University of Louisville Debate

Hi.  You haven’t heard from me in a while.  Life got in the way, you know how that goes.  This summer was filled with surprises, twists, turns, and yet another journey brimming with lessons to be learned.

However, learning those lessons requires preparation, especially those of our personal nature and the likelihood we can truly benefit from those lessons based on our traditional education system frankly isn’t very good.

In fact, somewhere along the way we made a collective societal decision to separate the objective from the subjective, the personal from the political or professional, and we sanitize our education through a political correctness of limiting any discussions of personal introspection  to the topic we study, instead of creating the possibility of personal transformation through the topic.  It does occur, but infrequently, and not because our curriculums are built to do such, but because sometimes the person has a process to demand a higher level of self-inquiry that transcends what we are trained to do. 

But it is that higher level of critical self-inquiry, which melds the self with the world around it, starting with the teacher’s personal transformation and not the student.  That higher level recognizes the student is also the teacher and the teacher the student, but that the teacher must jump into the waters of personal transformation through any lesson before she or he can effectively create that transformation in others.  Few are willing to pay the heavy price for such lofty outcomes, as it comes with a process that vents one’s personal pain, suffering, and routine through the topics first studied, then taught.

One must be prepared to make many mistakes along the way, which must include a process to  forgive onesself after studying the error, drawing conclusions from it, and then assessing the validity of any claim drawn.  One must prepare to investigate’s one own soul, determine one’s own values and purpose, including their methods for self instruction, before trying to tackle any topic through teaching.

I wonder how others got there, as my road wasn’t intentional, easy, nor pleasant, but one knows they have arrived when mistakes become not something to avoid, but something to learn from.  Errors become opportunities that one runs toward, instead of searching for blame of others.  Finally, failure as the song suggests becomes just the next opportunity for success.  That is the process by which sinners become saints, and while I’m certainly not ready to “go marching in,” I have a comfort that my process of learning life’s lessons has transformed me as a human being, a person, a father, a teacher, and even as a debate coach.

That process is persuasion, not in the contemporary public speaking kind, but the one that appeals to the mind, body, and soul in an effort to generate sufficient data and observations to make sound conclusions.  It is a never-ending and on-going process that requires so much more than what we choose to teach in the education system, as we’d rather pay lip service to its value and focus on less human endeavors.  Ironic, since the problems of the world are all grounded in recapuring our humanity.  Sad and ironic.

A decade ago, I was unwillingly thrust into a protest movement for social change, although at the time I thought I was coming up with a simple, yet brillant winning debate strategy that would force the national conversation on race former President Clinton spoke of, but never delivered.  But old habits die hard and as my friend Rosie Washington reminded me Thursday, “Power gives up nothing without a demand.”  The question is, do we know where the power is, and what the correct demand should be?  I wonder.

I promise that more reflections are coming but I have work to you.  I would say that work is personal, but that would be inaccurate.  I would say that it is professional, but that oversimplifies the equation as well.  It is both and there is no other way to consider “the work” beyond the ideal of a quilt, stitched with personal and professional development, overlapping, yet separating at points.  So I won’t reflect until more of that work is complete because taking care of myself must always come before I can share that self with others.

But I did want to take a moment and revisit the first 18 reflections that I’ve written.  It is important to have revolutionary patience and revisit our ideals and thoughts, especially those in pursuit of change, otherwise we simply don’t know if we are producing real change or if the appearance of change is producing us.  One has become education and one has been lost, hence the problems of the world grow without salvation in sight. 

Our Debate journey has been one for the ages, one to study, and one to learn from.  People have been moved, touched, angered, teared, charged, alienated, and shaken in all kinds of ways at all kinds of times.  But it is important as someone who has attempted to lead, primarily through first drafts of curriculum that then gets shaped and molded by staff and students in a process of experimentation that has rewards in and of itself, that I take the time to reflect on my reflections and check for balance, for accuracy, and for inspiration as we head into the 11th season, as we search for the right type of change.  A change that is balanced, nuanced, focused, appropriate, and most of all, beneficial, even when we are unsure of exactly what it looks like, we just know that “change is gonna come,” and we have a responsibility to ensure that inevitable change is productive change or we get an alternative that moves us away from our collective societal educational goals, instead of towards them.

