Week 8: Rousseau, Flowing, and Portable Skills
Hello and welcome back to my senior project blog! This week I spent more time working with Heights and made some valuable observations during their class time. I also spent some time with Holmes and discussed more about next year.
At Heights, I worked on the lesson plan a bit more. In particular, I worked on the lesson for flowing (note-taking during a debate) and cutting cards (collecting evidence and formatting it to be used in a debate). In this class, these are some of the first skills debaters learn, even before they learn the different types of arguments. In this regard, their learning experience is much different from my experience learning debate, where there was rarely a set lesson plan. Along with many other debaters who did not take a debate class in school, I was taught with a “learn as you go” model, in which the topics taught are those needed immediately to be able to go through the motions of a debate round. Often, this means reading evidence other people cut or never properly learning how to cut evidence, learning how to flow by imitating others’ flows, etc.
In retrospect, I understand and appreciate this program’s approach of making sure all students have a basic understanding of card cutting and flowing because those are the skills that would garner the most portable and useful skills in the future. Flowing requires students to quickly understand words being said to them and synthesize them into extremely shorthand notes that they can decode and extrapolate meaning from later in the debate round. When considering spreading, or when debaters read the fastest they can while remaining intelligible to maximize the number of arguments they can make in one speech, the speed at which debaters are required to synthesize while flowing means that in other instances where this skill will be valuable, like during a lecture, it will be second nature.
The same applies to card cutting. As a refresher, debaters will not read every word from a source verbatim. Instead, they will pick the best parts of the evidence and read that in the round, which requires highlighting and formatting certain parts of the text as such (image copied from week 1 blog):
Not only are the Heights students taught how to format evidence, but they are also taught how to navigate academic search engines, how to bypass paywalls, and how to determine scholarly sources to a higher degree than would be necessary for other on-level classes (a varsity debater might cut several cards a week, whereas they would only write 1-2 research papers for an English class). Moreover, the previous teacher standardized citation requirements. They mirror citations for academic papers, and students are required to put their initials in the citations of any evidence they cut. Thus, standards for evidence are high and there are accountability measures. The act of reading a piece of evidence several times, determining which parts best support a claim, and how to most effectively use the claims in the text is also critical to developing skills necessary for higher level academic writing, but also successful consumption of other forms of media. The same argument for repetition is true for these two aspects as well.
Aside from that, we had a relatively slow week at Holmes, as the short week and other plans they had during class inhibited my ability to meet with them. I met with one of their debaters and talked some more about the types of arguments they want to run on next year’s topic. They are currently between running a topical affirmative and a Kritikal affirmative. They want their affirmative to revolve around Indigenous opposition to US development in the Arctic, but the degree to which a progressive move towards non-settler, non-violent US presence in indigenous land is possible is heavily contested. To run a topical affirmative, they will have to prove that progress through the government is possible. They are still determining which route will have the most evidence and the most truthful arguments.
Aside from that, in terms of progressing toward my final project, I have sent out my questionnaire but have not yet gotten it back from either school. I tried to organize my questions into a series of groups. The first few questions aim to determine the relative experience level of the student. Next, several questions revolve around the impact that students think debate has both on their education and in general. Next, several questions focus on how students learn best, including how they learned debate and how they think that process could have been improved. The last group of questions revolves around things that happen external to the classroom, like other debate leagues and tournaments. I hope to organize my final paper along these general areas and look into whether the level of experience debating will have a noticeable impact on students’ answers.
In terms of observation, Thursday at Heights provided a very insightful look into how students learn best in situations where the subject matter is relatively niche. This week the U of H professor who usually works with the class wasn’t there. Instead, a U of H PhD student who works closely with the regular U of H professor was working with the students. He took a bit of a different approach to interacting with the students; he had them all move to a side of the room based on whether they thought it was better to be part of a civilized society or to be cavemen. Then, by asking the students guiding questions and allowing them to discuss amongst themselves, they went through the logical progression of the rationale behind a social contract as articulated by Rousseau. The discussion began with the pros and cons of each model with the students determining that the main pro of a civilized society is based on there being more to indulge in; more complexity and less isolation because of innovation and community. Although this was very far from the types of arguments seen in policy debate, the ability to discuss philosophical topics in an open format is undoubtedly enriching. It builds the fluidity of thought and ease of expression that the best debaters have in less structured moments of a debate like cross-examination or analytical-argument-heavy rounds. Additionally, arguments that rely heavily on philosophy (Kant is particularly popular) are prevalent in LD debate, another equally technical debate format that some Heights debaters participate in.
That’s all for this week, and I look forward to sharing more about the observations I make and the questionnaire answers I get back next week!