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These articles pop up once in a while, and it always makes me grateful for my high school debate experience. New England private schools don't compete in NFL, t

These articles pop up once in a while, and it always makes me grateful for my high school debate experience. New England private schools don't compete in NFL, they have their own league that's federated with some other private school leagues from around the world. Spreading is banned, essentially on the good, old-fashioned, "we know it when we see it" standard. I readily admit that for most people, it's not so simple as, "you want good high school debate? Simple! Just go to Hotchkiss or Exeter." (schools that cost $50k/year) In theory, there's no reason why other leagues and schools could not ban spreading and put down a rhetoric-forward, comprehensive debate format. The catch, it seems, is that none of them have successfully done so. It's probably a culture thing-- the New England prep schools have a fairly large community of teachers and students who know how their debate format works, who know how to practice and judge for a less formulaic format. It's not obvious how you would create such a culture out of nowhere, and you'll get little help from New Englanders, especially the prep set, who are famously provincial about education.

pigscantfly 9y ago
To provide a competing narrative, I spent my first year of high school competing in LD at a high level (broke at many national tournaments, qualled to NCFL Nats, etc.) working with captains who had won Harvard and were competing at TOCs from a small school in Florida. After my parents forced me into the boarding school system, I grew to hate the activity, since no one was serious about practice or skill and just using it to pad their college applications. I was on the board of Philo at Phillips Andover until in-fighting between the president and VP resulted in my expulsion from the team after refusing to vote to impeach the president over personal (bad breakup) reasons couched in procedural nonsense (a hallmark of these societies). I regularly mopped the floor with the other prep school kids (including Hotchkiss and Exeter) in what I considered extremely basic rounds compared to what I'd seen (as a novice!) on the national circuit. The New England prep school league was more a club for lazy, privileged kids who didn't care much for working on cases or practicing delivery; the reasons no one on my team spread were because the judges were too incompetent to follow it and the kids were too lazy to learn how to think that quickly - not some noble principles or rules banning it, which I've never heard of. They were far more concerned with access to the team budget and the ability to establish a pecking order with associated privileges (like international travel) than actual skill at debate (which was totally orthogonal to one's ability to succeed socially on the team). Besides, the events were a joke -- after dinner speaking? After being exposed to LD and Policy? Give me a break.

pigscantfly 9y ago

To provide a competing narrative, I spent my first year of high school competing in LD at a high level (broke at many national tournaments, qualled to NCFL Nats, etc.) working with captains who had won Harvard and were competing at TOCs from a small school in Florida. After my parents forced me into the boarding school system, I grew to hate the activity, since no one was serious about practice or skill and just using it to pad their college applications. I was on the board of Philo at Phillips Andover until in-fighting between the president and VP resulted in my expulsion from the team after refusing to vote to impeach the president over personal (bad breakup) reasons couched in procedural nonsense (a hallmark of these societies). I regularly mopped the floor with the other prep school kids (including Hotchkiss and Exeter) in what I considered extremely basic rounds compared to what I'd seen (as a novice!) on the national circuit. The New England prep school league was more a club for lazy, privileged kids who didn't care much for working on cases or practicing delivery; the reasons no one on my team spread were because the judges were too incompetent to follow it and the kids were too lazy to learn how to think that quickly - not some noble principles or rules banning it, which I've never heard of. They were far more concerned with access to the team budget and the ability to establish a pecking order with associated privileges (like international travel) than actual skill at debate (which was totally orthogonal to one's ability to succeed socially on the team). Besides, the events were a joke -- after dinner speaking? After being exposed to LD and Policy? Give me a break.