NFL and TMI

The National Forensics League and Toastmasters International, of course! Sillyheads, why wouldn't you understand my specialized jargon?! I went to a seven hour ordeal earlier today that was supposed to be a new coaches training for Speech and Debate. Unfortunately, it was supremely confusing and unhelpful. I swear to god, most of the seven hours went exactly like this.

Speaker: On to the EOs. For EOs, you have to have a strong speaker, because they're going to need to be prepared for any kind of quotidians* that come at them.
Memberof the in-crowd: Do the opposing members have to knock in a quotidian or stand?
Another member: I thought quotidians were outlawed at MFA conference?
Speaker: Well, let me give an example. (Puts hand on head.) I'm holding my wig, you see. (In a British accent.) "Motor-car? What is this 'motor-car?'"
Me: Um, is that a metaphorical wig or a literal wig, and why are you wearing a wig? Do they have to wear a wig?
Member: It's a pretend wig, but they don't have to wear a wig.
Speaker : At Paloma they'd better wear a wig! In any case, see, they can't do a time-set at the varsity level. At college I know they do, but not in high school. but if they're thrown a wicked googly*, they need to have a defenestration* defense ready.

Make any sense to you? Me neither. (And I know I threw in a couple words that weren't actually S&D related, but it doesn't matter, because it sounded like they were speaking Esperanto about 80% of the time. Incidentally, the only things I threw in that were not actually said in the "training" have an asterisk. Everything else is as good a paraphrase as I can recall. Including all that shit about the motor-car and the wig.) I recognized some words, knew what others meant but apparently not in that context, and generally only had the vaguest idea what they were talking about. A couple other good examples include the time they were talking about proper dress, and someone chimed in "Lincoln city" and the speaker responded "E-mail me." Both giggle. Yeah, um, thanks for the context there.

Maybe the worst was one of the final speakers, who was actually applauded by several people in the room, and who apparently moved himself nearly to tears. He was supposed to be teaching us about Lincoln-Douglas debate, and from what I gathered, it has something to do with values and philosophy. He started somewhat randomly throwing out the names of articles and books on philisophy that we might find interesting, then told us about an article on Andre Agassi in a recent Sports Illustrated that apparently was quite interesting. He told us at the beginning of this anecdote that what was really killer was the ending of the article, then he told us a few of the things about Agassi's early childhood, then moved on to another anecdote, this one about a businessman travelling in Greece on 9/11. This anecdote, at least, ended with an interesting quote from the article, and if I make a LOT of the connections for this guy, I think his point was that L-D debaters ought to collect and memorize a stockpile of interesting anecdotes and/or quotes to use when appropriate in debates, but that was wholly unclear from what he actually said. He's the same guy earlier who was telling us why he had to leave to get his truck, which apparently involved him falling off a horse. I really don't know how. I think his brain might have been scrambled in the fall, quite frankly.

What really worried me about this, besides the fact that I still haven't a clue how to teach this Speech and Debate class, is that almost all the other people there today to disseminate this information are or were teachers. Could their students possibly follow what they were saying if I, a pretty competent learner with a couple graduate degrees, couldn't? Maybe they're different in their own classes and didn't use their usual style because they were dealing with adults, but I was thoroughly and completely lost most of the time. Literally, there were times when someone would give an example of a debater pretending to be in the 1800s, and someone else would ask whether you could establish a time-set and whether the other team had to abide by it, and they would start debating the bylaws of the league, and I'd have to raise my hand and say "What's a time-set?" And they would get distracted and still not answer me!

To use an example that came up in my class the other day, we were reading a chapter of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," and a paragraph began "They were called legs or grunts." Now, I said "Gee, that's interesting, why do you think they're called legs?" And the kids talked about why the legs of these soldiers were important, and I said it seemed like they were being reduced to just a small part of them, and then I introduced the term "synechdoche" and defined it (calling something by a part to represent the whole), and I wrote it on the board. We talked about a few other examples, like "head of cattle" and "hired hands," and then I gave a funny example (so memorable, apparently, that I overheard a student repeating it to a student who'd gone to the restroom and just returned), and then we kind of naturally moved on. If someone in this meeting today was trying to teach synechdoche, it would have been like "Now, this paragraph has synechdoche in it, which is pretty common, for example I called a guy a dick once, it's a Greek term, did you ever get to see the Minoan, the Minoan, what are they called? Well anyway, that's synechdoche."

Sigh. Anyway, I'm going to do some internet research, maybe check out a couple books, talk to some people who did Speech and Debate in high school, and go to a meet on the 23rd just to observe. I know I can get a handle on this thing, I just was hoping today was going to help. It didn't.