I was trying to frame a debate for my HS3T cohort (9th graders) a few nights ago, where I'm doing a kind of "reboot" of my debate program since there are some new students, and the oldtimers could stand a review, anyway. I had chosen the fairly elementary (and ubiquitous, in debate curricula) proposition of whether money or passion is more important in choosing one's career.
A student, who goes by Kevin and who rarely participates (and whom I've known since his elementary years), raised his hand and said that the topic didn't make sense. I asked why. He said (I'm paraphrasing), "I have a passion for money. So which side am I on?" The other students found this humorous.
Of course this is a very legitimate point. At first, we tried to reframe the debate as money vs happiness instead of money vs passion, but that still didn't really solve the problem: one could say, in the same spirit, "Money makes me happy."
Finally, I ended up digressing, explaining that one strategy for the CON team in a debate is to "deny the validity of the proposition" – which is the sort of argument we were discussing. This made the students unhappy, though, because they felt it should be a valid strategy for the PRO team, too. So I was trying to explain that in a debate, the "government" – the PRO team – typically has a more difficult task, since they have to accept the proposition as framed, while the CON team is allowed to challenge the terms of the debate. In fact I was happy to to see some of the students relatively engaged with such a complex digression – perhaps this was even useful to the more advanced students, but those with less experience with debate just let their eyes glaze over.
Actually, I was pleased with this whole development – it's perfect for a reboot, where the topics are ostensibly "easy" but where we can go into more depth about how debate really works.
[daily log: walking, 10.5km]