Lecture - When Classes Collide in Debate - Wheatly - 3rd Better World Conference

Lecture - When Classes Collide in Debate - Wheatly - 3rd Better World Conference from Alfred Snider on Vimeo.

When classes collide – suburban and inner city debaters, Chris Wheatly, Aspen Colorado Schools, USA
After rising by an average of almost 50% for the previous ten years, firearm related deaths and injuries among juveniles in the U.S. reached an all time high in 1993, (National Center for Health Statistics). Entire neighborhoods in U.S. cities became ‘off limits’ for members of other neighborhoods. Debate, in the form of the Urban Debate League began as a way to address this national crisis and embarrassment. The successes and disappointments of the efforts to use debate as a pedagogical tool of empowerment and fellowship are those arising from twenty plus years of experience in Atlanta, Georgia and five plus years in Aspen, Colorado, this paper seeks to identify the advantages and potential sources of conflict occurring when cultures meet in the middle and/or high school debate tournament competition. Debate has been able to bring together and foster conversations among and between extremely diverse neighborhoods and communities. Debate can also reflect and magnify differences in ethnicity, culture and socio-economic status. This paper will attempt to explain and describe as many as possible.
This paper/presentation would seem to be central to the conference theme of, “ Rhetoric, Debate and the Pedagogy of Empowerment – Thinking and Speaking a Better World.” This author/speaker has had the pleasure of watching high school debate applied towards personal, familial, academic, social, political and economic empowerment and leadership.

3rd International Conference on Argumentation, Rhetoric, Debate and the Pedagogy of Empowerment, October 2010, Maribor, Slovenia.

Further details can be found at the conference websites:
Basic information at debate.uvm.edu/​debateblog/​better/​Welcome.html
News blog at betterworldconference.blogspot.com/

The conference was organized by the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor in Slovenia uni-mb.si/ , ZIP, Za in proti, zavod za kulturo dialoga/Pro et contra, institute for culture of dialogue zainproti.com/ , and the World Debate Institute of the University of Vermont debate.uvm.edu/​debateblog/​wdi/​Welcome.html .

The organizers are grateful for the support of our sponsor QatarDebate qatardebate.org/ .

Thanks to organizers Boris Vezjak, Alfred Snider and Bojana Skrt. Special thanks to Peter Mesarec, Monica Sobocan and Aljoša Polšak.