very well done
great story , great characters , and great kids , particularly the one who ask to speak to the jorden student after their debate at the Berkley tournament , he was a terrific young man , good for hbo and its programing ,
shareI couldn't agree more. This was a great documentary in every aspect possible. Very informative, and still has it's entertainment value while tackling some solid and important dialogue. You really feel for the two kids from the Jordan/Long Beach high school after losing at the Berkley tourny...a bit ironic that the issues they try to tackle are possibly the truth, correct, and yet hurt them in the debate some how.
Glad HBO chose to broadcast this...definitely worth the watch.
For those who have never had the opportunity to participate or watch a true debate, this was very eye-opening.
shareI participated in cx debate in high school for four years. We won state every year, and it was a great experience. I agree with the judge's decision in the last round for Jordan HS, because he was correct in asserting that you could not argue against the nature of the debate structure while simultaneously attempting to win the debate within that structure. Their revolution didn't go far enough.
I agree however with their team's assertion that money and race are a factor in winning debates. I noticed a lot of kids with laptops in the doc, which were against the rules when I was debating (I feel old now). Access to research, especially pre-fabbed research from sources like Squirrel Killers in expensive, and if your school isn't giving any money to debate than it's hard to get the cash together. Private schools have the luxury of allowing class time for debate team research, whereas public schools like mine relied on the students using their own time and money. At least most libraries will give debate students as discount on copies and printouts, but essentially a successful team needs access to JSTOR, Nexus-Lexus, several laser printers and an industrial copier, at the very least. A public school like the one in LB, CA just won't allot those funds, and local businesses are likely spending what little they can donate on the football or basketball teams. In the end it is not a coincidence that private schools fare better at the state and national level, and it has everything to do with money, which unfortunately has everything to do with race.
I would love to have heard Sam Iola's reaction to the argument presented by the Louis Blackwell's team.
Any fool can know, the point is to understand.share
aubrey , how do you reconcile the fact that they won some debates by using that argument , were all the other judges wrong ? It seems to me that the coach of the debate team from csuf disagrees w/ you . You can argue something is illogical by using logic ,one can argue against free speech by relying on the free speech clause to make their point ,similarly you "can" argue that the nature of the debate structure , w/in the confines of the debate structure.
shareNo, aubrey is exactly right. If other judges awarded them wins, they failed to consider the logical implications of the argument. Long Beach was trying to have their cake and eat it too. If you believe that the traditional terms of policy debate are wrong, you're a hypocrite when you ask judges to vote for you on traditional debate grounds (i.e., dropped arguments, etc.).
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I think we should limit free speech , and what gives me the right to say that , free speech , that logically consistent. That which if passed would deny me the right to argue for the limitation of free speech.
shareWhich would make you a hypocrite (i.e., taking advantage of free speech while simultaneously condemning it) just like Richard and Louis. Your example actually proves the judge's point.
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Ive proven that the judge was wrong , that is the price of free speech , I can vote for the communist party , hows that shake your world? thus your point would be one can never argue against limitation of free speech b/c to do so is hypocritical , can i argue that you can not yell fire in a theater or is that hypocritical for you to limit that speech ? can I disclose military secrets arguing on free speech grounds ? or is it hypocritical for you to say I cannot since you believe in free speech ? Thus the judge was wrong for him like you don't understand the nature of the argument .
shareAs was previously stated, you're confusing hypocrisy with deductive reasoning. One can argue that something is illogical using logic because it is through a comparison to logic that we discover something is illogical. Let's put this into an analogy you can better understand. Suppose a football team was arguing simultaneously that the way in which games are scored- touchdowns, field goals, extra points- were wrong, but then at the end of the game asked the referees to award them a win based on precisely that criteria. This is what the LB team was doing, asking judges to award them a win based on better flow points, but arguing that the nature of pre-gathered research inherent to CX debate was wrong, even though the flow points depend on the use of said research for argumentation.
What the LB team was in essence doing was not dissimilar to the tactics of Sam Iola, taking a CX debate which is heavily dependent upon deductive reasoning and empirical evidence, and turning it into an LD debate, in which debaters often argue not only the resolution provided but the nature of the debate on the resolution.
It has become fairly apparent to me however that you, tango09212, probably never participated in CX or LD debate in high school, and with the exception of watching this documentary, are wholly unfamiliar with these concepts. Is that a fair assessment?
Any fool can know, the point is to understand.share
I have never participated in a debate in my life , that being said I still take issue w/ your assertion that :one the L.B. jorden team argument was flawed b/c they used the the debate formate to attack the debate formate. Hypocrisy was a word that the previous poster used, and I just took his words and used them against him , so I will ask you, according to you I cannot argue for the limitation of free speech , by using the free speech clause as my ability to do so? Secondly , these kids won several debate by using this exact argument , some judges saw the brilliance in the argument and some did not . Thus is the debate coach for CSU at fullerton wrong ,Let me guess I bet he has more experience in debate than you do . Is that fair assessment ? So are those all those people who agreed w/ the L.B. jorden team wrong? Even the young man who was given the victory said that the L.B. jorden team should have won. How do you reconcile that ?
shareNo offense, tango, but I don't think you've thought very carefully about the free speech analogy. Let's stick with what was actually argued in the film.
The judge's point was totally logical, even though it's a little hard to grasp. If Long Beach is correct, and the traditional criteria of debate are wrong (i.e., racist, classist, etc.) then the judge should reject those traditional criteria by refusing to apply them in picking the winner. Anything less would make him complicit in the racism, classism, etc..
