Welcome to week 6 of The Great Debate's introduction to Lincoln-Douglas Value Debate. Today's lesson is entitled "Value Structure & Value Criterion" This 2-video lecture gives you an understanding of how "values" are used in "value debate" and discusses how we can determine who won a debate round based on theri values. This lecture is indispensable to any new value debater - it gives you the keys to the world of Lincoln-Douglas debate.
Before you watch the video, participate in the following exercise:
Assume you are the coach of your high school's basketball team. At the beginning of the season you are told that you must select a team of only tall somewhat slow players or a team of only short quick players. Your objective as a team is obviously to win as many games as possible.
Which team would you select?
Why?
Write down 7 reasons having a team of all short (or all tall) players will make your team best able to win games.
As we've said before, value statements rank ideas or beliefs against one another. A debater must be able to articulate a value, provide a mechanism for measuring that value, and demonstrate the superiority of the value in order to win a value debate round. The mechanisms for encouraging a debate on values is the use of a value criterion. The criterion provides concrete measurement of how close we are to reaching a given value. Great debaters don't just understand what value they are using, they understand the strengths and weaknesses of that value in relation to other values which might be employed in the round.
This week's lesson is available on the Great Debate's youtube page. It is also available on the Great Debate website in embedded format. Finally, you can see the videos right here:
If you haven't already, be sure to visit The Great Debate website to request your free packet of outlines. If you are a student, you can request the student packet and coaches can request a coach packet with additional resources including a syllabus and answer keys.
Now let's see if we understand how value statements apply in a debate round. Get your basketball coach exercise back out. Everyone that picked short players is on team "S" and everyone that picked tall players is on team "T." Compare your reasons with the other members of your team and come up with the 15 top reasons your team will present.
Here's where the value and criterion come in. The value you will be debating is "winning basketball games" and the value criterion is "scoring more points than your opponent." See, you can measure how likely you are to win games by how many more points than your opponent you score. Now group your 15 reasons into 4 or 5 "contentions" that all show how a short or tall team will be best able to win the games.
Each debater should take a turn presenting at least 2 arguments in favor of his or her side. The arguments should be in the form: "Tall players will be able to block more shots of their opponent and will thus prevent the other team from scoring. Preventing your opponent from scoring allows fewer points (criterion) which will ultimately lead to more wins for our team (impact the value)." If you wish, feel free to reply to one another's arguments after each debater has had the opportunity to present their reasons and apply them to the value and criterion.
After you watch the video, be sure you download Coach Marko Djuranovic's Ultimate LD Handbook. Read pages 34-54 before next week's lecture. Don't worry if it doesn't all make sense. You are just trying to understand the big picture right now.
Finally, as homework, make a list of the arguments you think support the resolution and are strong against the resolution. Next look at the list of values from week 3's handout. Do you see any values that would be furthered by the arguments you already have? If you can link your arguments to a value, take the next step and try to figure out how you would measure your value - what would you use for your criterion? Try to have 3 different value and criterion combinations ready for next week and try to have 3 arguments that you would use for each of these sets (9 arguments total).
Have a great week and we'll see you next week for our seventh debate lesson, "Refutation and Rebuttals"
If you are interested in learning a form of debate other than Lincoln-Douglas value debate, The Great Debate is a wonderful textbook for policy debate written by the teacher in these videos. The Great Debate provides training in the basics of debate and includes information for debaters who have already learned the fundamentals and are looking for more intermediate level training. The Great Debate has a teacher's guide (coming soon) which includes lesson plans and additional material for coaches. For more information about The Great Debate, visit our website. We also have produced a video training series for Public Forum Debate. The public forum series is another free resource from The Great Debate.
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