Judging NFA-LD

I agree with John entirely. Getting back to the first post by Danny, the solution to keeping NFA-LD at a conversational speed is related to judging, but also related to coaching. I can promise to not put more than six cards in the Affirmative Case, and can promise to not teach or encourage my students to spread. But if it is competitive, and speeches are timed, and our students have an ounce of sense, they will try to speak faster. It doesn’t happen in IE because the format is different, end of story. It doesn’t happen in a courtroom because closing arguments aren’t timed, end of story.

Providing qualified judges who will respect the notion of conversational speed is much more important than finding any judge who will respect conversational speed. My issue with the judging is that a typical IE judge does not know how to analyze a policy controversy, nor do they know the variety of debate judging paradigms. Even someone who knows how to coach a persuasive speech may only know one organizational format, like Monroe’s Motivated Sequence, but does not know about the stock issues and nothing about refutation. If you examine 20 or 30 public speaking books, it is not common to find the stock issues discussed in the chapter on Persuasion. Sure there may be a little bit about induction and deduction, even some fallacies covered, but there’s nothing about refutation. Why? Because it is more specialized than presenting a unilateral argument.

Policy debate, and judging it, should involve a basic knowledge of what a resolution is, affirmative and negative ground, jurisdiction, the stock issues, counterplans, etc. I can teach my student these concepts and teach them how to explain things for certain less informed judges, but an LD debater does not have time in a 6 minute speech to teach the judge about stock issues, the burden of proof, presumption, and all that other stuff. There are certain enthymemes in this activity, like the affirmative has the burden of proof, like the negative needs to win an issue (which doesn’t mean winning all the arguments for that issue), etc., and seriously a debater cannot and should not be expected to teach the judge about those things during his or her speeches. Moreover, as I said earlier, we all complain about unqualified judges and “bus driver” judges, and “warm body” judges, so why on earth would we intentionally provide that kind of judging when we are trying to establish this activity as something more meaningful and something that takes more time?

Danny, you did a great thing in asking for a special round of applause for the LD debaters at the Concordia tournament, because it IS a lot of work. But if we put anyone in to judge that round, then we send the message that regardless of the work, you’re going to get a judge who has no idea how to evaluate the round without having his or her hand held. And while it may not have felt good being rejected to judge Open at Fullerton, that’s the breaks. Had you debated and judged Open at a four-year for a certain number of years, or logged a certain number of round each year, then you would have been qualified. The tournament director, a stand-up guy, was using his best judgment and attempting to provide the most qualified judges for the students who were the most experienced, to make sure that when a decision was rendered it came from expertise, not desperation. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I don’t think John would even put me in Open, as I’ve been out of the activity for a while. I competed in the NDT, coached a team to Semis at the NDT, to the Quarters of CEDA Nats, etc., and have the PhD and all that jazz, but I have been out of the activity and so I wouldn’t expect John to use me for Open either. That’s fine with me, who cares, I’d rather that the Open debaters have the judges who have kept active and up on the things going on in that realm of debate anyway. If there were people available who were more qualified, then it makes sense that they were the ones placed in Open division.

NFA-LD is not the same as the IE events, and you can’t get someone ready with a little coaching. Impromptu has someone react to a quotation out of a movie, or something along those lines. It allows adaptation to a generic topic, and as I’ve seen so far, a generic adaptation to a generic topic. You can’t generically adapt to a topic on foreign policy or US-Cuban relations, unless you make it up. And if you are literally making up arguments about foreign policy, just stay in Parliamentary where at least we know and expect that to happen. As as you mention, Parli has become fast, even with the IE judges, so let’s just assume that the judging has nothing to do with the speed. It is the free will of the competitive debaters, and in the end we can’t go into every round and police speed, count words per minute, etc.

As for the invasion case, read the ballots. If you can actually say that those decisions came from a place of understanding the stock issues, the burden of proof, presumption, and the tests of evidence, then I’ll withdraw my request. But from my perspective the judges voted on plausible and possible arguments, delivery style trumping actual evidence cards, etc. That is simply not what we should be fostering in this activity. That should be the exception and not the rule.

Coaching LD is not easy and preparing for LD is not easy either. I can’t just make up what is happening in Cuba and I can’t make up an idea for an Affirmative plan. I have to get research and teach my students how to get research, cut cards, put together briefs, and all that other stuff. Then II have to teach them how to use the research, and how to refute the opponent. I think one of two things are likely to happen if we do not take a stand on the qualifications for a judge in LD.

Scenario One: We keep it the way it is, the debaters who sound good but have crappy evidence (or no evidence at all) and don’t know how to use it and have barely read up on the topic will continue to be in the final rounds, the coaches who know about policy debate will plug along and do the best they can do only to find out their student lost because of poor delivery skills or that an argument didn’t make sense (even with evidentiary support and a good explanation), more and more people do LD because, “It was really easy and I didn’t even have to read about Cuba to win,” and the most frustrated coaches will scrap the idea out of disgust, go back to Parli because at least they don’t have to spend their own time reading about a topic, or raise money to travel out of the area to have qualified judges.