In fact -- and this is key -- the judge who agrees with Long Beach's argument should arguably protest the evils of debate by giving the *loss* to the team that *wins* according to these traditional criteria. So that's precisely what he did. Because Long Beach's debaters were better as measured by traditional criteria, the judge gave them the loss.
They won the argument, but were clearly the better debaters, so they paradoxically had to lose the round. It's perverse but the logical implication of Long Beach's claim.
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maybe its over my head but it seems some what strange that for them to win they actually had to loose. Ive been wrong b/4 so I take no offense , what strange is take your argument to its logical conclusion is then , to give them the loss is then in fact a winning argument therefore they should have been given the win for making the argument that they should loose. What? by the way bigmouth I appreciate your views and the gentlemanly manner in which you presented them .
shareI think bigmouth has explained it very well so far. I dont think that it becomes an endless paradox of winning = losing = winning. it is exactly as the judge said it when they explained it to the camera: LB Jordan won their framework (how the debate should be decided) that things like "dropped (unanswered) arguments" or even "superior arguments" should not be the way to debate but instead it should be the LB Jordan 3-step process.
My very basic understanding of Freire (I am an education major) is that "banking education" hinges on the concept of a student as an empty vessel and rigid practices of what Freire would call teacher-student interaction that is racist, colonialist, imperialist, and so on. In a debate sense it seemed like LB Jordan used this to say that traditionalist debate posited teams that argued for "the best policy" (which would be the standard response to LB Jordan's "project") were the teachers to the other teams student, which was racist.
LB Jordan basically thought they won because the other team had dropped their superior arguments that were basically their best policy. I thought the judge spoke very well when he simply said that if that type of debate is bad, LB Jordan did it the most or used that framework to try to win more than St. Francis. That was more longwinded and less eloquent than the other person who was trying to explain it but I thought maybe a different perspective would help.
As an aside I think part of the problem here is that we did not really see any of the instances where LB Jordan likely slipped into their old tricks of traditional debate while still running their three step arguments. Then we saw the other team apologize (very rare in those types of debates) so you really feel for them, which I guess is a credit to whitely, but at the same time does not show enough of how they could have lost.
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Forgive me if i'm mistaken, but i thought the whole point of LBJ's assertions was that the idea/policy itself is being discounted in favor for how an argument's framework. The fact that the judge awarded the win to the other school, on the basis of LBJ's framework, proves that once again that ideas and policy take a back seat.
shareForgive me if i'm mistaken, but i thought the whole point of LBJ's assertions was that the idea/policy itself is being discounted in favor for how an argument's framework. The fact that the judge awarded the win to the other school, on the basis of LBJ's framework, proves that once again that ideas and policy take a back seat.
No, it's actually the opposite. Every other judge treated Long Beach's argument as simply a clever debate tactic. In a weird way, the judge at the end was the *only* one who validated what they said by voting against them -- he actually practiced what they preached.
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I agree with the judge's decision in the last round for Jordan HS, because he was correct in asserting that you could not argue against the nature of the debate structure while simultaneously attempting to win the debate within that structure
But the opposing team did not make this argument. The judge made it for them. He inserted himself into the round. We don't know how Long Beach would have answered this, because they had no opportunity to respond. share
But the opposing team did not make this argument. The judge made it for them. He inserted himself into the round. We don't know how Long Beach would have answered this, because they had no opportunity to respond.
The judge didn't insert himself into the round. He was only doing what Long Beach told him to do -- i.e., vote against the traditional criteria of debate. Once Long Beach argued they should win according to those traditional criteria, their fate was sealed.
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Great movie. Overdramatized, but still pretty accurate and certainly enjoyable. Made me want to cut cards.
Debate food for thought:
There seems to be a disjoint between "Critiquing the entire debate apparatus" and "critiquing the social norms of debate"
I don't think the judge was asked to give the finger to the entire debate system, in which case he could have just as well given the loss to the other team. I didn't see the round but it seemed the judge was making a logical error there.
chinable: It's more narrow than that. Long Beach argued (a) that the traditional criteria for judging debate are bad. Then they argued (b) they should win according to those criteria. If the judge is persuaded by argument (a), then he can't logically accept argument (b).
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You are not allowed to change the rules of the game in the middle of the game. This is true in any structured format, where a winner and loser are to be determined or judged. While they might have had a legitimate point, they chose the wrong place to accomplish anything with it. I expect many of the judges were blown away by a new style and let them win on that account alone. One even said that they won a round because we need more diversity in the contest.
To say the entire debate process and debating competitions are racist is just incorrect, as they won the California State Championship. This shows how they have a chip on their shoulder more than basis of facts of discrimination, because they won many tournaments. The reality of money and time is an inherent problem with any goal in life, so while it may be true and create more obstacles, that can not be used as a valid reason to not be successful, especially since they had often been successful in the past.
Using those two arguments to sustain the main point ended up being a distraction, instead of helping to show the weaknesses of where the debating world has gotten itself into. No one watches these things, because they are incomprehensible speed reading diatribes and not real debates. While it is an amazing skill to speak fast and list tons of information in a short time frame, that should not be where debaters want to end up at. A real debate should in a large auditorium, with hundreds of spectators and a panel of judges. They had a valid point in saying that the tournaments have created there own problems, away from the real world of information and understanding to the audience. While it might be fun to beat the opponent over the head with speed, if a neutral observer can not fathom what is even being said, then both sides ultimately lose. Unfortunately, that debate should be done in the off-season for the future betterment of us all.