http://www.debatecoaches.org The NDCA provides curriculum support for teachers and coaches who train students in debate, forensics, speech, and argumentation. Copyright 2012 James Pavur, a student at Westminster Schools, has created several graphical representations of the cases that teams are reading on the 2011-2012 high school policy debate topic. His graphs—of the field at the 2011 University of Michigan tournament, based on the NDCA Wiki—are available for download.

]]> <rss@debatecoaches.org> (Bill Batterman) /2011/11/graphical-breakdown-of-policy-topic /2011/11/graphical-breakdown-of-policy-topic Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:44:00 EDT The NDCA Board is accepting applications for the 2013 NDCA National Championships. To submit an application, please review the information about potential host sites and email the completed application form to Nicole Serrano. Please feel free to email Nicole if you have any questions about the process or the tournament in general.

]]> <rss@debatecoaches.org> (Bill Batterman) /2011/11/apply-to-host-the-2013-ndca-national-championships /2011/11/apply-to-host-the-2013-ndca-national-championships Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:26:00 EDT Why must school debaters argue both sides of the Resolve? It seems hypocritical.Outside school nearly all our important attitudes and beliefs are picked up from oursurroundings. In adult life we see great emphasis is placed on loyalty and sincerity tothese characteristics. Yet young debaters get caught up in the competition at school anddon’t ponder this paradox. Psychologists call holding conflicting hypotheses “cognitivedissonance” (see Wikipedia).Psychological science has changed my attitude toward the paradox in school debate.The charge of hypocrisy or theatrical insincerity can come from all sorts of extremesources: from classmates to visitors from non-English speaking countries. But all mustacknowledge scientific experiments conducted in Psychology. It is necessary to debateboth sides of the Resolve in order to overcome a weakness of the Human Mind proven byscientific psychology.We’re going to try and overshoot the charge of hypocrisy from classmates by aimingat the more difficult charge from foreign countries. If we don’t quite succeed thenat least we may have countered the charge from classmates. Below we will considerPsychological science at each of several major steps in the debating procedure. UnitedStates style debating meets the dangers of bias exposed by experimental Psychology.There may be other ways of meeting the danger of bias – depositions in law, for example-- but competitive debate makes good sport while it engages conflicting evidence of oneissue.First off the debaters must begin by trying to search for information about the ResolvedAffirmative Statement. From the start the mind’s weakness toward “Confirmation bias”(from Wikipedia) shows itself. In the beginning the debater will probably take the wholeResolved-statement as a hypothesis for searching. “Confirmation bias (also calledconfirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information thatconfirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, andinterpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significantissues and for established beliefs. …They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence assupporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and/or recall have beeninvoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extremeeven though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance(when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrationalprimacy effect (a stronger weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series) andillusory correlation (in which people falsely perceive an association between two eventsor situations).“A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased towardsconfirming their existing beliefs. Later work explained these results in terms of atendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoringalternatives. In combination with other effects, this strategy can bias the conclusionsthat are reached. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and thelimited human capacity to process information. Another proposal is that people showconfirmation bias because they are pragmatically assessing the costs of being wrong,rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.”(End quote, Wikipedia)These general observations about Confirmation bias go on to apply to searching in alibrary and internet. There are several paragraphs in Wikipedia on the “Topic: Biasedsearch for information” which the reader would enjoy, if he has time or space (about 760words).I think I have made my point about hypocrisy in gathering all the evidence you need foryour cases (pro & con); but for the still skeptical reader I will be explicit: If you don’tdebate both sides of the Resolve (and you still debate), then you only debate one side.If you debate only one side of the case, then your primary-search for information willbe one sided. You will be susceptible to Confirmation bias. Primary: secondarily youcould claim to look-up, have, and understand the evidence for the opposite side (youropponent). In practice you would probably learn the case against you (from the schoolof hard knocks) from your opponent during debate rounds. If two ‘sincere’ one sideddebaters were against each other they would tend to ‘talk past’ each other’s case – notengaging the evidence of the opponent. I can think of a lot of examples. The spectatorwould be the loser, also!The next important step in the debate procedure is the presentations, that is the debateitself before an audience (if only a time-keeper and a judge). The charge of hypocrisyat a debater(s) can arise for reasons other than that he debates both side of the Resolved.For example the speaker’s style of presentation may emanate a sense of hypocrisy. Butin this essay we are considering only the most probable source of the charge of hypocrisyin school debate sport, and that is that the debaters debate both sides of the Resolved.Again, it is necessary to debate both sides of the Resolved in order to overcome aweakness of the Human Mind proven to exist by Scientific Psychology.In addition to this another frequent cause of the charge of hypocrisy comes from usingarguments that appeal to the emotions of the audience – these arguments are problematic.In some cases the need arises to appeal to the audience’s emotions, for example in infantmortality statistics. The debater may feel that the evidence and argument warrens appealto the audience’s emotion to correctly present the facts of the debater’s case. If so, heshould admit to the audience that he tries to avoid this emotion when he is forced toargue the opposite side. However the audience is mislead without knowing the emotionalweight of the argument. Otherwise – if he did not qualify the emotional feelings hesolicits – the audience would probably feel that he was a charlatan, trying to dup themwith his hypocrisy of debating both sides of the question. But the facts of the case maywarrant a feeling of emotion from the audience.Wikipedia has a “topic: bias interpretation”, and this is almost entirely concerned withstrongly held emotional bias; and thus almost never applies to debaters presenting theircases.The foreign visitor puts the problem of the charge of hypocrisy most simply: The visitorfrom a non-English speaking country asks why does the debater try to persuade uswhen he is not convinced himself? I think the honest high school debater would answersimply, “It’s the competition of the sport!” But a competition between hypocrites?! Thecoach would then have to interject that these speeches are a learning exercise from ourLegal Tradition. That both in the making of laws and in the administration of justiceoccasions arise where the duty of the advocate must argue persuasively for a case aboutwhich he has no personal preference. The debaters are learning to lay out the best casefor a particular point of view The English (and American) system of justice allowsa defendant to lay out his best case for his innocence, and recognizes that he needs aprofessional (an attorney who understands the law and the way the court works) to be hisadvocate. That system will not work if there are no such advocates. Our system is basedon the principle that the prosecution must be able to convince a third party--the jurors--ofthe defendant's guilt. That system reduces the ability of a tyranny (or even a democracy)to imprison enemies of the government. The high-school debates are a teaching tool. Thesport of debate is the training ground for future advocates.The reader of this article can now go one step beyond the Legal Tradition, and he canpoint out that the Science of Psychology has justified the two sided speaker. The humanmind is rather weak in trying to search for information about only one side of a case.The best recourse for the amateur is to listen to a debate between informed advocates.Usually debaters do have a personal judgment about which side of the case is strongeror more convincing. They rarely will reveal this, because they have been very brutallyintimidated by reams of evidence for both sides. Now the debater is further reluctantto reveal any bias he has, because he knows scientifically this prejudices his search forinformation for his argument before an audience.The last important step in the debate procedure is how the audience reacts to what ithas heard. Here Wikipedia, “Confirmation bias,” does apply with its “Topic: Biasedinterpretation:” Emotionally involved people do not listen to evidence refuting theirbiased opinion. This is unfortunate, but it is a fact of Scientific Psychology that alldebaters should know.In summary, knowing the new Psychological facts about debate, you may be able to selldebate to the residents of your city. Students have the energy to argue the facts about cityballot issues. It should be a public service from schools. Internationally once the newfacts of Psychology are known, United States style of debating can be adopted in manyother countries – thus spreading out democracy.The only other reference I used was Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, Chapter #9 “Why the Mind Gets What It Expects.” This chapter gives many descriptions ofexperiments while Wikipedia gives many general conclusions.Autobiography of the Author: Woolsey Lent debated 3 years at South High School,Denver, Colorado from 1954 to 1957, attended a High School Summer Debate Instituteat Denver University. He graduated from the University of Colorado with a B.A. majorin mathematics and minor in physics. He worked as a scientific computer programmer inthe California aerospace industry. His email address is woolseylent@alaska.net .

