Hello, I remember reading a very well considered article about debate being a special enclave where everyone from communists to anarchists to post-modernists could/would be welcomed and protected within an inclusive community.
It can certainly be argued that things like "the code of conduct" and the "policy debate forums" are attempts at making what we do "safer" to the outside world, I worry more than a little (after decades of foulcault debates) that we are beginning to "tame" our wild things to make us all fit into an outside world acceptable package. This is certainly not to denigrate the fine work of Gordon (maybe the only thing aside from the Yankees I have ever disagreed with him about) or Jeff (who is one of my oldest friends in the activity) but this move seems, at best, non-organic to me. Many of you will be suprised I take this position, but those people probably misread many of the things I have posted in the past. My position was never that "wild things" should not exist or that we should "silence" or "discipline" them. My position was to present some arguments that could be made against people in debate rounds when they were "wild." Reason was the emphasis of my arguments (actually the crux of my arguments have always been best educational practices/experiences). To many, these are calls to the same thing (judges decision disciplines - teachers grading disciplines - etc etc) but to me it was a call to dialog between people on the so-called inside (tradition) and outside (wild things) in order to find a place we could all have meaningful discussions together. In other words, I value the ORGANIC process of good arguments beating bad arguments. If, the arguments were all made for this forums value...but people still prefer receiving and discussing things on edebate...why are we trying to "force" a move to this space? Talking about those reasons should be the basis of an argument that attempts to persuade the larger community to vote with its feet and participatate in this space instead of an alternative space. I have heard the arguments from my professional colleagues but remain unconvinced that the best solution is to participate here and let edebate die the death of a thousand swords. I know there is a kind of legitimacy that only a cleaned up Times Square could provide to a revitalized New York City and that a starbucks on every corner gives instead of an ethnic deli....But I really miss the old NYC. I don't want debate to become Giulianni's or Bloomberg's debate 2.0 Part of me likes the world where outsiders, outliers, pirates, and rogues roam the bandwidth. I think we lose something very special about our activity when we stop embracing the corners (dark or otherwise) of our debate reality. Josh
_______________________________________________ CEDA-L mailing list [email protected] http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/ceda-l
