I’m not sure why debate has suddenly become such a popular topic for movies and documentaries. For years, the only debate-related film was Listen To Me with Kirk Cameron and Jami Gertz.
The latest debate film is a documentary called Resolved.
The project documents the life of debate-team students as they approach the 2007 National Forensic League Tournament to be held in Kansas in June. Caddoo, a former debater herself, teaches film and media studies at Hunter College, which is part of the City University of New York. The pair are following several debate teams throughout the country as they compete at the national tournament. Their film is slated to be released by the end of the year.
The article does not say, but I would assume that the film crews will be following the profiled teams at the NFL National Tournament.
[via Global Debate Blog]
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The movie makes its TV premeire on HBO tonight.
A recent review of the film in the URL.
Just finished watching the documentary and here are my opinions.
I had no idea that debating was simply nothing but reading really fast from a page and not even thinking about what you’re saying. THAT SHOULDN’T BE DEFINED AS DEBATING!
As for the Long Beach team, they were changing the rules of the game in the midst of it, which you can’t expect to succeed at. Imagine if, all of a sudden, in the middle of a basketball game, a player decided to pick up the ball and run with it like in football, then proceed to grab a ladder and climb up to the hoop to deposit the ball. It wouldn’t be legal, would it? Well, that’s what the Long Beach team did.
Anyway, interesting movie. I now know that there is no such thing as debating in this country anymore. It is very sad.
Resolved is an outstanding piece of work within the dynamic of Americana, ie; politics, racism, classism, school systems ext…Richard and Lewis were phenomenal along with the Long Beach Jordan staff. Keep this kind of “real” work going…
The documentary just gives one side of the debate process and it involves a tiny segment of the speech and debate community; even in the area of policy debate. At the national level, we have Lincoln Douglas debate in which highly polished speaking skills over propositions of value are debated. The delivery style is such that any public speaker would be proud of these kids. A team event called Public Forum debate is another style used to present well reasoned and persuasively delivered arguments.
Even in policy debate, most areas of the country reject the counterintuitive and mindless spewing of arguments sometimes practiced by elite schools in the country.
While it was admirable for the Long Beach team to take on this games playing style of debate, they too engaged in the game and the script writers of this piece tried to make it appear that all high school debating is along this model.
There are almost 80,000 U.S. high school students competing in speech and debate on an annual basis. At best, perhaps 3,000 of these practice this style of debating. Even at the National Forensic League’s national tournament, a really small and usually not winning percentage clear to the elimination rounds for this tournament.
The authors make a valuable contribution. None of these practices as shown in the documentary can be defended. The problem though is that high school speech and debate is a much larger process and this should have been an editorial commentary included in this piece.
Thank you for your comments. As a high school debater in the late 1950’s, when I watched the show, I was shocked at what I saw. Now I know the “speed debating style” is not the norm, thank God. One of the most valuable activities of my high school years was learning to research both sides of an issue and to be ready to defend either one. Debate also taught me to think critically, a skill not taught to nor evident in most high school students today. My daughter, who teaches history to high school students, tries to teach this skill by making her students defend the side of an issue with which they do not agree. She has found this to be very enlightening to her students and many have come back while in College to tell her ” thank you for teaching me to think critically”. Perhaps the media needs to take some lessons as well!