• The blogs generally focus on my mistakes, and the accomplishments of others.  This lacks balance.  Many read these as my personal failures.  However, as I learned at the our squad trip to the National Underground Museum in Cincinnati this past week, generations of runaway slaves failed, resulting in punishment, sometimes death and return to their slavemasters.  But this was inspirational for other slaves who saw the possibilities for their chance to break free, realizing that they could learn better techniques and strategies for their dash to freedom.  And in fact, all social movements have significant failure at first, we just don’t teach the value of it.  We talk about Montgomery without the three attempts at bus boycotts prior to or we talk about the Underground Railroad and not the thousands that died trying to figure out how to put down the tracks of freedom. The University of Louisville Malcolm X Debate Society, under my leadership failed many times, but lessons were learned and strength grew from weakness.  Any one person may not see that big picture process, but those who study our entire time, can’t help but notice the evolution.
• While I take responsibility for many of the mistakes, there are often others who bear their share of responsibility as well.  Most will likely never assume reponsibility, at least not publicly.  However, that should not hinder my personal introspection process, nor should it divert my process in an effort to learn as much as I can.  It saddens me that others choose not to engage in similar ways, but it is also possible their process is just private and my choice of transparency, is just that, my choice.
• The blogs tend to focus on the latest version of Louisville soldiers, but one cannot forget that the curriculum they participate in the creation and execution of this season, lives on the backs of all ten seasons before it, as each year we come closer to a strategy that envelopes the critical aspects of all of them.  Again, this is the natural evolution of revolution.
• Finally, the big missing piece is how are the Louisville students taught policy debate?  That has been the age old question that has prevented many contemporary policy purists from jumping on board the express, even those who see the valid criticisms of debate as we know it.  The phrase, “if I vote for Louisville, I don’t know what the world will look like” and fear creates the product of their ballot against change.  I too, wonder how a team built in the image of Wiley College, driven by arguments of social protest that often start in the mind of the only person with all 20 years worth of knowledge of the institutional history of debating race in NDT/CEDA, learns policy debate.  And while I can’t answer that question, I can stand on faith when I say that “it does, it most certainly does.”  I watch the ease with which our students take the starting argument outlines provided by the staff, and they transform into wonderful and powerful pieces of prose and advocacy which touch the human spirit, and perfectly execute the strategy even before we know what that strategy fully is.  I watch collective forms of learning where the next infusion of knowledge may come from a first year debate, an old head returning veteran, a strategy community organizer aka program coordinator aka co-director, or sometimes even I get lucky and offer a beneficial thought.  The ideal of collective learning in models of debate that focus on social protest and change has been almost dismissed since the interracial debates, and sadly the strength of collectivity that produced winning debates by teams with substantially less funds, playing by someone else’s rules, in someone else’s house, was one of the greatest underdog stories ever.  Yet the one movie made, most Americans never saw, and the one community that needs this form of debate most, continues to run from their collective past and the truth within, that debate can create real social change.  In fact, it is the only vehicle that can do so.

So as I go back to my search for finding my personal objectives fused with my professional goals, and when done correctly a singular method allows me to accomplish both simultaneously, I wonder how many of us could benefit from a world that separates the two, from being forced into a position where they become one? 

The night of my arrest for my role in a domestic dispute, that was the world imposed upon me and I have learned more in the last 13 months than I did my entire life.  Yeah, it’s time to forgive myself, love myself, and move forward, but in ways that don’t forget the past but appreciate the lessons that grew from it.

With love for the pain of mistakes, the learning process, and the lessons of struggle,

Dr. Ede Warner, Jr.

aka

Doc aka Dad aka the Co-Director of the Malcolm X Debate Society and Associate Professor of Pan African Studies, both at the University of Louisville