Critical theory is radicalizing high school debate(slowboring.com)
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Critical theory is radicalizing high school debate
https://www.slowboring.com/p/how-critical-theory-is-radicalizing
540 comments
I think this an attempt to champion the idea of rhetoric as a virtue, in the face of arguments made in bad faith. I have a soft spot for this. My grandfather, before he fled Belarus, was trained at a yeshiva and on his way to becoming a rabbi. His explanation of the training was ... Jedi-like, to my young mind. Students were paired off and given a biblical passage to examine, say, Jonah and the whale. One student would have to defend Jonah while the other defended, basically, God. After ten minutes, the teacher would say "switch" and they would have to defend the opposite side with equal logic and vigor. This was the making of a mind. Any shortcuts to rhetorical passion might be allowed, but learning to parry them and see through them was what was truly valued... well and beyond the ability to convince others (and certainly beyond obedience or conformity). Not surprising that my family in the US became lawyers.
This is not to say that there's anything wrong - morally or rhetorically - with breaking the game if you don't like the choices. There's no unfair play when the point is to win a debate. Debates are not won by changing your opponent's mind - I mean, who cares? They're won by convincing whoever else is listening. That being said, failing to take the unlikeable part of a debate is read as cheating - if not to the judges, who may share your bias, then to the audience who you've alienated and failed to convince. And so it can and should fail in the long run, as an impurity in the art.
This is not to say that there's anything wrong - morally or rhetorically - with breaking the game if you don't like the choices. There's no unfair play when the point is to win a debate. Debates are not won by changing your opponent's mind - I mean, who cares? They're won by convincing whoever else is listening. That being said, failing to take the unlikeable part of a debate is read as cheating - if not to the judges, who may share your bias, then to the audience who you've alienated and failed to convince. And so it can and should fail in the long run, as an impurity in the art.
High school debate has always been broken. It has only very rarely been about the contest of ideas, and always been about how to win. For example there is a concept called 'spreading' in policy debate. This is where you speak as fast as humanly possible to lay out as many points as possible and if the opposing team fails to address or mention any of them you claim victory. For some reason this strategy, which makes the debaters all but unintelligible is allowed and leads to victory.
In Lincoln Douglas debate it was common to construct what is called a 'collapsing tautology'. Your argument is constructed to look like a series of logical steps with which there can be argument, but in fact all it is is a tautology that ultimately can't be refuted. It's a trap and if the opponent engages at all they lose.
More generally HS debate is politics and persuasion. Know the judges, build charisma, learn what works regardless of the content.
The introduction of a new noxious debating strategy might be noteworthy, but it is no more ruining debate than all the others, and the students don't actually care about the strategy or its tenants any more than they care about the validity of Rawlsian justice.
In Lincoln Douglas debate it was common to construct what is called a 'collapsing tautology'. Your argument is constructed to look like a series of logical steps with which there can be argument, but in fact all it is is a tautology that ultimately can't be refuted. It's a trap and if the opponent engages at all they lose.
More generally HS debate is politics and persuasion. Know the judges, build charisma, learn what works regardless of the content.
The introduction of a new noxious debating strategy might be noteworthy, but it is no more ruining debate than all the others, and the students don't actually care about the strategy or its tenants any more than they care about the validity of Rawlsian justice.
Thats always been the problem with competetive debate - you're supposed to argue a position that often has significant culutural weight, meaning its unlikely anything you say will change anyones mind. I was once asked to debate a pro slavery stance in debate class despite obviously everyone being against it. I felt our team did pretty well and the other team did barely anything and yet everyone voted for the other side. Often the only way to succeed is by reframing the stupid position you are supposed to argue for entirely, which appears to be what this is talking about.
Debate doesn't do any of the thing that I consider critical to learning about the world.
