How critical theory is radicalizing high school debate

Re:How critical theory is radicalizing high school debate by schoen on Saturday July 29, 2023 @08:34PM (#36926411)

I have repeatedly wondered whether the causality might run in the other direction.

The first time I heard of people saying "you should lose this argument because you have a harmful mindset / hold harmful presuppositions / are using harmful language", they were policy debaters practicing kritiks around 2000. (I did high school and college debate, but never policy debate, always the much less formal Lincoln-Douglas style with, at least at that time, no spreading, evidence, or kritiks -- and topics that were a surprise rather than given ahead of time.)

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Re:How critical theory is radicalizing high school debate by pessimizer on Saturday July 29, 2023 @08:59PM (#36926564)

That's an odd angle that is worth investigating.

edit: The real question is how all of this stuff took over politics, nonprofit boards, corporate boards, etc.; basically Robert's Rules debate style deliberative environments. Changing trends in literally high-school and college debate would feed into that, because they ultimately feed people onto boards and into politics.

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Re:How critical theory is radicalizing high school debate by morelisp on Sunday July 30, 2023 @05:28AM (#36929414)

But the formats using Robert's Rules or similar structures are least affected by this.

I assure you these people are way more likely to feed into, y'know, policy institutes like CATO, Hoover, or Brookings. Nonprofit boards have little use for the kind of manic nihilism policy debate breeds in its most dedicated adherents.

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