4 ms·

I have next to no sympathy for this article. These kids sound awesome. Actually thinking about the world and engaging with it as opposed to playing a debate gam

I have next to no sympathy for this article. These kids sound awesome. Actually thinking about the world and engaging with it as opposed to playing a debate game by the rules. These kids sound awesome. If debate club was this interesting when I was in high school I might have gone. Instead it was exactly how this guy described it. Brainless recitation of prepared arguments trapped inside of a box.

ang_cire 3y ago
It's not even against the rules, kritiks are literally a standard part of debate. Right-wingers just don't like it because it allows people to attack the choices of arguments and sources. So with kritiks, if someone walks in and runs an "immigrants are eating babies in secret demonic rituals" argument and cites Alex Jones, you can say, "That's xenophobic, and Alex Jones is xenophobic, here are my sources that support those assertions, and you shouldn't vote for them, judge, if they're perpetuating that, especially in a space where there are debaters who are themselves- or who have family who are- immigrants." Without Kritiks, you have to either find a source that *specifically* says "Immigrants are not eating babies in demonic rituals" (and unfortunately, there are far more nutjobs out there putting out garbage than there are people spending time to individually refute each and every stupid statement), or you have to try to attack the negative impacts they're claiming - OR - you have to run an ethical violation argument, which is accusing the other team itself of being intentionally malicious, which is a much higher threshold than saying, "they should have known better", which is not making assertions about their intentions. Kritiks are a normal part of all debate, both competitive and informal.