anyway, with actual stuff, I’m still missing some points. Do people really believe that Jason is right in his arguments to begin with (ignoring VBI)? I mean, I see some real problems with his analysis… specifically in what I hesitate to call in a non-deabte round “solvency.”
Is VBI really the cause? Would kids actually do more work if they couldn’t get handbooks or hire coaches? Wouldn’t the kids who get all their work frmo there just not do work, and then get “even less” from the activity? Wouldn’t we need to not allow people to talk at all in debate to stop friends from voting for friends, which would clearly hurt education because you can’t learn from others?
Posted from: 140.247.156.223
October 14th, 2005 23:14
I’m trying to organize this in a way that makes sense. I think there are too many big issues relevant to debate today being discussed at once, which makes it hard to have a coherent discussion on any of them, so I’ll basically write about the two-three I feel strongly about.
I am ambivalent on the subject of VB. I think that it does many good things for the community: by all accounts, VBI is an excellent program, the conversations on the website are stimulating, and it’s nice that a more coherent community has been formed by the enormous unpaid efforts of Jon Cruz et. al. I largely visit for the results, but it’s nice to have a pleasant, centralized portal where all facets of the debate community are pretty fairly represented. I think that those who run VB, VBI, VBD, ADD (as Menick would say…) are nothing but well-intentioned, as are the many coaches and volunteers and others who commit so much time and effort to this activity every year.
That being said: I don’t think that the fact that VB does many good things for the community means that it is perfect in every way. I turn to the subject of elitism…
Elitism has always been a problem in LD. I KNDI at the University of Kentucky after my junior year in high school, the summer of 2001. I was not a fellow (Jessica Huynh was in my lab, incidentally – Hey Jessica!). And yes, Fellows were always a little revered. Since I was a freshman in high school oh so many years ago, there has been a reverence for the very talented and an elitism that springs from winning a lot, from being good at something, and for having people tell you that all the time. I’m a little confused at Mr. Baldwin’s thinly-veiled implication that VB increases (or even causes) elitism – since his program reveled in it for so many years, but I digress.
I think that it’s true that VB does a lot to create community, but that doesn’t change the fact that posting interviews and prefacing anyone’s name with a list of their accomplishments and posting big prominent pictures of winners with big trophies elevates those very talented people above everyone else. There is an important distinction between how VBD does this and how it was always done in the past: on the LDL, someone would just send out compiled results (subject line: Manchester results), and you scrolled down to read them. Most of the time, the poster managed to figure out what set of initials meant who, and we were all well-informed. lddebate.org forums were very similar in that they were (are) decentralized in the way that information is compiled, distributed, and presented. The distinction between the two previous implementations of online debate community and this one is that the information on VBD is distributed from one centralized source, and we consider everything to come from that source to be Important. More simply, there’s a difference between scrolling down to read results from the bottom up and opening up a site to have a big picture of the winners and runners up blaring at you, with the rest of the tournament hidden behind the link. These are very subtle differences, I know, but they’re present, and they matter. Before, it was everyone posting about everything, with results all jumbled together from various sources; now, it’s the Big Debate People posting big pictures declaring the omnipotent winner of this tournament or that, as though the important thing about the debate tournament is the winner.
That’s bad, because it destroys the community, making the winning the most important part of a debate tournament. Sure, winning is important (no one goes to a tournament intending to lose), but equally, if not more, important are the people you meet and the conversations you have and the bad meals you eat between rounds and the things you learn in rounds. Elitism and reverence for the elite creates a class of special debaters, segmenting the population into the good untouchables and everyone else and disrupting the flow of relationship-making (or whatever you want to call it). Yes, this problem has always existed. Yes, this problem will probably always exist. Yes, the problem exists in professional basketball. This does not mean that we should just throw up our hands and declare the problem unsolvable: VBD, as such a powerful force in the modern debate community, is in a position to take steps to try and alleviate the problem.
So what kinds of steps could be taken? I don’t think VBD should stop posting results (hell, it’s half the reason I visit). I think that, actually, my former coach (Jim Menick) has some of the best advice on how to restructure VBD to make sure that emphasis is given to everything in proportions that make sense (I won’t rehash too much, but he basically says that it would make more sense to structure the site in several columns with different categories, so all the way to the left could be results, and then in the middle could be discussions about the community, about teaching and coaching, etc, and the right could be…whatever. I think VBD should do this anyway, because there’s just too much news to put it all in one big-ass column, but what Menick says makes sense. You should go read his opinion on it – coachean.blogspot.com – because I can’t articulate it nearly as well).
I understand that VB does a lot for the community in bringing together debaters of all levels. I appreciate this. But there are things about the organization that could be even better, and I only wish we could discuss those things in an intelligent, critical, and objective way.
Problem two: the question of Biased Judges.
I am a judge. I am endlessly annoyed by the bizarre and completely convoluted intentions that are continually ascribed to debate judges. Personally, I just want to be friendly and maybe help someone learn something, and have some good conversations. Come on, guys. I can’t remember a round ten minutes after it happened, I cannot possibly hold a grudge long enough to remember to drop you for it. Besides, no one who commits as much time to the activity as Jon Cruz, Michelin Massey, etc would be in it to make biased decisions to help their debaters win or because of some random comment on VBD. People out of high school who are committed to the activity are committed because they think debate is a valuable pass-time for high schoolers that requires outside, adult participation to thrive. It is impossible to care enough to be involved in LD debate and simultaneously make stupid biased decisions for no reason. I’m sure it happens. But it doesn’t happen in the enormous majority of rounds. Stop being conspiracy theorists. People should recuse themselves from rounds in which they are legitimately biased, but I think this happens far less often than most people would have me believe.
Final problem: old vs young
I think that it’s great that so many recent graduates are so committed to the activity (though I invite them to check out real college life every once in a while, because it does a body good). At the same time, it’s the lifers that keep the activity going, the teachers who lobby with schools to keep the budget, the people who have been in the community for many years who have kept it going for so long. Time and again, I am appalled by the sheer lack of respect given to these people, some of whom have been around for 30 years and are not getting paid, who may not like it if you talk too quickly, whose hair is gray and who prefer when you debate arguments that are explicitly topical (side note: my hair is not gray, and I still prefer explicitly topical arguments). Besides that, debate doesn’t just exist for people who have enough money to hire college students and can pay their own way to tournaments: debate exists because schools are willing to fund it, are willing to host high school tournaments (for everyone, not just the winners), and who continue to see the value in an activity practiced by very few (in the grand scheme of things). We cannot alienate these people. On a related issue, Menick has mentioned to me several times the difficulty that LD will face if it turns into policy. Here’s a secret: policy is not as popular as it once was, because it’s incomprehensible. There are still powerhouses, of course, but it draws fewer students than it used to and schools are less willing to fund an activity that no one understands. The faster and more incomprehensible LD debate becomes, the smaller it will become, because fewer younger students will want to do it (being intimidated or just not seeing the point), fewer parents will be able to judge small tournaments for the younger kids or at large tournaments for the older kids who have no one else to cover for them, and fewer schools will be willing to pay money for it. Those elements are the backbone of the activity, not the Glenbrooks champions, and without them, LD will fade away.
The direction of LD – regarding critical theory – is also something I feel strongly about, but I guess that’s a discussion for another day.
Posted from: 68.237.220.36
October 15th, 2005 05:28
I was at Bronx yesterday, and all the good people were sitting at one table, or maybe a cluster of tables (I don’t know because I wasn’t there; elitism is bad). And I noticed that being at this table proportionally increased the number of times your face comes on the banner or your name comes up on results sheets (or is it vice versa??!?). And this little freshman noob even tried to approach them, but he instead immediately erupted into a ball of fire. When the heavy smoke cleared, what remained was in the clear and distinct quasi-phallic form of the ‘vb.’
Posted from: 152.163.100.203
October 15th, 2005 10:31
To preface, I think the influence of critical theory and so called post-modern philosophy are great for LD and I really can’t understand why those who emphasize education are often up in arms about debaters using original ideas and researching new thinkers.
On the other hand, the thought that “progressive” stylistic changes won’t affect the long term sustainability of LD seems naive. For an event born out of the incomprehensibility of CX debate we seem to forget this fairly often. College CX is literally dying for the same reason. Every year two or three major policy teams end up switching to Parli. True, college cx has -ahem- “progressed” to the point where teams are kritiking topicality and affirming the resolution “as a vision”. I think though that high school administrations will be somewhat more incredulous with debate (I mean, college is pretty much one big kritik even without debate). High schools also tend to have more cash flow problems and unfortunately, administrators who don’t really give a shit.
If high school programs do begin to face pressure to make the activity more accessible coaches will end up turning to Public Forum- an event that does a pretty good job synthesizing everything wrong with contemporary political discourse. The result obviously isn’t to drop Prashant every time you judge him. In general, any paradigm that intervenes in order to emphasize some vague idea of education is going to be counter-productive; that is I don’t think that paradigm will catch on much in the current climate and I think focusing on BEING educational is LESS educational than just focusing on arguments.
