Loved it. How may I purchase a copy? My students have to see this.

I,m also make a documentry and films but i have not to bary.i want to seal eo all my documentry.

The film is available to buy in fall of 2008. As for the documentary itself, I thought it was fantastic. It really gives a ton of insight into debate and the competitiveness that exists. As a high school debater I’m ecstatic that we’re finally getting the recognition deserved.

Towson university won the college CEDA debate championships in May running a similar argument to the one Jordan uses in Resolved (a criteque of debate with a racial focus). It was very cool to see them win. That they beat University of Kansas (where I debated) in the final was the only negative.

As a retired director of intercollegiate forensics and author of debate books, I’ve seen several major innovations in the practice of debate in high school over four decades. The courage that Richard and Louis showed by challenging the reigning “SPREAD” paradigm through a passionate commitment to Paolo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed is by far the most important new thing to happen. As I see it, the primary value of the debate tournament system is to motivate students to master skills of analysis and advocacy through competition in an intellectual activity. As the film demonstrates clearly, the worst result of the spread technique is not so much that debates are made unintelligible to average listeners, but that it rewards mindless regurgitation of overwhelming volumes of evidence cards and argument briefs that the debaters themselves may or may not have had any part in producing. For a variety of reasons, the democratic purpose of having debates in the first place is subverted by the strong tendency to make it into a game that can only be played successfully by an elite, wealthy few schools.

Bravo to the breakthrough achievement of Louis and Richard, and their coach David Wiltz, who showed the way to open up the field to more diverse participants. Let us not overlook the great effect that the Urban Debate League has had in recent years in drawing in minority schools to debate competition. Yet it took Louis and Richard to show that it is not enough simply to recruit minority students into an elitist activity. Their living example of Pablo Friere’s educational philosophy, and their apt use of it to ground their entire arguimentative strategy, will ultimately revolutionize interscholastic and intercollegiate debate. Hopefully, the activity will become much more important to students than as a boot camp in preparation for laws schools, but a real liberalizing of public policy deliberation for everyone.

Finally, I want to say that as a film teacher, I’m very happy that the movie succeeds in portraying an esoteric activity like high level HS debate competition in realistic scenes, yet still manages to keep the narrative simple and clear enough to hold the interest of uninitiated viewers.

In other words, watch this movie, and you will probably enjoy it. Not only that, you’ll encourage your teenagers to try out for debate, and you’ll actually enjoy attending their contests when they do.

How do I purchase for download for my students?

Sad and touching, yet strangely motivational. Makes me not to want to lose another round.

This movie was amazing, I’m a high school debater and we watched this one day and I think it’s so cool to see debate shine, and Richard and Louis’s style of debate was really cool.

Interesting to read the comments from current high school debaters! Though Richard and Louis’s style appears to be “really cool”, it is a harsh and real reality that where is the importance of the debate when no real debate occurs, and the harsh reality of the stigma attached to African American debaters. As a current coach and being in the forensic world since the age of 9 and being a 30 year old black female, the elitism of the art is blindly exclusionary, however, on the other level of it, the prime purpose of the debate itself can be had if in CEDA or CX {whatever region you’re in} the defragmenting of “SPREADING” can occur and educational benefits can begin. However, this is not the only style of debate in high school or college.

This film has impacted me both positively and negatively, however, due to my personal experience in this world has been so long and am still active, the most powerful part of this film to me is the nonverbals of the film and what wasn’t said.

Currently being a middle-class policy debater, I obviously have a bias. This was a great film, for sure, but I completely disagree with the approach of the Long Beach team. If I lost to their arguments on how the existing style of debate is not providing us with the best education, I’d feel so screwed over.

“At the end of the debate round I think it’s probably a good idea to incorporate under evidence of minorities in the debate community and so I vote affirmative”.

That judge made me so angry. From what I could tell in the round, the negative team was clearly winning, and they weren’t arguing that whoever has the most evidence is who should win the round, they were arguing that modern debate is about theoretical ideas, and shouldn’t be based on personal connection, as the affirmative team had suggested. As one boy had stated, they were a team of two white males, there’s no possible way they could connect to their arguments.
The biggest problem was pointed out by the last judge that spoke. The Long Beach team was arguing that the current structure/style does not offer the best education, and puts far too much emphasis on winning, then they proceeded to blatantly state that they should win because their idea is better for reasons a, b, and c which are in fact voting issues, (voting issues being part of the thing they said they were concerned with because they diminish the connection between the debater and their arguments.)

Another thing that bothered me is that the judges were talking about how impressive it is that the Long Beach team had spoken without evidence and made logical explanations of their ideas. This is an unfair assessment, because Louis and Richard are saying the same things every round. No matter affirmative or negative, they just say that they want to change the way people debate. It would be easy to go up and give a speech with no notes or evidence if that’s all you’ve been saying the whole season.

It’s also unfair to the opposing teams. They spent days, weeks, or months researching the resolution, collecting evidence, competing in practice rounds, and doing whatever they could to prepare them for the tournaments ahead. They do not, however, have any preparation for the arguments made by Richard and Louis. The Long Beach team has their non-traditional arguments already planned out. They spend their time practicing the use of the same persuasive words over and over again, until it becomes second nature. And, because raw persuasion and personal connections with arguments is not the purpose of policy debate, traditional teams do not practice it. This makes it unfair for teams opposing Richard and Louis to present adequate arguments. I mean what can they even say? They put together a case, prepared negative files, extensions, and all of the other necessary arguments, and the Long Beach team just tells them they aren’t debating the right way. They don’t attack the affirmative’s case at all, and they never provide an actual plan to resolve the year’s issue. These opposing teams just have to freestyle, given no preparation in advance for the kind of arguments Richard and Louis are presenting.

Lastly, just the fact that they were trying to change debate upset me. Obviously people like it, that’s why it’s become as popular as it has. They were making bigoted arguments. The fact that they might not have the money or the time to prepare is not an argument that should be made in policy. It’s simply not the point. As the boy in the elimination round brought up, if they don’t have time or money to amass large quantities of evidence, then why are they competing in policy debate? They could easily try LD or Pufo, because those types put less stress on evidence, and more on principles, values, and real life situations.
I’m totally disappointed that so many of the judges failed to overlook these things. It shows how subjective the activity is. Nonetheless, I will continue my new age, spreading, policy ways, in contrast to the Long Beach boys approach.