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December 16, 2006

Cross-X: Book Report

Oh, the hours I spent at the goofy forensics tournaments!

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by how much I enjoyed Cross-X by Joe Miller. Given the amount of time and energy I devoted to the speech and debate team in high school (and, ahem, grade school), it's kind of a no-brainer that I'd be into a year-in-the-life story of an inner-city debate team from Kansas City. Oh, you're going to devote swaths of text to descriptions of van rides to debate tournaments, complete with details on the battle for control of the stereo? Check. You've got complicated theories about the evolution of high-school debate and the competing philosophies therein? Uh huh. You'll even include a couple pages of back and forth with Jim Copeland in re: the state of high school debate? Umm, yeah. That sounds about right.

For the avoidance of doubt, I was very very into the speech and debate team in high school. To an almost shameful degree. Not that I am/ was ashamed of being on the speech and debate team -- that part was fine. It was more that I was actually so into it. That is, I thought it was important and I really wanted to win. That's the part that seems so silly. But it's also the part that made this book resonate so much with me. Reading the descriptions of the tension surrounding the final-round postings (remember all the goofy codes!) or hearing the kids from Kansas City Central whinge about judges who "don't understand their style" -- WOW! Didn't that all feel just a wee bit too familiar!

I'm semi-shocked that this book hadn't been written before. That is, why hadn't there been some kind of non-fiction expose or low-budget documentary about speech and debate? Why hasn't debate gotten the National Spelling Bee treatment? Cross-X actually provides an answer to that question, albeit indirectly. That is, high school speech and debate is dying a slow death. Fewer and fewer schools are supporting programs, fewer and fewer kids are participating, and the activity is slowly but reliably lumbering toward extinction. The reason no one had written the debate book is that no one would really care to read it. I hadn't really thought about that until I read this book, and it kind of bummed me out -- especially since my experiences with speech and debate are easily among my fondest and most treasured memories from high school.

Anyhoo, me going on and on about high school debate and the La Salle Forum is a story for another day (or series of stories and/ or days). What you need to know about Cross-X:

Title:Cross-X

Author: Joe Miller

Tags: debate, cross-x, 1AC, TOC, spreading, topicality, midwest, NFL Nationals, NCFL Nationals, Montgomery Bell Academy, James Copeland, Kansas City Central, Urban Debate League, race, class, education, power, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, articulate nerds, subcultures surrounding articulate nerds, van rides involving articulate nerds, genocide, dehumaniztion, nuclear war, why we got screwed by that lousy judge who doesn't understand sh*t about debate!

If someone asked you to make a slide called "Key Takeaways," it would contain the following information: if you thought high school debate was a strange and bizarre beast that bore no relation to the way that human beings typically exchange and challenge ideas ten years ago, then you really won't be able to make any sense of it today. Still, if you're one of those super-dedicated teachers, you believe that anyone can debate, and that your kids -- so long as they attend the proper debate camps and download the right cases from the internet -- can hang with anyone at the big debate tournaments, even if they're kids from a school right out of Season Four of The Wire. Spending a season with the kids -- and the coach -- from Kansas City Central (KCC) as they wagon-train across the midwest from debate tournament to debate tournament gives you a pretty good feel for the high-school debate subculture. And is it ever a goofy subculture! Still, you can't help but pull for the KCC kids, and you can't help but enjoy the relationship between their beleagured coach, Jane Rinehart, and her star debater, Marcus Leach. I'll tip my cap to Joe Miller for not overplaying that relationship, and for letting it speak for itself. There was a lot of love there, even if the two of them would/ could never admit it. Any kid -- inner-city school or not -- should be so lucky to have a teacher like Jane Rinehart looking out for them.

If I Could Meet Any Of The Featured Players: I might argue it's Marcus, but I've met Marcus and his teammates (plenty of times). And although I've also met Jane Rinehart (plenty of times), she's really the one I'd like to talk to. Because although I've met my fair share of adults who've given their lives to high school debate -- with all the sacrifices that entails -- she strikes me as particularly dedicated and tireless. That is, her experience strikes me as extra-thankless. And I just want to make sure she knows that she's doing a good thing, and that the world needs more people like her.

The Super-Interesting Passages That I'm Looking Forward To Dropping On People In Casual Conversation That I Imagine Will Make Me Sound Smart: gigantic shout out to Jim Copeland for offering the observation that turns the whole book on its head (and actually dramatically flips the perspective/ point of view of the author). In response to Joe Miller's claim that the kids from KCC were being screwed by some Missouri state high school rules commission that was preventing them from traveling to all the national circuit debate tournaments, Jim Copeland drops the hammer:

"This team isn't being persecuted. My God, it's one of the luckiest teams in the country. Persecution is being a debater in Berger, Texas, where the closest tournament is 500 miles away."

Bam! Miller had been selling us a story of hardship for the KCC team -- the poor kids from the inner city who just wanted a chance to go to all the big debate tournaments. But Jim Copeland flipped that on its head; the problem with debate is all the big debate tournaments! Having the same thirty schools flying all over the country every week to debate each other (with all the debate camps and expensive research to support them) is creating a tiered hierarchy of high school debate -- and slowly squeezing out all the schools who can't participate in the policy debate arms race.

Yikes. I had never thought of it that way, but it makes total sense. That's why they invented Lincoln-Douglas debate, which doesn't stress piles of obscure evidence and crazy nuclear war scenarios -- they wanted to make debate more democratic and hopefully engage more kids. It hasn't really worked, but I understand where they're coming from.

Mostly it bums me out that the whole thing is dying. Don't know what we can do about that.

What I Still Want To Know: I really didn't like the last 25 pages of the book, in which the author becomes the team's coach and imagines that he's solved all of our educational system's racial problems -- or at least taken the first cliched step toward a solution -- by sharing their "new ideas about debate and race" with a wealthy school from Tennessee. Dude, you and the KCC kids are getting played! The rich kids from Nashville are co-opting your style just to win the goofy tournament against the other rich kids from Atlanta! Dude! You should know better than that! Or at least omit it from the story! Seriously.

Are They Going To Make a Movie?: as noted above, I could see this getting some sort of Spellbound meets Hoop Dreams treatment, but I doubt it. I mean, who would really watch it?

So I Should I Read It? oh yeah. If only so you can learn the precise details of my high school geekdom/ experiences. And if you were actually on the high school debate team, well, tell someone you know that this will make an excellent gift.

Posted by thatkid at December 16, 2006 8:05 PM under Book Report , Stuff To Buy , ThatKid

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