So that leaves me with a three paragraph rant that was not productive in the least. I don’t have any way to solve this problem except to ask debaters and coaches to be wary of moving to quickly in a direction that decreases accessibility. That doesn’t mean anyone should dumb down their arguments but maybe a 2-point a priori overview instead of a 4-pointer? Is that too much to ask?
Please, so kids don’t have to start doing public forum…
Posted from: 152.163.100.203
October 15th, 2005 10:32
To preface, I think the influence of critical theory and so called post-modern philosophy are great for LD and I really can’t understand why those who emphasize education are often up in arms about debaters using original ideas and researching new thinkers.
On the other hand, the thought that “progressive” stylistic changes won’t affect the long term sustainability of LD seems naive. For an event born out of the incomprehensibility of CX debate we seem to forget this fairly often. College CX is literally dying for the same reason. Every year two or three major policy teams end up switching to Parli. True, college cx has -ahem- “progressed” to the point where teams are kritiking topicality and affirming the resolution “as a vision”. I think though that high school administrations will be somewhat more incredulous with debate (I mean, college is pretty much one big kritik even without debate). High schools also tend to have more cash flow problems and unfortunately, administrators who don’t really give a shit.
If high school programs do begin to face pressure to make the activity more accessible coaches will end up turning to Public Forum- an event that does a pretty good job synthesizing everything wrong with contemporary political discourse. The result obviously isn’t to drop Prashant every time you judge him. In general, any paradigm that intervenes in order to emphasize some vague idea of education is going to be counter-productive; that is I don’t think that paradigm will catch on much in the current climate and I think focusing on BEING educational is LESS educational than just focusing on arguments.
So that leaves me with a three paragraph rant that was not productive in the least. I don’t have any way to solve this problem except to ask debaters and coaches to be wary of moving to quickly in a direction that decreases accessibility. That doesn’t mean anyone should dumb down their arguments but maybe a 2-point a priori overview instead of a 4-pointer? Is that too much to ask?
Please, so kids don’t have to start doing public forum…
Posted from: 69.230.77.42
October 15th, 2005 10:56
Wesley – remind me to buy you some taffy next time I see you!
Prashant – As usual, you and I disagree less than we think we do. The first part of your post deals with stylistic issues ruining debate, which is not in fact what I talking about. I think the style war is completely irrelevant to the discipline war, and in fact adults who spend all of their time prioritizing style issues as THE problem in LD only alienate students and pull attention away from the real problems.
Moreover, I think most people have misinterpreted my paradigm and your post shows this. Let me just clarify now. I do not dislike speed on face. I tell people not to spread the case because a) I need the arguments slowly to understand them if they are the foundation of your offense and b) it is often a cheap ploy by poor debaters who struggle in rebuttals. I have no problem with fast rebuttals, although most debaters do them poorly. I saw John Lewis at Greenhill do the first REAL LIVE spread that I have seen in about three years. There were like five DIFFERENT unique answers for every point, and they even CLASHED. I nearly pissed myself.
As for critical theory and alternative case positions, love most of em, my students ran tons of them last year. What I do not like are kritiks that reject the legitimacy of the resolution, because I think that is anti-creative and stupid and makes a painful debate to watch. It’s like, thinking inside the box is stock args (enh, fine), thinking outside the box is CT, CPs and argument & rhetoric level kritiks (sweeet), but resolutional kritiks just burn the box (she said fire Beavis!!!). That said, I want to see all arguments done well and not just to confuse younger debaters.
What I think will ruin LD is what Claire LeGoues so eloquently posted above. Basically, if adults bail out of the activity, it will stop being funded, it will die. Unless you guys want to LARP debate rounds in your spare time, respect the community, and the community only exists because of schools and adults.
As for what I meant by discipline, in writing out an email regarding my original post, I realized that everything I believe is truly a problem in debate comes from coaches and judges not doing their jobs. I want to expound on that point, but it isn’t related to this thread (which is overfull as is) so I will wait for .org to re-emerge and you and I can go at each other’s throats then.
ANYONE- HOW THE HE$& DO THE PARAGRAPH BREAKS WORK? I can’t get it to work right! ARGH!
Posted from: 68.198.158.134
October 15th, 2005 12:24
petraro, quit the humor and stick with what you know best; namely, how to order a pizza.
Posted from: 71.141.22.74
October 15th, 2005 21:18
Daryn-
I think you’re probably right that we agree on most everything that is being discussed. I will discuss what we disagree whenever .org gets fixed as well.
Posted from: 24.90.9.11
October 16th, 2005 10:36
+1 to pat fitch
speaking as a sophmore who last year read numerous interviews, all of what pat said was dead on, it brings the idolized debaters down to the level of normal everyday kids, and if i hit jeremy shiftberg this year i wouldn’t be scared of him, chances are i’d bring up our joint love of sports, and know that win or lose, jeremy’s a nice guy so i could have some fun in the round
jon, i urge you not to ban interviewing students in the prime of the career at least until this thread is fully exhausted, as numerous people have recounted, even if you forget a) the educational value, or b) the humorous value, i feel that pat had it completely right when interviews (at least for me) serve to help make people seem more normal, and less god like, at least for me the phrase we fear the unknown is much more true, i’d much less like to hit p. rai who i know next to nothing about except his outstanding achievements, but maybe if you post the fabelled interview that apprehension will go away too
Posted from: 24.46.44.48
October 16th, 2005 11:29
VB does bring about elitism by glorifying good debaters.
So what? If anything, it motivates some young debaters to do well. They see these individuals as being really good (which may or may not be true, most often true) and strive to do well like them. It’s not like VB worships good debaters, but you have to give these kids some credit. They did work hard and deserve the respect they receive. We shouldn’t stop giving them credit by not doing any more interviews, and VB(D) shouldn’t be criticized for highlighting those few students for working hard. There is obviously a competitive nature to debate, and let’s leave it that way. Even though winning isn’t everything, I strive to be a good debater and hope that I’ll break at tournaments. We have to realize that the debaters who do win tournaments aren’t doing it for the “fame.” If they were, then they have to realize that they’re not going to be stalked my any sort of paparazzi (Jon Cruz is an exception).
In regards to Peter Petraro’s comment about Big Bronx
When I was at the tournament I saw the same thing. I, and most others there, knew that it was a bunch of good debaters. From my perspective at least, it wasn’t like the “almighty, banner-hogging kids” immediately flocked to each other. They were pretty much in the top labs in camp and knew each other from there and previous tournaments, or whatever the situation may be. I don’t think that they were sitting next to each other because they were elitist and would only converse with other good debaters. VB wasn’t the actor in doing this either. As for the freshman, c’mon, who wouldn’t be somewhat intimidated by a group of some of the best debaters in the northeast, if not the country? I know I secretly was, I mean, these guys (and girls!) made their way to the top by working hard and I hope that one day I’ll be as good as them. If anything, VBI, like was said, is a way to break down the barriers between all debaters, good, bad, old, new.
P.S. VBI was an amazing experience and only elevated my skills. I am completely grateful that such a place exists for students who love debate and simply want to improve.
~ Erin
Posted from: 4.254.82.57
October 16th, 2005 12:26
Rich Edwards is writing a response to Jason’s article that will be posted in the Rostrum…Rich Edwards is known for his tab programs that most tournaments use in the country. He also was the first (I think) to begin writing debate briefs….
Should be interesting.
Posted from: 68.99.17.24
October 16th, 2005 14:37
Regarding Claire Le Goues excellent post, thank you and best wishes. Especially your “final problem” analysis – may you be the next generation of ‘old timers’ as those of us in the current ‘old timers group’ aren’t going to last much longer.
Posted from: 68.99.17.24
October 16th, 2005 14:48
By the way – without specific comment on either side of the spectrum for this issue, I’d like to think the Baldwin article in question was very beneficial, if for no other reason than to create the discourse we see here. Perhaps this article was long overdue and if nothing else, both extremes on this issue will potentially see where they have room for improvement and consider revising their behavior.
Posted from: 66.42.43.177
October 16th, 2005 15:55
i would agree that the article and its’ responses have been very good for “the discourse”. However, i would also agree that Victory briefs is an amazing experience that i would reccomend to any debater, and i know that it definitely helped me personally. Way to go Victor!
Posted from: 172.128.4.106
October 16th, 2005 21:07
I actually had the chance to attend both VBI and KNDI in the past two years and will admit that politiking is strikingly evident in both entities. But what angered me most was investing so much time and money to attend KNDI only to have the majority of my time spent there hearing the lab instructors (though not Jason surprisingly) complain about mass commercialization of debate. having a debate institute is commercialization in itself, so the hypocrisy is undeniable.