1. Maintain a calm attitude
2. Evaluate facts BEFORE taking sides, and evaluate if you have enough facts to make a conclusion
3. Consider the deeply held beliefs of the primary people involved
4. Honestly evaluate "How could I gather evidence that I'm wrong about this"
5. Consider that the solution may lie outside the area of discussion
Why do the debate organisers tolerate this? If the debate is X versus Y, why allow someone to say we should really be discussing Z? Imagine this in any other competitive arena like sport where during a match some team starts playing another sport entirely. There's nothing wrong with debating critical theory but not if that's not what's being debated. It should be an automatic fail, just as it would be if you're supposed to debating in a certain language and you refuse to do so. This just seems like deliberate sabotage/propaganda masquerading as sincere communication. As much fault lies with the organisers as with those who wish to deliberately pervert the debate.
My high school Policy league (2010+) did not allow kritiks essentially at all. It was an extremely rare occurrence to run a negative plan (I'm not sure I ever saw it myself). An aff kritik would absolutely not have been tolerated as we would ding them significantly on Topicality (sticking to the required resolution), which is voted on halfway through the round (so if aff loses, the round is over). I was one of the most resolution bending debators, with most of my aff plans going outside the bounds of what everyone else thought of for that topic.
I think my league was very abnormal however as we had a lot of layman, parent judges that we had to teach rules to (and sometimes the teams had conflicting interpretations), and we didn't allow more abusive techniques such as speed and spread (a common technique in Policy or Parli to present arguments as quickly as possible to prevent the opposite team from being able to address all of them, resulting in a de facto win). We would never have allowed someone to judge with a bio of "I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for ... fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism", and it's insane to me that this was allowed at a top end tournament. There were certainly judges that brought their own priors (and we tried to keep track of them to help the rest of our club out), but they generally didn't announce it in such a damaging way.
I think my league was very abnormal however as we had a lot of layman, parent judges that we had to teach rules to (and sometimes the teams had conflicting interpretations), and we didn't allow more abusive techniques such as speed and spread (a common technique in Policy or Parli to present arguments as quickly as possible to prevent the opposite team from being able to address all of them, resulting in a de facto win). We would never have allowed someone to judge with a bio of "I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for ... fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism", and it's insane to me that this was allowed at a top end tournament. There were certainly judges that brought their own priors (and we tried to keep track of them to help the rest of our club out), but they generally didn't announce it in such a damaging way.
These alt debates were well around 20 years ago. It was incredibly rare that they succeeded because:
a) most judges didn't really like it when the debate becomes some weird meta thing.
b) most teams that ran this were NOT good at debate.
What seems new is Judges completely throwing out the substance of the debate and relying on their own political views for the round.
a) most judges didn't really like it when the debate becomes some weird meta thing.
b) most teams that ran this were NOT good at debate.
What seems new is Judges completely throwing out the substance of the debate and relying on their own political views for the round.
Interesting to hear that the high school debate world is just like it was when I went to high school 20 years ago.
I became somewhat radical and left wing through my debate experience and then took action on it in college (participated in lots of illegal/anti-cap collective actions at Berkeley) and ultimately found that the entire revolutionary cause and “movement” are intellectually bankrupt. It all certainly sounds and feels very different when you can flit around the intellectual landscape in a debate versus having to settle on a real vindication and make your life out of it.
I became somewhat radical and left wing through my debate experience and then took action on it in college (participated in lots of illegal/anti-cap collective actions at Berkeley) and ultimately found that the entire revolutionary cause and “movement” are intellectually bankrupt. It all certainly sounds and feels very different when you can flit around the intellectual landscape in a debate versus having to settle on a real vindication and make your life out of it.
This article smacks of a classic bad-debater behavior: "I can't win rhetorically on the power of my own argument so I'll attack the people and techniques that are beating me instead of addressing them substantively."
The correct response to "the whole world is broken and we can't debate X because it's stoppered by Y" is "the world is not broken (enough) to not debate X because there are practical things we can do about X."
If that's a unpersuasive argument, well, then it's unpersuasive and you ought to ask yourself why. It's always possible the judges are biased in favor of one argument or another, but that's how the game has always worked.
