Originally Posted By: Edelweiss3
Quote:
If it is a disgrace to a man when he cannot defend himself in a bodily way, it would be absurd not to think him disgraced when he cannot defend himself with reason in a speech." Aristotle from The Rhetoric

I enjoyed participating in our debating club at our high school. I too think it would be a shame if we aren’t able to discuss politics without getting hot headed about it. If we handle our discussions as a debate, it may work out. There are a few rules we would have to follow:

1. Limited space to state your opinion. Lets’ say; not more then 200 words.
2. In your debate, concentrate on a rebuttal, and back it up with facts. Act as if we were lawyers ( with the exception of Lola, she all ready is ).
3. Okay:There is the affirmative side and the negative side.
For example; those pro Obama. Affirmative must prove the resolution,
Negative: those against Obama. Negative rebut it and back it up with facts.
Objective:
These roles are reversed if the Negative introduces a Counterplan (in which case, the Negative assumes the burden of proof).

Rebuttal: Attacking the other team's arguments and evidence and defending your own, characterizes good debating.

Clear organization is vital to a successful debating speech.
A debater who convinces you has debated well; a debater who does not, has not.
Anyone have any other suggestions? If we follow these rules, I think it could be not only fun but also enlightening.


It is helpful to follow classic rules for rhetoric and debate. The major kinks in this in the 21st century when presenting 'evidence' or citing a source are:

1) Longevity of the evidence from the Internet- which does lead to literal copying and text of longish articles/passages from the internet. Not just the URL, 'cause the internet resource could disappear or be reorganized by the Internet site publisher.

2) Understanding the credibility/authenticity/reliability of the information source itself. Huge debate amongst educators (who must deal with student plagariasm), librarians (they see users relying on wikipedia citations for their essays. Can you imagine a judge writing a court case that cites a fly-by-night article? Each year gets more challenging to teach people how to assess information sources and author's credentials properly as we become more flooded with personal Internet blogs, self-published articles vs. articles pre-screened by editors, etc.) Sample article from Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educati...ternet_Age.aspx

'Course our chats are not academic discussions. smile But to help one another, it helps to reference Internet information source..that will not disappear off the Internet in 2 years and preferably published by an organization that has longevity.

Don't know if this helps. But we do have many other topics to chat up also.

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