But regardless I feel guilty because I seem to have angered Baldwin and the other KNDI instructors with my constant negative critiques (1st in 4 years, according to the apologetic emails I got later on) and defense of VBI. I mean, some people need help on a topic. And if someone’s willing to publish evidence or provide a forum for networking and communication so be it.
I just wish a trivial high school activity didn’t have so much politics, especially from people who don’t even participate in the actual activity anymore.
Posted from: 71.57.91.16
October 17th, 2005 01:41
I skimmed the circlejerk but a few things caught my eye. (I use circlejerk descriptively, I’m not passing judgement on Mr. Baldwin’s or Mr. Jih’s articles or the form by which the overwhelming backslapping and support for Mr. Jih’s has found its expression in) I hardly visit this website anymore and I’m not even sure of the level of my involvement in the community anymore, but I’ll say something as long as it’s on my mind.
The one issue that has always irked me has been this celebrity sub-culture. Pat Fitch, someone in the community who has a deep sense, if not the deepest sense, of history and who I’ve always found to be very smart, said something very true.
As a freshman in high school, my relationship to the national circuit was through the daily posts to the now all but defunct LD-L. Over time I’d notice the same names over and over again. Pat points out Westwood TC and Henrick Hudson NG, but I’d think it would be in poor form to ommit Lake Highland PF (who, remember, probably led the bid count that year) as well as many, many others. There were definite boundaries. I was inspired by these people through their achievements, not their personalities. It was probably better that I didn’t know many of them personally at the time, it might have made me second guess the selection of the role models I had created for myself. The type of “community” that VB creates is one that allows debaters to meet other debaters in what I will call their “human form.” It eliminates boundaries, for better or for worse. To be honest, I think I’d have a lot more respect for people of the likes of Sam Duby if I merely knew him through results postings than having experienced him in his human form.
A lot of the genuinely “nice guys” who are glorified for being inviting, sweet, and helpful I’ve found to not really have been the case. Maybe I’m just universally disliked–a possibility that I won’t exclude–but I traveled to plenty of national circuit tournaments my senior year and I just didn’t share many of these experiences. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t good enough (read: elitism) or because I had the wrong friends (read: wrong institute) or because I wasn’t a good enough suck-up; the fact is is that a cult of personality is constructed that glamorizes specific individuals in ways that really provide little in the ways of additional inspiration over the previous forms of media distribution (read: LD-L) and in at least some cases have really exposed the ugliness of this community (literally too! I used to think all successful debaters were as handsome as Achilles! Michael Mangus clearly proves otherwise! I heart you Mangus, don’t worry).
Also, I’d be interested in knowing the net profit on VB’s brief, handbook, and DVD business before making a final assessment on their profitability. Of course, don’t feel compelled to share this on my behalf. Who am I to ask for financial disclosures. I honestly couldn’t personally care less anyway.
P.S. I always really enjoy RJ’s contributions. I think he’s ridiculously intelligent even if I don’t always agree with what he says.
P.P.S Before everyone throws around terms like commodification, it would be nice if people actually understood Marx’s Critique of Commodification and it’s relation to his social theory of alienation. The “for-profit” companies in the debate community have been doing a pretty poor job at that, despite all the claims that they provide encouragement and resources to faciliate the understanding of dense theoretical texts. I can’t wait until a “for-profit” company publishes Cliff Notes on the History of Sexuality and The State of Exception. Because honestly, who really has time to sit there and grapple with the text themselves.
Posted from: 71.57.91.16
October 17th, 2005 02:41
wow i feel stupid. this website really needs to get fixed so that people can actually believe that there post went through the first time.
Posted from: 24.153.226.112
October 17th, 2005 12:54
Or you could just look down to where it says:
Avoid clicking “Post” more than once. Response may take a few seconds.
Posted from: 68.221.197.33
October 17th, 2005 14:31
im pretty sure lee’s post was one of the most pretentious things i’ve ever read.
Posted from: 68.221.197.33
October 17th, 2005 14:33
i think lee’s post was probably one of the most pretentious things i’ve ever read.
Posted from: 68.221.197.33
October 17th, 2005 14:35
i think lee’s post was probably one of the most pretentious things i’ve ever read. im really upset i had to read it 10 times.
Posted from: 68.221.197.33
October 17th, 2005 14:36
the double-posting is actually getting pretty whack. i hard-refreshed the page 3 times and my comment didnt show up, then it came back when i posted a second time.
Posted from: 68.198.150.207
October 17th, 2005 14:57
In the interest of full disclosure, Lee Solomon is employed by KNDI.
Also, Lee, doesn’t your example of Sam Duby suggest that it’s good that we have interviews and stuff and get to know people in a human form?
Also shouldn’t KNDI perhaps disclose its financial information before KNDI staff start asking VBI to disclose its financial records?
Also, I’m kind of confused by all of this criticism of “for-profit” institutions coming out of KNDI because last time I checked KNDI still charges tuition, pays its staff and TRIES to make a profit unlike PDI run by McCobin (sp?) which has a very low tuition and is meant to provide a service.
Further hypocrisy:
Jason Baldwin criticizes debate camps hiring debaters with bad character. KNDI last year attempted and almost succeeded in hiring a former debater who KNDI staff then criticized for having a bad character when they failed to hire him/ her.
Jason Baldwin talks about how celebrity culture is bad, but doesn’t seem to mind when people worship him. In fact, he often tells people that he is the winningest debater ever.
Jason Baldwin says that the commodification of debate is bad. I’ve heard that last year at Vestavia, Jasob Baldwin himself was handing out pamphlets for KNDI and encouraging people to attend and telling them how much better at debate KNDI would make them.
Jason Baldwin says that judging conflicts of interest are bad. I’ve heard that Jason handed out those exact pamphlets mentioned above to the people he judged each round.
Jason’s article is in my opinion very misguided because of his lack of knowledge of VBI and VBI staff. Jason came from a team with a legacy of success, lots of resources at its disposal and two great coaches. Not everybody has those older debaters to teach them debate, those resources or coaches who have been in the activity for a long time. As Victor so aptly pointed out, VBI tries to help such individuals by teaching them the activity. VBI assembles many of the best coaches and debaters in the nation who can impart their knowledge of the activity to students so those students and thus the activity can improve and the activity can actually become more successful. Victor is one of the nicest people I’ve EVER met and his committment to the activity is amazing. As has already been pointed out, Victor actually accepts a loss in running VBI. There was one incident at camp where there weren’t enough computers and Victor went out and purchased a computer, so that students would get the most out of their VBI experience by having resources available to them necessary to learn.
I’d moreover argue that the VBD website run by Jon Cruz which includes postings of results and interviews is valuable insofar as it actually enhances the community atmosphere. It allows debaters to see how their friends and labmates have done at tournaments, congratulate them and keep in touch. Moreover, the interviews allow debaters to get to know other debaters on a more human level. The interviews also often contain valuable tidbits of advice.
Posted from: 134.58.253.131
October 17th, 2005 15:43
I don’t want this to sound like an advertisement for KNDI, because I don’t mean it to be; but the anonymous poster above (“Full Disclosure…”) makes a few arguments that I don’t think are fair.
First, (s)he claims that KNDI exists to try to make a profit, while other workshops intentionally charge a low tuition because they don’t care about profit. I don’t think that’s been true at KNDI, at least in the years I’ve been on staff there. Last year, I coordinated the LD division, so I was involved in the discussion of tuition. We truly did just want to charge enough to break even. Our advertising campaigns (which (s)he criticized) made that clear: KNDI was the cheapest per day of any of our main competitors, and we thought that was reasonable evidence that we weren’t in it to get rich. It’s true, our staff members were paid; but from what I know, we weren’t paid more than the average workshop staff member. I can’t say that for sure (not knowing other workshops’ payrolls besides what I’ve heard and/or been offered); but I know that I worked for the lowest amount of money I’d have been willing to work for. I was willing to do it in large part because I knew KNDI made an effort to be as inexpensive as possible so that fewer people would be excluded for financial reasons. Pat Fitch posted above that he had debaters who had traveled too much in a given school year to afford camp, and KNDI wasn’t willing to give them a break. That’s because we use official documents for financial aid (although I was never involved in that; Dr. Patterson handles it in the University’s debate office), and spending too much on travel doesn’t show up on your parent’s tax returns when you have to demonstrate need. KNDI does offer what scholarships it can afford, and the scholarships go to kids who can neither afford to travel *nor* afford camp on their own.
It was also asserted (by a few posters, including “Full Disclosure…”) that Jason Baldwin frequently calls himself the winngingest debater in history. That’s false. I’ve known him as a student and a colleague for five years, and I’ve never heard him say it. People say it about him (because by a lot of acceptable standards, it’s the truth), but he certainly doesn’t advertise it himself, and he’s so modest in person that I’m not sure if he even believes it to be so.
Additionally, “Full Disclosure…” and others have made many arguments about Jason’s supposed hypocrisy, especially about his employment at KNDI. Jason makes it explicit very early in his article that such arguments shouldn’t be considered reasons why his article is wrong. Instead, he says, those are reasons for him to resign from KNDI, which he is more willing to do than cede his ground.