]]> <rss@debatecoaches.org> (Tracy McFarland) /2011/08/science-hypocrisy-and-debate /2011/08/science-hypocrisy-and-debate Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:25:00 EDT Earlier this summer, the University of Michigan Debate Institutes hosted Dr. Everett Dolman for a lecture and demo debate about space weaponization. The video of the debate and the audio of Dr. Dolman’s lecture are now available from the NDCA (via DebateVision).   The debate featured Srinidhi Muppalla (Centennial High School, Maryland) and Evan McCarty (Mountain Brook High School, Alabama) on the affirmative against Mimi Sergent-Leventhal (Edina High School, Minnesota) and Zach Rosenthal (Kinkaid School, Texas) on the negative. It is divided into three parts: constructives, rebuttals, and RFD.   Constructives   Rebuttals   RFD   Dr. Dolman's lecture (audio only) is also available for download.

]]> <rss@debatecoaches.org> (Bill Batterman) /2011/08/demo-debate-and-lecture-with-dr-everett-dolman /2011/08/demo-debate-and-lecture-with-dr-everett-dolman Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:18:00 EDT The Houston Urban Debate League is hosting Space Policy Day on August 1 from 8:00AM to 2:30PM. Of interest to students and coaches who are preparing to debate this year's space topic, the event will feature discussions of space policy by experts in the field. The event will be webcasted live at http://www.bakerinstitute.org/events/houston-urban-debate-league-space-policy-day. Questions can be submitted in advance by emailing spacepolicyday@urbandebate.org; they will be read live during the event. For more information, please visit http://houstonurbandebateleague.org/Space_Policy_Day.html.

]]> <rss@debatecoaches.org> (Bill Batterman) /2011/07/space-policy-day-hosted-by-houston-urban-debate-league /2011/07/space-policy-day-hosted-by-houston-urban-debate-league Sun, 31 Jul 2011 11:01:00 EDT