There are lots of arguments against critical theory that have merit and are useful in debate. "Boo hoo I don't like critical theory" isn't one of them.
The correct response to "the whole world is broken and we can't debate X because it's stoppered by Y" is "the world is not broken (enough) to not debate X because there are practical things we can do about X."
If that's a unpersuasive argument, well, then it's unpersuasive and you ought to ask yourself why. It's always possible the judges are biased in favor of one argument or another, but that's how the game has always worked.
There are lots of arguments against critical theory that have merit and are useful in debate. "Boo hoo I don't like critical theory" isn't one of them.
My partner and I went 36-4 in our senior year* in policy debate because we continually argued that the federal government was inefficient and corrupt and we should instead just give block grants to the states. In the mid 1990s in Montana, that was a nearly unbeatable strategy. It's always been about finding the one argument that the judge will be unable to ignore instead of about the actual evidence you have for all the rest of it.
*we lost the state championship to a team from Hardin, MT, population about 4000 and guess where the state championship was held that year?
*we lost the state championship to a team from Hardin, MT, population about 4000 and guess where the state championship was held that year?
“Kids are doing something differently from how we used to do it” is always a red flag for me.
The fact that traditional high school debate produced leaders such as Nixon, Pelosi, and Larry Summers is not the ringing endorsement of the process that the author seems to think.
I think this a compelling argument: “minimum wage is an irrelevant debate in a country where basic necessities such as housing, healthcare, and education are increasingly out of reach. Structural reforms are needed, not minor adjustments to regulations that often go ignored.”
If people don’t think that’s compelling, I’d love to hear that argument! But the author’s complaint is framed as “kids today are doing it wrong” and it doesn’t really counter the points the kids are making.
The fact that traditional high school debate produced leaders such as Nixon, Pelosi, and Larry Summers is not the ringing endorsement of the process that the author seems to think.
I think this a compelling argument: “minimum wage is an irrelevant debate in a country where basic necessities such as housing, healthcare, and education are increasingly out of reach. Structural reforms are needed, not minor adjustments to regulations that often go ignored.”
If people don’t think that’s compelling, I’d love to hear that argument! But the author’s complaint is framed as “kids today are doing it wrong” and it doesn’t really counter the points the kids are making.
Is critical theory a rhetorical dead-end if you want to seriously debate something? Sure, but framing a debate and constricting it to a dichotomy is no less radicalising than a critical theory argument. I think people dislike critical theory so much because they know that it shifts focus to the structures everyone knows control society but nobody wants to acknowledge. Sure, it’s lazy to blindly advocate for revolution for the sake of revolution, but it’s also lazy to reject a line of philosophical inquiry just because you don’t like how it was presented. What should high school debate even be for? Should we restrict it to rhetorical sandboxes, or should we allow it to be a forum where ideas can be put forth and debated?
Isn't the entire point of debate to restrict how you can argue in order to provide a similar creative structure to artists using arbitrary rules?
Doesn't allowing adhoc attacks on semi related structures effectively bypass that structure?
Also given the notes in the article it sounds like the judges are too generous with blue sky proposals. "It would be neat if" does not make good policy and shouldn't make good debate.
Policy and by extension debate should focus on changes small enough that the outcome of the change is predictable. "Capitalism is terrible" is easy to show but an off ramp to anything else requires more than an hour of explanation...
Doesn't allowing adhoc attacks on semi related structures effectively bypass that structure?
Also given the notes in the article it sounds like the judges are too generous with blue sky proposals. "It would be neat if" does not make good policy and shouldn't make good debate.
Policy and by extension debate should focus on changes small enough that the outcome of the change is predictable. "Capitalism is terrible" is easy to show but an off ramp to anything else requires more than an hour of explanation...