A few more minor points, too (and these aren’t meant to be endorsements of the arguments they respond to so much as nullifications of “Full Disclosure…”‘s quick shots at the arguments): (1) Jason does know many past VBI staff members, because he’s been around a long time (which isn’t to say he is right about them, but he has taught many of them and has known others in other contexts); and (2) Lee Solomon never worked at KNDI, although at one point he was set to.
And finally, I think it’s fairly hilarious that someone would name him/herself “Full Disclosure of Bias Good,” because (s)he is intentionally witholding his/her own name to do so. If full disclosure is good, how about practicing a little of your own? I’m also disappointed that no one chose to respond to my previous post, but I’ve gotten used to that over the past few years…
Posted from: 66.14.234.65
October 17th, 2005 16:26
Chase Martyn writes, “I’m also disappointed that no one chose to respond to my previous post, but I’ve gotten used to that over the past few years…”
I believe Chase is mistaken given that he did not read my first posting on this issue, which was written to reply to his and other commentaries on Victory Briefs.
Back to working on distributing the book,
Michelin Massey
Posted from: 68.198.150.207
October 17th, 2005 16:31
I’m not sure what exactly KNDI means by “for-profit.” Chase says that KNDI isn’t “for-profit” because it only charges a tuition necessary to compensate its staff comparably to other camps, but doesn’t make any other profit. The problem with that though is that the money that is paid to the staff IS the profit. Like, what else would be your definition of profit? KNDI is the same as any other camp – it charges a tuition necessary to compensate its staff. What does it even mean for a camp to make a profit beyond what it pays its staff and where would that profit go? The profit is what is paid to the staff. If KNDI compensates its staff comparably to the staff of other camps then it is no less for-profit than any other camp and Jason’s argument that KNDI and Iowa are good and everyone else is bad make no sense. I’ve heard that KNDI actually pays more than some other camps, but won’t get into that because I can’t back it up. What’s really ironic though is that Jason’s article attacks VBI which is necessarily less for-profit than KNDI insofar as in order to compensate his staff, Victor has to use his own funds, which means that unlike KNDI, VBI doesn’t even charge a tuition necessary to break even!
The Lee Solomon comment was based on the KNDI website. If he isn’t a member of the KNDI staff perhaps that should be corrected because listing people and their qualifications on the website who aren’t actually staff is probably not a good idea because it’s false advertising insofar as people use camp websites to see the staff and their qualifications and decide what camp they might want to attend.
I’m not going to post my name and that’s that. Perhaps the one point that I really very, very, very strongly agree with in Jason’s article is the point about the political nature of the debate community. The fact of the matter is: the debate community is political, VERY political and it is an issue that needs to be examined. I’ve perhaps benefitted from the political nature of the debate community more often than I’ve been harmed by it, but that’s because I’ve been very careful to try not to piss anyone off because the fact of the matter is that the debate community is political end of story.
Speaking of not responding to arguments…You missed alot of the arguments, mainly the one about Jason passing out pamphlets for KNDI and advertising it at Vestavia according to many sources. Jason can work at KNDI and not actively engage in the commodification he criticizes in the article, but my argument is that Jason ACTIVELY engages in the commodification he criticizes in the article by advertising KNDI and telling people how much better it can make them at debate. It has even been suggested that Jason’s Rostrum article was an example of that commodification. If Jason really does believe his arguments then he really should resign from KNDI, which would have the further benefit of demonstrating that his article wasn’t just a self-interested attack on compettitors and then perhaps he and his article could actually be taken seriously.
I think my post does actually respond to alot of what you say in your previous post. You say the shout-outs on the site and the interviews are bad. I respond by saying they promote a sense of community and make people more human.
The only argument really unresponded to is the one about how VB should have a disclaimer on their handbooks. I’m pretty sure that many of the topic overviews do begin with statements to the effect that the handbook is only meant to be a starting place for research. Moreover, you say they should have it before the cards. I don’t think that when Victor and others say that you can’t do well jut purchasing the briefs they mean that none of the cards are good. I don’t think they would have a problem with a debater pulling one sweet card from the briefs and having their other research from elsewhere. In fact I think that’s sort of the idea of the briefs. You concede yourself that you can really only be moderately successful just using the briefs.
Posted from: 67.162.153.109
October 17th, 2005 16:54
Um… I have absolutely no dog in the Jason Baldwin v. VB fight, but profit is just Revenue – Costs. Since paying for labor is a cost, if a debate camp made *just* enough to pay its staff, then it has made no profit. Profit for a debate camp would be the money left after paying for the facilities and the staff and would presumably be go back into the organization to create other things (like briefs or DVDs or websites).
Posted from: 71.96.103.180
October 17th, 2005 21:47
Profit can also go to stock holders. Oh the day I can trade shares of VBI on NASDAQ…
Posted from: 209.11.48.2
October 18th, 2005 09:02
Micahel Arnold,
I’d argue that when talking about debate camps what is paid to the staff must be considered revenue/ profit and things like room and board have to be considered the costs. If what’s paid to the staff isn’t considered revenue/ profit then in the context of debate camps the term is meaningless. There isn’t ANY debate camp that makes more money than what it pays its staff. Also, things like running the website would certainly have to be considered a cost more so than paying the staff.
Basically there are two options:
1) Profit means money garnered by a camp above and beyond what it pays the staff. If this is our definition of profit then no camp is “for-profit” which is the term Jason’s article uses and KNDI is no better than anyone else and Jason’s accusatory article is silly.
2) Profit means money garnered by the camp above and beyond its costs (room and board) that is paid to the staff. If this is our definition of profit then every camp is “for-profit” which is the term Jason’s article uses and KNDI is no better than anyone else because as far as I know it pays its staff and Jason’s accusatory article is silly.
I think people are missing the point though which is that KNDI is no better than anyone else and may actually be worse. At best, KNDI is no better than anyone else because KNDI does the same thing as every camp – i.e. it makes enough money to cover its costs and compensate its staff at least comparably to any other camp. At worst, KNDI is more “for-profit” than camps like VBI because whereas KNDI generates enough revenue to break even, VBI actually operates with a deficit because Victor is a generous individual who is willing to give out scholarships and spend money on other items to ensure the most fun, accessible and educational experience possible for students.
Posted from: 160.39.220.165
October 18th, 2005 16:53
“I’d argue that when talking about debate camps what is paid to the staff must be considered revenue/ profit and things like room and board have to be considered the costs.”
That’s funny because such a definition is not adopted in calling churches, shelters, NGO’s, legal aid clinics, government agencies, schools, universities, etc. non-profit groups. In some cases entities such as those above make no money above their operating costs. In other cases (such as universities) the organization does seek to take in more revenue than it spends, but that “profit” is just put back into its endowment. Contrary to your bald assertion, some debate camps DO in fact run like that with the institute being a cash generator for the debate team it is associated with (this is true of some university sponsored debate camps). I don’t know how KNDI operates, but if they say they operate on a “break even” plan I’m inclined to take them at their word. However, it is ridiculous to call paying out money to the staff a profit. By that logic The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the Catholic church are all for-profit entities.
Even if a debate camp makes money for its debate team I should still think we would call that a non-profit. Profit results when individuals (shareholders) have a financial stake in money generated beyond operating cost. Thus, many universities have endowments that they manage to try and reap financial gain (many schools in the ivy league saw returns on their investment in excess of 15% last year, which would be considered a very handsome return on a stock portfolio). However, no individual or group of individuals stands to pocket any extra money if Yale’s endowment earns a lot; rather, that gain will be plowed back into projects, research, student aid and so on.
Under any definition, Victory Briefs is for-profit. If the camp or the business makes money, Victor, and the other shareholders, stand to gain financially. The merits of this are clearly debatable (and this is clear not because of any obvious problems with the VBI model, but rather, because we are having a debate about it on here). For what it’s worth I had a very good experience as a fellow at Kentucky. I also think that VBI tries to, and often does, provide a very good experience for its students.
Some might think it ironic that a man as conservative as Jason Baldwin finds such fault with private entities trying to do better what public entities have already undertaken. But I think the wave of people searching for hypocrisy is unfounded. Kentucky is run differently from VBI. Which does a better job educating is a matter best left to the public discourse and, I should think Jason would agree with me here, the market. While it’s evident what the market segment who reads this board thinks, it’s a shame that lddebate.org is down because I would be interested to hear what others have to say about for-profit vs. non-profit debate camps.
Posted from: 70.251.78.205
October 18th, 2005 18:07
First, I would like to respond to a question Matt Scarola asked me much earlier in the thread about the celebrity culture (sorry, haven’t had a chance to get online), and then post some opinions that were inspired by RJ’s comments once I finish processing all that I’m thinking.