(OR)

Scenario 2: We can do a debate judging clinic and provide neutral educational materials on analyzing policy controversies, tests of evidence, and various judging paradigms (like tabula rasa, games, hypo-testing, or whatever), even link them to judging philosophies from a variety of policy judges across the country, and then provide LD judging certification. It won’t happen over night, but it will happen in the long run; and in the short run it sends the message that echoes what John and others have said, that this is not an easy activity, not easy to do or judge, and if you want to be on the LD train you better learn about argument theory and judging policy debates, and you better go to the library and read up on the topic and make educated arguments and back them up with evidence. If you do this, you will be rewarded, because the person in the back of the room knows what you are talking about can can reasonably evaluate the debate based upon an understanding of the activity. Now that you have LD in the area, and you do, then you kind of have to switch gears to keeping it. It may be a little ‘bait and switch’, but that’s okay. It is at Phi Rho Pi, there are directors here willing to have it as a division, and so we can attempt to impart integrity before it gets out of hand.

Danny,

I agree with you that the speed needs to be regulated. I (and others) only ask that we hire qualified judges, not because of speed, but because of education and predictability. Anyone can enforce the rate at which someone speaks, including my mother. I think there is much more to judging LD than assessing the speed, and it isn’t really necessary to argue about whether an IE’er would speed or not, because I am not defending speed. I am saying that hiring judges who lack the knowledge I described above is not a solution to keeping a debate slow, in that students will choose to go fast anyway (as they do in Parli). I do not see why you wouldn’t educate the judges about stock issues, etc. They will still require a slower delivery, because they are from IE and that is their preference. But they will be making educated decisions, so it ends up being a win-win.

You may end up sustaining the event, but it won’t be an evidence-oriented policy debate adhering to the stock issues. It will be a policy-oriented debate that is slow and adapted to a layperson audience, and it will not have a foundation in credible evidence, argument theory, or informal logic. So it will be slow, and it will not teach the students what we hope to teach them in this kind of activity. But you run the tabs and you can do what you want.

Perhaps you can conduct a study somehow, with a survey, and also with some kind of content analysis of the ballots. Let’s stop making hypothetical arguments and actually see what is happening in the rounds.

I think the “two sides” here are really closer than they might think. One point of clarification might be needed. The local league here (PSCFA) mandates that all judges, whether in IEs or debate, sign a form that lists out all the criteria for judging. It’s called “FRED” (military-style acronym) and is available at http://www.pscfa.org I think that a sincere effort to utilize that tool should fit the standards that Sydne mentions, and also keep the activity free from “expert only” judges that Danny rightly complains about.

As to the “rules” of NFA LD. I have the perspective of a judge who has taken people to LD and CEDA/NDT tournaments in the last year and I agree totally with Danny, but for different reasons. The reason CEDA collapsed into NDT was not because one was “better”, but because their ceased to be a pedagogical difference. If NFA LD becomes 1-person CEDA/NDT then one or the other should be euthanized since there will no longer be a pedagogical difference between the two. Danny is familiar with this argument in a different context, as he argued at recent JC National tournaments that Parli-LD and Parli should not co-exist.

For that reason, I disagree with the trend in mid-west and eastern U.S. to make NFA LD faster and more technical. I think it is a suicidal attempt to destroy the activity, when the people in favor of such a move should just join the CEDA/NDT circuit. I think both have their place, but they should be kept separate in order to provide a better teaching experience for a greater number of students.

In answer to John’s question about what SoCal would do if the majority of NFA LD succeeded in amending or ignoring completely the rules, my answer is CBU would then lobby that NFA LD should be changed to a 2-person activity that follows the CEDA/NDT topic. Since those two things would be the only difference, it would seem like an obvious move. My best guess about SoCal schools in general, is that the activity would die practically overnight. The reason is not that NFA LD would become something horrible, but because CEDA/NDT is very nearly dead in SoCal (to not offend those who do take part, I will operationally define that as the inability to compete at more than 4-5 tournaments without traveling to the other side of the country), and so we don’t have the judging pool, school support, etc. to support 1-person ceda debate.

John’s argument is that an appeal to “rules” in not persuasive because the “community” wants to change the rules. That appeal to community side steps the most important questions. What should the rules be? Is it better to have multiple activities utilizing various pedagogical models, or should only the “good” pedagogical models be used? These, it seems to me, are the core questions irregardless of the debate over NFA LD.

I have looked over that document and there’s nothing in it that helps to clarify the stock issues, the speaker’s duties, or elements of refutation. I am not talking about how to run a round, or the speech times. I’m talking about information related to basic debate concepts like presumption and burden of proof.

I am not arguing for a fast and technical debate. I am arguing for educating the judging pool on the basic concepts associated with judging and evidence-based policy debate. One doesn’t have to be an “expert”, but one should have a specialized knowledge base that is distinguishable from the knowledge base of an IE judge or a Parli judge.

I am not arguing for LD to become like CEDA and NDT. I haven’t said anything like that. In fact, please stop suggesting that I am advocating for a faster debate or a debate that is more like CEDA or NDT. I seriously just want an LD judge to be qualified in order to make any of my coaching worth my while.

If we teach the judges about stock issues and judging paradigms, the debate will not become faster and more technical. There’s nothing that suggests that qualified judges make debaters talk faster.

And I believe that the merger of CEDA and NDT had more to do with tournament availability and traveling, etc. True the pedagogies were similar, but that wasn’t the catalyst…it just made the merger easier. And we don’t have to worry about that. It isn’t like if we teach the judges about stock issues then they are going to want to be like CEDA or NDT.

I honestly do not understand why anyone would resist more education for the judges. It seems to contradict our principles as educators.

“Why wouldn’t an IE’r want to speak faster to get more information in their persuasive?”

Because they’re not facing an opponent responding to their presentation. Competing non-responsive speeches = persuasive = no need to go fast. Competing responsive speeches = debate = need to speak quickly.