Maxwell Schnurer, wake Forest University

1997 - Renewable Energy : A Sustainable Debate

Imagine some high school student who gets the DRG in the mail. She or he tears open the package and sighs gratefully that their research is done for the season. In a frenzy, the first seven pages of the DRG are cut up and taped down as blocks. Then summer flies by and the DRG is thrown in the back of a debate tub waiting until the first debate of the season when it is opened for the second time. Or, imagine the debate coach who dutifully orders the DRG and passes it out to her students secretly feeling as though she has helped them "cheat"

Debate handbooks have come under attack recently as being anti-educational because of problems like our imaginary debater and coach above. The Debater's Research Guide has always been intended to be an educational tool to help students and coaches learn about the national debate topic and to provide inspiration for students to undertake what we consider to be the most important educational activity: debate. The DRG staff has put together a few ideas Of ways in which debaters and coaches can utilize the DRG more effectively to learn and hopefully win more debates.

Suggestions for debaters

1. The DRG is a good place to begin your own research. We have gathered eight experienced researchers to create the arguments in the DRG. This is a good watermark of where arguments will be at the end of the summer. With this ways to use the DRG to have Your opponents. First update run. We stopped researching les about the juvenile justice published. More ideas and arguments exist on fl subjects we have covered in the DRG, it is up to you to go out and find them. Second, you should prepare to beat the arguments in the DRG. You can be ready when someone runs a gang interdiction affirmative or the net widening disadvantage, because you have seen them in this handbook. This will probably mean a trip to the library to research answers to arguments you suspect will be run. Third, use the DRG as a basis for library research, not a substitute. Find the original articles and books that we got cards from. You will find that we only took a few cards from most sources. Then you can find the authors cited in the bibliographies and footnotes of important sources. Figure out what keywords are commonly used to identify research in the area that you want to find information about. For example, you may want to do more research on VORP (Victim offender reconciliation program). It will be a frustrating search if you are looking under reconciliation, because most of the literature identifies VORP as VOM (Victim offender mediation). Using the keyword of "mediation," one can find a lot on VOM, but only some time in the library will allow you to figure that out.

2. Use the DRG for practice. The way to become a better debater is to debate, preferably on the subject that you will be debating during the school year. The DRG enables you to jump right in and start debating with juvenile justice evidence. Grab a couple of your friends, make some positions and start debating. You will find the strengths and weaknesses of your evidence and your arguments earlier enabling you to be a more compelling debater during the season. If you want to do speed or clarity drills you can practice with topic-specific evidence, shells and first affirmative constructives.

3. Read sections of the DRG for understanding. The outlines we have provided contain a lot of information and can greatly contribute to your understanding of the arguments. Read the evidence, make sure that you understand how the argument works and why the evidence that is contained in the DRG supports the claims made in the outlines. The more you understand the issues you will be debating the better off you will be. A good read of the DRG can greatly help when it comes time to research. You will know what evidence you need and what evidence you already have. You will know what authors advocate and which authors are "hot" authors for the topic.

4. Use the DRG to prepare answers. If you want to run the spending disadvantage, you can be aware of what arguments are commonly used to answer that disadvantage, because they are at the end of the disadvantage. You can now make answers to those arguments. You can prepare second negative constructive (2NC) answers to common second affirmative constructive(2AC) answers for your disadvantage. The same is true of affirmatives. You should look hard at the negative evidence that is included after each affirmative and prepare to answer the most common negative arguments. Take the debate to the next level by preparing to beat your opponent's best arguments.

5. Break down the mental barriers of affirmative and negative. Typically, most debaters will keep the sections clearly distinguished between simple affirmative and negative categories. Most of these arguments interrelate in some way. Some of the disadvantage impacts can become advantages for certain affirmatives, and some of the affirmatives can become counterplans. The possibilities for the DRG evidence are endless. A careful read of the DRG can emphasize the possible connections between arguments and help you win more debates by understanding the evidence and its intricacies.

6. Make your own arguments from the DRG evidence. Debaters should construct the best arguments possible, which means carefully selecting the best pieces of evidence to support ones arguments. You should write your own version of first affirmative constructives, disadvantages shells, and first lines of defense against arguments. Make your team, partner, and self defend why some cards are chosen to support some arguments. The sooner you can construct your own arguments, the more time you can have to evaluate them and the stronger your arguments can be.

7. Go back later in the season and reread the DRG. The issues that you debate will change as the season progresses. Some arguments will become irrelevant and some will become much more relevant. The assumptions that one has at the beginning of the debate season often change after a few complicated debates occur. The way that one uses cards may change as the season moves along. The DRG can be a resource all through the season if you continue to use it as one.

8. Don't use the DRG as a research substitute. The DRG is not the final word on these arguments. It has been intended to be an inspiration to research, not a crutch. The book is not sufficient to win every debate this year. The affirmatives are purposefully small to give you a taste of the ideas and evidence, without covering all the literature. The disadvantages will probably need updating. You will learn more if you go to the library and research these ideas and get a good grounding in the topic. You will probably win more rounds that way too.