Matt: I pretty much agree with you and Josh. I respect you two for how you are willing to challenge your peers’ views in a respectful and mature manner. The purpose of my post was to complicate the issue and challenge in kind, not disagree. Like Josh said, I don’t know the answer. But, I do think there is more to the issue than celebrity culture exists no matter what we do and the interviews are fun vs. celebrity culture promotes elitism and ego and at the very least we can work against it. Those things are all true. But, I think much of the disagreements we are having on this thread are about what is and is not actually educational for high school students. I find that these issues rarely have two sides, but are complex questions with difficult answers. It isn’t as easy as fleeting/no value vs. waiting/lasting value. Teachable moments are real, fleeting, and of significant value. Sometimes a situation comes together at just the right time to allow for powerfully deep education. Not every moment in a classroom is the same, no matter how hard you try to make every moment count. Would I still find value in Amanda’s interview if I had read it in June, certainly. But, when I read it in September, it had an important impact on my team. It shaped how I discussed feminism with my students for the rest of the year. It led to important conversations during case writing sessions about whether or not personally meaningful activism and competitive success could coincide. It motivated us to formulate argumentation as to why debate was an appropriate forum for advocating socially significant positions based on feminism since it seemed like being accused of gaming was part of the reason Amanda abandoned what I thought was one of the most powerful cases I have ever seen in debate. And yes, it led to some of my team being a bit in awe of Amanda … an awe inspired by respect. Sure we could have discussed all these things without the interview, but what made these discussions real and not just some intellectual exercise was the role model found in Amanda. That makes the impact lasting and not just a fleeting lesson plan I present one day in class.
The goal of sharing this anecdote is to illustrate the tradeoffs made with any decision regarding educational practice (which I will discuss more in my next post). I think in weighing costs and benefits, the equation needs to be considered in all its complexity. Due to my problems with elitism in debate, I think the interviews probably should wait until after students graduate, as Jon has decided to do. It is a fair compromise … but it is a compromise, not simply the “right” thing to do, whatever that is. While special educational moments may be generated by these interviews, these are moments … the problems of elitism are persistent every day encounters.
Posted from: 70.251.78.205
October 18th, 2005 21:22
I agree with Chase Martyn that this conversation has been energizing, not just for the intellectual stimulation but because it has given me a much needed faith in the ability of opposing sides in our community to come together in respectful and productive dialogue. The conversation on this thread has been characterized as both a war and a circle jerk. In terms of the war, I think it has been silently raging for a while and it has come time for there to be an open discussion of mutual respect even in our strong disagreements. I’ve also been energized by the fact that a flame war hasn’t seemed to emerge to the degree usually found on other threads when the opposing sides come together to dialogue. Even the few times it has started to digress into negativity, somebody has posted to keep the conversation on track … and kids have even apologized for overly emotional reactions in order to keep the dialogue going productively.
It is always good as a teacher to constantly rethink your practice and the theory it is based upon. RJ’s posts have been stimulating in this regard. While I often think we all agree on our end goals much more than it seems and need to remember how much we all care about what we are doing (as RJ says), I’d like to disagree with some of the things said in terms of educational theory and practice.
I don’t think vastly different views on education are clearly incompatible. Education, for which the business model fails to account, is a highly messy undertaking. There are multiple theories on curriculum development and practice in education, some of which are diametrically opposed to each other. Yet, I have found few to be wrong in any sort of factual sense. This may seem counterintuitive or illogical. In the debate world we have been taught to view complex issues as having two sides in which one must win and the other must lose. If two ideas disagree, one must be wrong. But, children don’t work that way. Students are diverse creatures with diverse needs. Discipline of children provides a good example. I’ve seen some kids who need a tough love approach and others who are emotionally scarred by such an approach. For some students, external rewards prove highly motivational. For others, external rewards destroy any genuine motivation. The examples could go on.
What has me stimulated the most is this discussion of education as a business. The business model is something I strongly disagree with in terms of education. So, it would seem that I would agree with RJ’s views on a lot of things. Yet, somehow we can share this perspective while seemingly disagreeing to a significant degree on crucial areas of education even though we start with the same underlying principle. After reading what RJ has to say, I agree with him that a business model allows for the commodification of education regardless of whether or not an institution actually makes a profit. AISD, the public school district that employed me for four years, certainly didn’t generate any income above cost, but it certainly commodified education in its approach. Ironically, I left public schools and went to private school largely (in addition to health issues caused by exhaustive hours and stress) to escape the business model that seems to be taking over education policy. I, in fact, think this model is what caused me a lot of my stress as a public school teacher. I have found in private school a commitment to the diversification of education that has made me feel respected as a professional capable of exercising responsible judgment, which has freed me as a teacher to meet the needs of my students.
For me, the problem with treating education like a business is in mainstreaming practice to correspond to some kind of theoretical or “proper” formula somebody has magically figured out to produce the intellectually and ethically healthy child as if she were a widget. You can’t manufacture a sound education like you manufacture a sound car. Where I find RJ’s comments problematic is that they either explicitly say or imply that practices he disagrees with must have resulted from a lack of perspective or misguided rationalization. What RJ calls rationalization, I consider to be the reflection necessary to prevent forcing education into a business model. I think accusing those who disagree with you as only caring about winning is the quickest path to avoiding reflection because it makes the issues so cut and dry. But education isn’t so efficient.
This discussion reminds me of a meeting I had with an administrator in AISD that ultimately led to me accepting the Hockaday job, which I had previously decided not to consider. (The story is somewhat long but it addresses the bigger educational issues that RJ’s post raises. I tend to argue in narrative format better than the typical line-by-line fashion.) After my debate team at SFA had become one of the most successful academic programs in the school district, the district decided to take away the honors credit from my course, which it had enjoyed for more than a decade. In my naïve belief that I could present a solid case against what I saw to be an irrational decision, I scheduled a meeting with our district curriculum director, a highly intelligent woman who believes her way is the only way. What struck me was how much we shared common values. Her reasoning for removing my program’s honors credit was that it created inconsistencies in the system. We all needed to be on the same page. She argued that if debate programs received honors credit then every extracurricular program should get it and then proceeded to list off courses she obviously didn’t find academically stimulating. I had put together a presentation using the district’s criteria for what deserved honors credit, which these other courses didn’t meet. Debate, however, exceeded all of these expectations, such as requiring significant independent time of the student to engage in individualized academic inquiry. She acknowledged that my presentation was true and that the samples of my students’ work were impressive, and we then proceeded to have a long conversation about potential inequities in offering honors credit to programs that benefited the wealthy white students in the district who due to socioeconomic advantage typically happened to be the children in these admittedly more advanced courses. It was obvious that we both were caring individuals who had thought long and hard about the issues we were discussing. Much of my presentation actually was based on the same underlying concerns expressed by this administrator, such as demonstrating how our program had benefited at-risk students and how the honors credit could reward them for taking on work that they usually were intimidated by, an external reward that would acknowledge them as intellectually advanced and serve to combat internalized stereotypes about their academic inferiority. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have some students in my debate class who I had specifically recruited because they were gifted kids who had never risked taking an honors course before due to having been conditioned to believe they didn’t belong among the advanced students. Despite all of our connection on both intellectual and ethical levels, she ultimately denied my request. At the end of the dialogue, she looked me straight in the face and told me that if I needed honors credit to keep students in my debate program than obviously I had the wrong values as a teacher. It was easier for her to begrudge me than to acknowledge that her streamlined model of educational efficiency might be only one of many possible answers as to what could be good for some students instead of THE answer for all children. We all needed to be on the same page regardless of the individuality of children. I had also tried to explain that honors credit was a tool toward bringing the privileged students who had been conditioned to pursue external reward into my classroom so that I could expose them to the value of intrinsically motivated intellectual work. Kids might walk in my door for their GPA, but they walked out of it having gained something personal and intangible. I was deeply offended by her accusation that I only valued external reward, and anybody who had spent anytime in my classroom thought this accusation was ridiculous. I do nothing haphazardly because I believe the responsibilities of being an educator are profound and require exhaustive reflection, which I hope my longwinded curriculum column at least models even if some experienced teachers might find its contents rudimentary.
Yet, here I am again as a judge, institute director, and coach in a position of some influence (though not anywhere near those with years of experience in the activity) being charged again, even if indirectly, of caring more about external reward (winning) than education. Because it seems these days that if you disagree with another adult in the community about educational practice then you obviously must be only in it for the trophy. And if you aren’t, you must be terribly misguided or have given no real thought to what you are doing as a professional. It would be nice if the answers were this easy. My job would be a lot simpler if the answers to the educational questions I struggle with every day could be computed using a cost-benefit calculus.