There was a period where people were claiming that critical theory is being pushed in schools, while school board members refuted the claim as nonsense. Then it became clear that the students aren't being taught critical theory at all, but are being subjected to critical pedagogy - ie. teaching methods influenced by critical theory.
So, the school board was correct!
So, the school board was correct!
Arguing something only tangentially related to the debate topic is a decades-old strategy, at a minimum. We called them squirrel plans, or something like that.
When I was in high school in the late eighties, one semester the tournament topic was something like, “Resolved, that the USA should decrease the non-military consumption of fossil fuels”. A fairly straightforward topic.
In one tournament we ran into a team whose affirmative plan was, “ban oil-eating microbes”. Basically they ran with “evidence” from some articles written by crackpots who postulated that these microbes used to clean up oil spills could mutate into something that would essentially eat all life on the earth.
You had to be ready to handle things like this so you would have a number of generic negatives that you would try to tie in. In this case, we ran with our “humans are bad, so killing them off is a net good” negative. We called that one Malthus.
When I was in high school in the late eighties, one semester the tournament topic was something like, “Resolved, that the USA should decrease the non-military consumption of fossil fuels”. A fairly straightforward topic.
In one tournament we ran into a team whose affirmative plan was, “ban oil-eating microbes”. Basically they ran with “evidence” from some articles written by crackpots who postulated that these microbes used to clean up oil spills could mutate into something that would essentially eat all life on the earth.
You had to be ready to handle things like this so you would have a number of generic negatives that you would try to tie in. In this case, we ran with our “humans are bad, so killing them off is a net good” negative. We called that one Malthus.
Securitization is a political decision that discursively constructs certain phenomena as threats to justify their management and extermination. The practice of security erases alternate perspectives through the dominance of Western rationalism, permitting unchecked violence against alterity. We should use this round to create space for an epistemological multiplicity that breaks down dominant discourses of North Korea.
Does this actually have a meaning? It's mind numbing and comes off as sophistry.
Does this actually have a meaning? It's mind numbing and comes off as sophistry.
This was ubiquitous back when I was doing debate, around 20 years ago. The ship sailed long ago.
I loved debate in university and I benefits from the skills I learnt.
That said I am not sure the handwringing in this article is justified. So what if someone uses critical theory as a response to a topic? Criticizing and understanding the world is important. I think young people who care about the world is important. And us older people will always view what the younger generation does as too wild and weird as we become more conservative with age.
Young people experimenting and trying new ways of working with the world and ideas is important to the vitality of society. Shutting them down because they are changing things will ossify us.
That said I am not sure the handwringing in this article is justified. So what if someone uses critical theory as a response to a topic? Criticizing and understanding the world is important. I think young people who care about the world is important. And us older people will always view what the younger generation does as too wild and weird as we become more conservative with age.
Young people experimenting and trying new ways of working with the world and ideas is important to the vitality of society. Shutting them down because they are changing things will ossify us.
As a foreigner with kids growing up in the US, this crazy bias toward critical-everything in the US education system makes me worried that my kids will be indoctrinated in some weird speculative theory instead of educated in normal fields in a focused and rational manner. It leaves me wondering if I shouldn't send them abroad to some school system that has remained sane.
To question the premises of the debate topic rather than support a side seems like a huge cop-out. You don't have to do your research to support evidence based arguments and your opponent who may have done their research to support their arguments now has to argue against a completely different position for which their evidence is useless.
What is going to happen when these people wield actual power in politics and public policy and the conclusion policy debates is "society is rotten to the core" (example Kritik from the article).
What is going to happen when these people wield actual power in politics and public policy and the conclusion policy debates is "society is rotten to the core" (example Kritik from the article).
What?! High-schoolers, given access to the infinite debate medium of the internet, no longer want to score brownie points from their teachers by debating narrow, safe, softball "debate topics" that are carefully-constructed to keep people from discussing interesting things like capitalism vs marxism, which might put the school in hot water with government and big industry, who are very comfortable with the status quo? What...