Suggestions for coaches

1. Use the DRG to get a good topic understanding. Many coaches feel swamped once the season gets underway, the DRG can give you a leg up on the topic. Take some time and read the outlines of major arguments and the evidence for them. Become familiar with the major themes of the topic and you will be able to advise your students more effectively.

2. Use the DRG for practicing debate skills. Debate gives students a phenomenal array of skills that will serve them well all though life: research, organization, public speaking and critical thinking. You can isolate where your team or debaters may be weak and use skills exercises to practice whatever might be lacking. Here are a few skills exercises that may help:

- "52 Card Pickup. " Photocopy the cards of an argument from the DRG, cut off the numbers and then cut each card out. Mix up the cards and give them to a debater(s) to sort back into outline format. For beginners you may want to start with a few cards and perhaps give them the DRG outline to compare their understanding of the evidence. For more advanced students, you can throw in a few unrelated cards. This exercise teaches students to organize and to summarize arguments when they read the evidence. The ability to physically manipulate the cards will probably help the students better "see" how outlines are made.

- "Tag Cards." Cut a handful of cards from the DRG and give them to the students to summarize. Many students have a hard time explaining what they have read in a piece of evidence. After the students have given a one-sentence explanation of the piece of evidence, discuss how the evidence might be explained differently. Learning to draw the essence out of a piece of evidence and then communicate that tag line is an important skill even for the most experienced debater.

- "Support." Give debaters a handful of cards to sort into piles relating to their usefulness for an argument. Make the students figure out why some evidence supports certain ideas. For the beginning debater this can be as simple as "some of these cards support bootcamps, and some of them are against bootcamps, sort them into two piles." For the more experienced debaters, evidence for a disadvantage could be sorted into links, uniqueness, impacts, etc. Exploration of the types of support for certain arguments is an essential skill for debate and for life.

- "Research Games." There are several ways to use the DRG in the library. You can have students look up the original sources for the cards in the DRG. You can have students look for arguments in support of a card or argument, or authors who would be opposed to an argument. With a little bit of preparation, a simple scavenger hunt can be created that will keep students interested and teach complex library skills.

- "Beat the DRG." Once students have mastered basic skills you can have them evaluate the arguments in the DRG and try to construct a better version of the argument in the DRG. This may be a serious project, but it synthesizes several important skills: organization, critical thinking, research and the ability to present an argument in public.

- "Carding." Get an original article from a source in the DRG and pass a copy out to all of your students. Have the students mark where they think important cards are in the article. Have them write a tag line and what argument the card would support next to each card. After everyone has finished the article begin discussing where arguments can be found in the article. This exercise will teach critical reading skills, the ability to "tag" cards, and argumentation skills when discussing the uses of the cards.

- "Develop an argument." Have the students take home a section of cards from the DRG and create their own debate argument (affumative, disadvantage, counterplan etc.) out of the evidence. If you have multiple students, have a discussion about the finished products. Explore why the students chose to support their arguments with the evidence they selected. Evaluate what arguments the positions are susceptible to, and how one might answer those arguments.

- "Impromptu speaking." Some students may be uncomfortable speaking in front of their peers or an audience. The DRG can help get them used to speaking. Gather three or four related cards and have the student organize and incorporate the evidence into an impromptu speech of a few minutes. The student will gradually get used to the topic and standing up and speaking.

- "Practice Blocking." Many debaters will want to use practice (or classroom) time to work on their files. Organize time to practice putting evidence on paper in a usable fashion. Examine the students' work as they organize and tape down DRG cards to create arguments. They should grow more confident in their organizational skills the more time they have to practice. Feedback is essential to show students how to construct a useful block.

3. Coaches can use the DRG to have mini-debates or practice debates. Once debaters have basic skills down, the most effective synthesis of skills exercises is to actually have debaters debate! Coaches can help students make positions and then get them to practice debating. With some encouragement and patience, your debaters can be practicing while other debaters are still scrambling for evidence in the library. The DRG enables beginning debaters to practice and learn what debate evidence and debate arguments are before doing library research.

4. Coaches can play an essential moderator role in facilitating team discussions. Analysis of topics such as: what disadvantages apply to what affirmatives, what disadvantages contradict with what other disadvantages, and how to attack certain affirmatives can be initiated by coaches. The discussions can begin before the season actually starts. With a careful reading of the arguments in the DRG, one can get enough of an understanding to facilitate important team discussions that would ordinarily have to wait until after the first tournament of the year.

Conclusion

We suggest that you try to avoid slicing up the DRG. You will get much more use out of the DRG if all the parts are there the next time you -o back to look up something. Photocopying the pages that you need from the DRG will help keep the DRG intact as a reference tool so it can be used all season.

The DRG is supposed to provide assistance to students and coaches who want to excel in debate. It isn't possible for us to include all the information on the juvenile crime topic in the handbook, nor would we want to. We want the handbook to help students learn, as well as help coaches to involve themselves with debate. It should not replace independent research or critical thought. We hope the suggestions given in this article will be helpful for teachers and students in achieving these goals.