What some people call giving kids what they want, I call student-directed curriculum. It isn’t an evil idea. There have been volumes written about its benefits by people with many years of teaching behind them. My practice has been greatly informed by John Dewey’s book “Democracy and Education,” which I highly recommend to new teachers. Student-directed curriculum isn’t the same as teacherless curriculum or turning over the reigns of education to immature minds. Dewey has often been grossly mischaracterized as advocating such in the curriculum debate. What it does require is a genuine respect for a student’s process of discovery. My October curriculum column that was just posted tries to demonstrate how to construct a debate lesson based on this idea. Paradoxically, student-directed learning in my experience requires much more planning and thought about my students’ needs on my part than teacher-directed learning. As a judge, all of this translates into me trying to be open-minded about what students are trying to do in terms of their advocacy and style. This doesn’t mean I believe that anything goes in debate. Far from it. Ironically, I would guess that I tend to think a good debate round looks a lot like the adults RJ thinks are in the right. I tell students directly when I don’t like a tactic or argument they have used in a round. I try to do so with a respect for what they are attempting to accomplish, but sometimes I’m not always successful. But, if I go off on a student, I make an effort to track them down and apologize, even if it is several weeks later. I have found that some students out of an appreciation for how I treat them are quite receptive to listening to me and to trying to adapt to me. One student last year who I judged frequently would tell me about his rounds and characterize certain debates as “rounds Ms. Thomas would be proud of.” I think the number one thing I consider when choosing summer educators for my students is how I’ve seen these educators interact with debaters when they are displeased with their performance in a round. How you interact with kids is more important than your particular curricular philosophy in my opinion. That is why there can be two teachers who widely diverge in terms of their theory and practice, even to an incompatible degree, who can still have profoundly educational impacts on kids. If there was a wrong and right way of doing things, this ingredient wouldn’t really matter. And, thus, my primary problem with the business model of education is the way in which it actively devalues the individuality and professional judgment of teachers. This model seems to become more and more prevalent with the teacher shortage because a formula has to be generated to make it easier and easier for anybody to do the job. Sadly, the more education moves in this direction, the more I see the most motivated and creative teachers I know leave the career.
I’d like to address further the idea that if you at all support certain practices in debate than you obviously value winning over education. To do so, I’ll cover two of the issues often raised: speed and critical theory. What I find funny is that teaching kids to go slow and run classical philosophy can be as much about winning as anything else. As a disclaimer, I in no way intend to say that slow debate or classical debate is anti-educational or bad. My paradigm has always been that if your arguments are well explained and your style furthers actual dialogue of these arguments (read I hate blippy debate), then please be yourself. Again, I’ll make my point by anecdote.
I have a young student who competes locally who has become interested in queer theory in researching the judicial activism topic. This student is doing work that is both personally significant for her and socially significant in general. In high school climates where “that’s so gay” is a phrase tossed around casually as a form of chastisement, students exploring academic literature that might result in at least toleration and at most activism is important for our future leaders. Because the student is directing her own learning, she also is intrinsically motivated by her intellectual curiosity, rather than by extrinsic reward. So, am I providing this student with a space for what she wants or what she needs in my classroom? I don’t know the answer. On thing I am certain of is that this is a question of scale and is not a binary. If once her ideas are shaped into written form, she has to speak more quickly to share the depth of her inquiry, well we will work on word economy as much as we can to keep the speed in check. Then, we will have to practice articulation and expressiveness to maximize her ability to communicate effectively at a faster pace. In front of judges who prefer a slower speed, we will have to choose warrants to cut, even if they seem important to the advocacy. The reduction in speed would actually be an effort to be more competitively successful, not the faster pace, which would be chosen to further the depth of support for her position. In an activity that asks students to explore complex issues concerning ethical and political philosophy within time limits, there will always be a tradeoff between communication and depth. I think there is value in emphasizing both, which is why I think a variety of judges benefits the activity, even if these judges are in direct opposition to each other in terms of the debate they like to see. A debate world that emphasizes one over the other is a world that deemphasizes the importance of judge adaptation, in my opinion.
In terms of the critical content itself, the only reason I would advise my student not to run this queer theory position and to instead choose a more traditional approach to the topic would be to win ballots. I would not find it more educational to deter her from her interests in this literature just as I would not find it more educational to thrust this kind of literature onto a student interested in social contract theory (and I have those students too). The reason a “normal” approach to the topic would be more competitively strategic in this situation is that this is a younger debater who is likely to mishandle conditionality or topicality argumentation when run against her by a more advanced debater. This makes a stock case more advantageous in terms of winning on two levels:
First, judges who readily accept critical literature usually happen to be judges who also readily accept theory debate. So, when she has a judge who might enjoy the position, she also will have an opponent who can run all kinds of arguments on her that she will struggle to answer. I think many of the competitors who my team sees consistently know that theory debate isn’t our strong suite as a program, putting this student at a disadvantage in terms of winning the ballot. Debating an obviously topical position would save her much struggle.
Second, judges who dislike theory debate often (although not always) also dislike this kind of approach to casing. So, even if her opponent isn’t likely to win by using a priori theory arguments, my student is likely to lose on face anyway for running the position.
It is a no-win situation, and I have found myself in this position often. I agree that when competitiveness wins out and we decide to go for the ballot over other considerations education loses. But what counts as “going for the ballot” vs. education is again a gray area. This situation reminds me of one I actually found myself in a few years ago. A senior on my SFA team who did policy debate (yes, I had CXers) decided to run a queer theory kritik of the resolution at a conservative tournament (both in terms of debate style and political opinion). She was passionate about this position, but this tournament would determine her qualification for TFA State. If she didn’t qualify, it would be the last tournament of her debate career. She asked me what I thought she should do. I asked her which coach she wanted to respond: the coach who wanted her to win or the coach who valued her education. I gave her both perspectives. The safest route to State was to stick with a traditional case position and not run the kritik. She was walking into what couldn’t be a worse tournament for promoting her position. She told me that the environment was why she wanted to run the position. She said the best thing about debate was that as a teenager somebody had to listen to her for at least a certain amount of time on the clock. She had a real opportunity to try to impact people’s perspectives, especially in terms of other students her age. So, I told her the more meaningful thing for her to do would be to run the kritik if she believed in it that much understanding the consequences, which her partner needed to agree to. I left that call up to her. She ran the kritik. She ended her debate career with 7 of the 8 points she needed for state qualification. To this day, I’m not only proud of her but admire her. She left debate with a soul, to quote a line from an earlier post that especially hit home with me.
In terms of LD, the diversification of styles and argumentation has led to most of your highly successful debaters having multiple case positions on both sides of the topic to adapt to multiple judges. In my opinion, this phenomenon completely collapses the line in terms of the winning vs. education discussion. The motivation for doing this is to win. The result is that students read and learn more by exploring a plethora of potentialities for any given resolution and that they have to think not only about judge adaptation in terms of presentation but also in terms of their intellectual approach.
I’m skeptical of anyone who tells me there is a right answer when addressing much of the issues raised in this thread or even that there is a “righter” answer. Almost every practice both in the classroom and the debate round has its pros and cons in terms of education. There are always tradeoffs, usually significant ones in both directions. What I think is most important is that the educational process is a conscious one so that students are aware of the choices they are making, whether it be about their debate style, their personal ethics, or their intellectual pursuits. I think this is where as a coach I act as an important guide and mentor, assuring that reflection exists in all endeavors. My job is to make sure that education doesn’t only happen by accident or at random. Ultimately, though, I want my students’ education to be their own. I don’t think in the long run they gain much if I dictate values to them or tell them how they should communicate. The process of deriving values is what LD is all about, and if students walk away with a personal compass for making their own decisions then they have found what the need in education … the freedom of awareness to pursue their own self-examined life path.
Posted from: 66.193.5.99
October 19th, 2005 13:58
Let me start by saying that I found Stacy’s post to be informative and stimulating. I disagree with her point of view on many issues, but I am sure there is more common ground between our viewpoints than there is divergence. I do however think that the places we differ represent extremely serious and pressing issues to the LD community, and therefore I am glad to have the opportunity to discuss those differences in depth. (I hope that even those people who have issues with aspects of VBD will take note of this discussion as one of those positive attributes that cause many of us to support it.)
I am in the process of writing a full response and plan on posting it as soon as possible. (It takes me a little while because I have to email it someone else and get them to post it for me. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get the spacing to work right.)
RJ
Posted from: 71.57.91.16
October 19th, 2005 18:32
Mr. Full Disclosure:
I wrote this post having had no current affiliation with KNDI. Also, I have had no correspondence with any KNDI employee for at least 4 or 5 months. Actually, I’ve had zero correspondence with anyone in debate other than Alex Smith (who I coached), Alex Solomon (my brother), Adwait Parker, Petey Gil, and Mike Mencher (all of whom I sit next to in one of my Philosophy classes at school). As I said, my level of interest is probably at it’s all-time lowest. If KNDI still advertises my hiring on their website, then this is beyond my control.
Mr. Peliciotta & Ms. Thomas:
Thank you. The intelligent approaches that you both have taken toward discussing this issue is what ultimately keeps me interested in discussing debate… from time to time. If I have the opportunity soon, I’d like to add to it constructively. A year ago I posted on this website somewhere that “LD does not need [professional educators] anymore to continue to survive,” but it appears that I have made that judgment much to hastily.