> For example, if the topic was “The U.S. should increase the federal minimum wage,” the affirmation side might provide some arguments supporting this policy. But then the negation side, instead of arguing that the government shouldn’t raise the minimum wage, might reject spending any time on the original resolution and counter-propose a Marxist kritik
Honestly, if this is what debate is all about - “here is a political policy proposal, argue either for or against it” - this sounds like a waste of time. Good for the negation side. What is the minimum wage trying to solve?
To get meta on this article, maybe debate itself should be reimagined. Pose a problem, like “too many jobs don’t provide a living wage for their locale”. Then ask for policy proposals. Find two teams with strongly differing approaches, things that they have researched and believe in, and then have them debate.
Honestly, if this is what debate is all about - “here is a political policy proposal, argue either for or against it” - this sounds like a waste of time. Good for the negation side. What is the minimum wage trying to solve?
To get meta on this article, maybe debate itself should be reimagined. Pose a problem, like “too many jobs don’t provide a living wage for their locale”. Then ask for policy proposals. Find two teams with strongly differing approaches, things that they have researched and believe in, and then have them debate.
It reminds me a bit of when a new class of exploit is discovered, like in the early Internet when buffer overflows became popular. You have a period where the exploit gets abused widely until countermeasures are developed and deployed.
In this case it seems to be out of context use of cultural critique as a way to throw off the opponent and change the subject. If the debate were actually about these topics that would be another story.
This one must be more popular in academic settings. Online the most popular exploit I see is the “Gish gallop.”
I only regard debate as having much value when both sides are debating in good faith. Use of thought stopping tactics reduces the whole thing to a mere sophistry contest with no value beyond testing how powerful the LLM is between each debater’s ears.
In this case it seems to be out of context use of cultural critique as a way to throw off the opponent and change the subject. If the debate were actually about these topics that would be another story.
This one must be more popular in academic settings. Online the most popular exploit I see is the “Gish gallop.”
I only regard debate as having much value when both sides are debating in good faith. Use of thought stopping tactics reduces the whole thing to a mere sophistry contest with no value beyond testing how powerful the LLM is between each debater’s ears.
Just whining about the meta.
> When debaters reject the topic and advocate for these critical theories, they choose not to engage in pragmatic policy discussions.
Well, they choose some strategy to generate debate entries, namely theoretical sophistication, instead of whatever pragmatic means. (Usually it just means "My position is really great and I don't want to think about alternatives," but perhaps there is a specific technical meaning here.)
> Even if they’re not advocating for kritiks, in order to succeed at the national level, debaters have to learn how to respond critical theory arguments without actually disagreeing with their radical principles.
That is just saying, to compete on a high level people have to play the game well.
> When debaters reject the topic and advocate for these critical theories, they choose not to engage in pragmatic policy discussions.
Well, they choose some strategy to generate debate entries, namely theoretical sophistication, instead of whatever pragmatic means. (Usually it just means "My position is really great and I don't want to think about alternatives," but perhaps there is a specific technical meaning here.)
> Even if they’re not advocating for kritiks, in order to succeed at the national level, debaters have to learn how to respond critical theory arguments without actually disagreeing with their radical principles.
That is just saying, to compete on a high level people have to play the game well.
> Here’s a brief timeline of the development of the different high school debate formats: ... 2009: Parliamentary debate is founded
I was doing parliamentary debate in high school around 2002 in Boston; where does 2009 come from?
I was doing parliamentary debate in high school around 2002 in Boston; where does 2009 come from?
I've repeatedly wondered whether the causality might run in the other direction.
The first time I heard of people saying "you should lose this argument because you have a harmful mindset / hold harmful presuppositions / are using harmful language", they were policy debaters practicing kritiks around 2000. (I did high school and college debate, but never policy debate, always the much less formal Lincoln-Douglas style with, at least at that time, no spreading, evidence, or kritiks -- and topics that were a surprise rather than given ahead of time.)
Some of them started winning debates that way, and I keep wondering if they started to think of it as a useful or effective approach more generally.