Mr. What:
Wow, you’ve proven to everyone once and for all that I’m a bit pretentious. Thank you for so boldly pointing that out. It’s very nice to meet you too.
Mr. Cruz:
The server that hosts this site is really acting slow. I posted it before and I hard refreshed for 10 minutes, no post showed up, and then I tried reposting several more times (in fact 9 more times). Finally, all 10 of them decided to show up at once.
Posted from: 68.175.60.33
October 19th, 2005 18:39
did the symposium on critical theory at kndi not happen as advertised?
Posted from: 71.57.91.16
October 19th, 2005 20:51
On a side note–and I hate to digress from the productivity of the current discussion–Mr. Full Disclosure stated that he had heard that KNDI pays their employees more than other debate camps. I doubt this is true. When I had planned to work for KNDI, I was told by two NSD staff members that I was getting paid much less per week than they were. This was not at all a factor in my decision to pursue other things this past summer instead.
I really don’t understand why people try to underscore such petty points with mere hearsay. When I went to debate institute, instructors taught us how to find substantive evidence to warrant our claims, not hearsay.
Posted from: 24.211.171.197
October 20th, 2005 19:38
I apologize for any typos or errors, this was written in a time crunch. I hope the spacing works out as well, sometimes I can’t seem to make it work.
Stacy provides a plausible defense of many of the current practices that I personally find problematic. I think the one thing that her defense completely ignores, however, is the idea of how those practices affect the accessibility and inclusiveness of the activity. This was a point I alluded to in my last post, but would like to expand on now, as I feel it represents the key difference between Stacy’s views and mine.
I probably should have made clearer in my original posts that I am not suggesting that there is necessarily anything inherently uneducational about the current practices I object to. I find them to be harmful to the educational value of LD primarily because I believe they do not fit well within its format. In other words, I think they fail to contribute to the unique educational purposes that were behind the creation of the Lincoln Douglas format, and that I believe justify its continued existence. My basic argument is that the various formats of academic debate offered at the high school level ultimately will serve the greatest number of students when they offer a unique and distinct set of benefits. For that reason I believe the different formats of debate ought to be distinct from one another in a significant way. I believe that distinction must be in the type of skills that each format emphasizes, as well as in the level of exclusivity that the emphasis of those particular skills creates. This is because I do not believe that there are policy arguments and LD arguments, an argument is an argument. I do believe there is the policy format and the LD format, each with unique educational goals. I believe these unique educational goals can best be determined by looking to the reasons that the newer of the two formats, LD, was created. I was not around at the time, but I am fairly confident that LD was not created because there were a bunch of people sitting around in 1980 going: “Oh my God, we have just got to debate VALUES! Debating policies is just not educational.” Or possibly saying: “Some people are just not capable of having an intelligent discussion about policy.”
By 1980 policy had become very technical and specialized. While the technical and specialized nature of the event certainly contributed to certain educational benefits to participating in it, it also entailed a tradeoff. That level of specialization required specific training that was not necessarily equally accessible to all people. LD was created to provide an alternative format of debate that would not require that degree of specialization. This was supposed to make it more accessible not only to new students, but also more importantly to new coaches. I also believe that the LD format was created to emphasize the communicative skills that seem to have been left out in the cold by the evolution that policy debate had undergone, as well as to encourage the direct discussion of important social issues in a manner that could be described as reasonable public debate.
My major objection to many current trends in LD is that they have turned the event into exactly what it was created to be an alternative to. The gaming paradigm prevalent in policy has found its way into LD, and I find that unacceptable. Not necessarily because I think such a paradigm is in and of itself bad in an educational sense, but because I don’t believe the unique goals of the LD format are advanced by adopting such a paradigm. (I also feel the time constraints in LD are ill suited to maximizing the educational benefits that one can derive from the gaming paradigm.)
Stacy says that she doesn’t think vastly different views on education are clearly incompatible. I can agree to this to an extent. I think having a variety of different approaches available to students is a great thing. But, I believe that this can be accomplished best by having formats with unique characteristics where different approaches do not clash or come into conflict with one another. I believe there is a lot to be learned from a format of debate where the gaming paradigm is the dominant one, and I believe there is a lot to learn from a format of debate where judges are more disciplined in their focus on promoting objectives like clear communication, effective public speaking, and reasonable public debate. I also believe that when we attempt to combine the two into one format, they inevitably compete with one another. Where a gaming paradigm becomes prevalent, the communicative aspects of that particular format become deemphasized, and access to meaningful participation in that activity begins to rely on specialized training that is not available to all people. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it is a problem if it is taking place in a format whose goals are clearly in opposition to this. Stacy believes that students are diverse creatures with diverse needs. I completely agree. But I believe that diversity is best served by having diverse formats of debate that very clearly encourage different educational goals, as well as ensuring that there are formats that are purposely meant to encourage inclusion in the activity, rather than the exclusion which occurs along with greater specialization.
In fact Stacy’s own examples illustrating why she prefers teaching at Hockaday to public schools help to reinforce a concept I think is very important. That being that certain educational ends do require a degree of exclusion in order to be achieved. The things that Stacy likes about Hockaday would in all likelihood not be possible if it was responsible for educating a vastly larger group of students like a public school system is. Let me be clear that I don’t have a problem with this type of exclusion itself. (I myself teach at a private school.) In fact I think it is absolutely necessary to achieving certain goals. I wish that this type of educational experience were available to more students, especially those from less advantaged backgrounds; but even having said that I do not believe every school should be exactly the same size. I also believe there are students who will thrive in a larger school environment, and that the larger environment can serve students whose needs may be different in a diversity of ways not possible in a smaller environment. I think this can clearly be seen on the college level where there are outstanding schools of all sizes and where we try to encourage students to choose the size and type of school that will best fit them. The point I am trying to make is that there are educational benefits both to inclusion as well as exclusion. There are also tradeoffs involved in both as well. I don’t have a problem with the promotion of educational goals that may require exclusion in order to be achieved. I do have a problem with such practices when they begin to crop up in formats whose goals are meant to be inclusive, not the opposite. This is because I believe if we lose sight of those goals than we risk losing what makes the different formats of debate unique from one another, and without those unique differences than a smaller number of students will be served by the debate community as a whole.
Let me specifically apply these ideas to three areas that Stacy references in her post: speed, critical theory, and social activism in debate.
Speed is probably my biggest problem with current practices in LD. I oppose if first on the grounds that it makes the activity more exclusive in that it represents a specialized form of communication that to a large degree only specialized training within the activity itself can prepare one for. It also clearly interferes with the goals of promoting effective communication, fine public speaking, and reasonable public debate. I also feel its use stems from a very technical approach to evaluating arguments in the round that is heavily related to the mechanics of the flow, rather than being based on a substantive evaluation of ideas. This too is an attribute that is reflective of a specialized type of activity that works against the goal of inclusion, not for it. I also firmly believe speed is antithetical to quality argumentation. This is because I believe that a quality argument is one that can withstand scrutiny. The use of speed is often a deliberate attempt to avoid having one’s argument scrutinized. I just don’t see how speed facilitates the end of substantive discussion, which in my mind ought to be the purpose of the debate. This type of discussion is about quality, and not quantity; and I do believe the two compete with each other because as Joseph Nye tells us “Surpluses of information lead to deficits of attention.” The purpose of the debate should be to uncover, not to cover. Justifications for the use of speed seem to start from the basic assumption that in order to have an intelligent discussion in a limited amount of time, one should try to cram as many ideas as possible into that time period. I personally find this to be an absurd assumption. I believe intelligent discussion in a limited amount of time requires the discipline to limit oneself to a reasonable number of issues, such that those issues can be adequately addressed in the time allotted. Whatever skills a spread, even a supposed good one, may require; are far less impressive to me than someone who is actually willing to defend a position on its merits from actual in depth scrutiny from the opposition. If there are students who feel they will learn more from doing this type of speed-oriented debate, than I suggest that they do policy debate. I would argue that in that format they will actually be given greater opportunity to develop those skills they value so highly, and those practices will not interfere with the ability of the LD format to promote those unique skills it was created to encourage.
As for critical theory, my problem with it is that most of the time I think it is non topical. It fails to address the spirit of the question, or put another way it asks a fundamentally different question then would a more direct reading of the topic. The argument is usually tangentially related in some way to the resolution, but for me that is not enough to accept that it corresponds to a reasonable interpretation of the topic. To have an in depth and intelligent discussion I believe both debaters have to be fundamentally addressing the same question. I like to use the analogy that when a scientist is conducting an experiment, she has to control for all variables except the one she is testing. My problem with the use of critical theory is that it seems to me to be an attempt to change the variable we are attempting to test in the debate. I don’t think meaningful discussion can be facilitated when the two sides aren’t even on the same page or addressing fundamentally the same question. I also think a reasonable person would agree that debaters who use critical philosophy are more often than not trying to shape the debate to be about a question they want it to be about, rather than making a good faith attempt to interpret the resolution as a coherent meaningful whole statement. This is not to say that critical theory cannot be educationally valuable. I just do not believe the use of it furthers the unique educational goals that the LD format was established to promote. Critical theory fits very well into the gaming paradigm that predominates in policy debate, but LD was created to provide an alternative to that; to promote reasonable public debate as opposed to more abstract deeply theoretical debate. Critical theory does nothing to contribute to that goal and in fact works against it. My suggestion to students who wish to learn about critical theory would be to do policy debate. The longer length of the rounds actually allows greater time to jump into those complex issues making it a format even better suited to achieving the educational goals you value. While I have no doubt critical theory can be educationally valuable, what I do not believe is that incorporating it into the LD format is educationally valuable. I may believe that writing romantic poetry is educationally valuable, that does not mean that incorporating it into physics class is a sound educational strategy.
As for matters of social activism in debate, I have great respect for people who are willing to sacrifice competitive success to make a statement they believe in. If this educational benefit is achieved by ignoring the educational goals that are unique to the format in which one finds oneself, however, than I have no problem with such behavior not being factored into the reward structure of that format. In other words, if I assigned a paper on a particular subject, and a student turned in an excellent essay that did not focus on that subject, but rather on the use of queer theory to evaluate material related to that subject; while I would certainly believe that what the student did was educationally valuable, that does mean I would feel that the student should be rewarded with an excellent grade. An assignment has a purpose, and just because one diverged from that purpose in an educational manner is not an excuse for failing to be consistent with that purpose in the first place. My advice to students whose primary educational goal is to be socially active is to write an oratory. It will be a much more effective way to promote whatever you believe in than by presenting it in an uncommunicative, technical format where it will be judged as words on a flow rather than as an idea meant to be presented in an authentic human fashion.
Let me finish by addressing two final issues Stacy raises. Stacy claims that giving students what they want is a student driven curriculum. My understanding of this term has always been more about focusing on the individual needs of students, not necessarily their wants. It is primarily about choosing methods that will best facilitate the learning of each individual student, and choosing goals that will best fit with preparing each individual student for a productive future. At times this may very well be equivalent to giving students what they want, because sometimes what students want and need are the same. This is not always the case however. Furthermore I would argue that only by sticking to what we believe are the unique educational purposes of any particular format of debate can we ensure that the maximum number of students will be able to obtain what they both need and want. This may require students seeking certain types of benefits to choose alternative formats than the ones they currently do. I do not see this as problematic, however, since I believe all the formats can have unique educational value if we take seriously the job of preserving their distinct character.
Stacy also suggests that diversity of approaches within one format is best for students because they learn how to adapt. I disagree with this because I don’t think that debate is most educational when it teaches students a little bit of a wide variety of different skills, but rather when it encourages them to perfect the particular skills that represent the underlying goals of the format they participate in. If the goal really was for them to simply pursue a variety of different educational benefits than there would be no need to have distinct formats. All students could participate in one single format of debate that would inevitably encompass a wide range of viewpoints they would have to adapt to. In fact, if we accepted the notion of education upon which Stacy’s argument is based, it would almost seem that we would be compelled to only have one format in order to best achieve this. I, however, believe we have distinct formats for a reason and that we should not lose sight of that fact.
There is much more I would like to say, but I think that must be saved for a later date. I will simply end by saying that I believe that there are many valid methods to achieve any educational goal. I do believe strongly, however, that any educational endeavor worth its weight must have clear and specific goals that it is meant to facilitate. While it perfectly acceptable for people to have different methods for achieving those goals, I think it is essential that all educators involved in that process share those goals and are committed to achieving them. I believe that Lincoln Douglas Debate exists to achieve a specific set of educational ends. I believe it will be most valuable in and of itself, and as part of a broader debate community when it works to accomplish those specific ends. Practices that interfere with this, even educational ones, are not appropriate and should be discouraged within that format. Finally, I would hope that I would be open to attempts to persuade me that the practices I find to be harmful are in fact valuable. These attempts will only be persuasive, however, when they explain how these practices facilitate the goals of effective communication, fine public speaking, and reasonable public debate that I believe to be fundamental to the purpose of this activity; not simply broad appeals to some nebulous notion of education.
Posted from: 66.26.40.201
October 20th, 2005 20:08
preach Rj, keep preaching.
Posted from: 151.200.80.4
October 27th, 2005 12:28
My name is Alexandra Kogan, and while in high school I had the privildge of being coached by Victor. From four years of personal experience and observation, Victor donates his time, money and energies without expectation of compensation. His love of debate and sincere wish to impart his passion on his debaters is well known to those who know him well. If anyone thinks that Victory Briefs is operating with the aim to exploit the LD community, they are sorely mistaken. Their homebase office in Los Angeles is tiny, their supplies limited. That being said, Victor still somehow seems to reach out to thousands of debaters and either directly, or indirectly inspires them and allows them to put their practical knowledge of LD to use in their own communities. A big thank you to Victor and his staff for providing me with the most valuable set of skills I could ever ask for.
Posted from: 66.65.179.99
November 16th, 2005 16:50
I am always amazed by the ferocity of debate politics. This all seems crazy to me. Educators in this activity will disagree about the best way to structure the activity, things will come and go, everyone should just relax…
Posted from: 66.65.179.99
November 16th, 2005 16:50
I am always amazed by the ferocity of debate politics. This all seems crazy to me. Educators in this activity will disagree about the best way to structure the activity, things will come and go, everyone should just relax…
Posted from: 69.203.74.71
November 17th, 2005 15:57
I can’t believe I am actually getting sucked into this, but since I had something to do with the Senior Philosopher’s (SP) program at the University of Iowa, I think I need to correct something that Mr. Firch said. Instructors at Iowa held their daily meeting over the lunch hour – this was the only time of the day that all the staff is available to meet, because other than that, they were teaching or reading cases or sleeping. While the lunch staff meetings were “exclusive” in the sense that students were not there, please believe me they were not the exciting, intellectually charged dining experiences you are imagining. I can recall several hours of my life discussing the policies of checking books out at the library that I would desperately like to get back.
There was never a time when staff ate only with certain students, or top students, or whatever. That is simply not true. I even remember several breakfasts were I would sit alone at a table, hoping that some student would come and keep me company, but alas . . .
The SP program was open to any rising senior who had attended Iowa before (and we even made exceptions to the requirement that the senior had attended Iowa previously, space permitting). I don’t think in any year I was involved did we turn down a student who met these requirements. The entire premise of SP was that it was for students who were burnt out on competitive debate, and would rather explore in a seminar setting the philosophical writings and ideas that underpin debate . . . as such, I believe it is the antithesis of competitive elitism.
Besides which, the notion that I or Dan Yaverbaum would ever be impressed or not impressed by a debater’s record is patently absurd. I think we were far more interested in what individuals had to say at any particular time than what their record was in debate. Really, it is quite impossible to impress us with a trophy, and quite easy to impress us if you have something to say. That is what SP was about.
I have never paid attention to what SPers records were coming into the program or leaving the program. What I have paid attention to is the number of students who said it was the first time they were truly challenged intellectually, and the best preparation they had for college of any of their high school endeavors.
Any time you divide up students based on experience level, you create the risk of creating elitism. To some extent that is a necessary evil. If you create pictures and interviews (I really like the interviews of coaches on this site, and really hate the interviews of debaters) of certain debaters, or debaters who run in certain circles, you increase that risk, and unlike dividing up students based on experience level for instruction purposes, there does not seem to be a clear educational upside. I think that is all that Mr. Baldwin was saying: Not that Victor Jih, who is by all accounts a decent, dedicated and positive influence on the debaters he has taught is evil, but that the emergence of the VBI programs have costs that should be examined. None of us should be above honest, polite criticism, and I don’t think Mr. Baldwin crossed any lines into a personal attack (stirring the pot through Rostrum articles is what Mr. Baldwin does, he has been doing it a long time). The notion that his attack was “partisan” and should not be carried in Rostrum is taking this all way too seriously . . . VBI has become very powerful, and I reject the notion that powerful forces in the finest educational institution in this country should not be examined and criticized and debated in public forums. Educators disagree about the best way to structure the activity – I read Mr. Baldwin’s article and found a lot of it correct and some of it overstated. But students of the activity taking sides and see this through such a political lens is crazy…
Posted from: 117.200.193.156
November 5th, 2009 07:51
never looked these like articles above this post thanks for sharing and again thanks for
Posted from: 218.19.53.80
April 28th, 2010 22:55
preach Rj, keep preaching.
Posted from: 112.111.173.176
July 14th, 2010 21:55
I really support VBI/VBD and everything the entire VBI Staff does for this community. Thank you very much for your very, very generous efforts (time, money, etc).
Just incase anybody is wondering – Word Count on this forum (just comments): about 31,800.