The first time I heard of people saying "you should lose this argument because you have a harmful mindset / hold harmful presuppositions / are using harmful language", they were policy debaters practicing kritiks around 2000. (I did high school and college debate, but never policy debate, always the much less formal Lincoln-Douglas style with, at least at that time, no spreading, evidence, or kritiks -- and topics that were a surprise rather than given ahead of time.)
Some of them started winning debates that way, and I keep wondering if they started to think of it as a useful or effective approach more generally.
This seems much better than the last article I read about trends in high school debate, which basically was talking over the other person and using the gish-gallop maneuver:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
This piece is not about the vast majority of high school debate and is probably going to create some real headaches for people just trying to run an after-school activity.
All of the statistics in this piece are about the "Tournament of Champions". As its name implies, the Tournament of Champions is an invite-only tournament. In order to get an invitation, students need to do very well at several elite tournaments that make up a "national circuit". As the name of the circuit implies, doing well at these tournaments typically requires traveling long distances throughout the year or living in places with a large concentration of "national circuit" tournaments (ie, coasts and huge cities).
Almost all high school debaters compete close to home in regional or local circuits. "Kritiks" are far less common on these circuits, usually ineffective, and almost always used because some kid is excited about them for one reason or another.
In 15 years of judging I've judged maybe a half dozen rounds in local tournaments where an actual kritik was read, despite being one of the few judges who would be at all receptive (I don't have strong feelings either way; I just want the kids to be able to exercise their brains and explore their interests).
These facts are going to have to be explained to some irate school board member who read this piece. The explanation will come from some stressed and over-worked coach/volunteer in order to make sure their rural midwestern debate program doesn't get cut or micro-managed out of existence.
Anyways, I'll let the Harvard kids carry on with their elite infighting about how there's too much critical theory at the invite-only championship of a largely inaccessible national circuit.
All of the statistics in this piece are about the "Tournament of Champions". As its name implies, the Tournament of Champions is an invite-only tournament. In order to get an invitation, students need to do very well at several elite tournaments that make up a "national circuit". As the name of the circuit implies, doing well at these tournaments typically requires traveling long distances throughout the year or living in places with a large concentration of "national circuit" tournaments (ie, coasts and huge cities).
Almost all high school debaters compete close to home in regional or local circuits. "Kritiks" are far less common on these circuits, usually ineffective, and almost always used because some kid is excited about them for one reason or another.
In 15 years of judging I've judged maybe a half dozen rounds in local tournaments where an actual kritik was read, despite being one of the few judges who would be at all receptive (I don't have strong feelings either way; I just want the kids to be able to exercise their brains and explore their interests).
These facts are going to have to be explained to some irate school board member who read this piece. The explanation will come from some stressed and over-worked coach/volunteer in order to make sure their rural midwestern debate program doesn't get cut or micro-managed out of existence.
Anyways, I'll let the Harvard kids carry on with their elite infighting about how there's too much critical theory at the invite-only championship of a largely inaccessible national circuit.
This has been going on for a long time. Im 15 years removed and made a hard U turn back to STEM after high school, but nihilism never left me. I blame some of it on debate, and some of it on doing salvia (with people from debate)
The author is arguing that the rise of K-s is killing true debate (where anything can be advocated for and one wins based on the quality of arguments) with something else (clever appeal to authority and personal attacks).
The aim of debate is to foster people who form their own opinions, but the current structure instead fosters people who blithely subscribe to the current social norms. Critical theory is not revolutionary. Socially, it is dominant (particularly among that demographic). It is actually truly revolutionary to disagree with it, e.g., take the stance that capitalism is an effective way of organizing labour.
I also think a white elephant in the room, is that a) a lot of critical theory is incredibly badly reasoned / detached from reality and b) a significant amount of the use of it is done in bad faith (e.g., for virtue signalling, and to shoot others down, invalidate others rather than engage with their arguments and views)