**Notes**
Framework files are notoriously boring to produce. Some of this boredom comes from the repetition of arguments/cards over years. Some of this boredom comes from the relatively stale nature of framework debates themselves. This framework file is not immune from those critiques. Indeed, you will find here many of the same arguments/cards that have been floating around framework files for years. That being said, we have tried to create innovations on a couple of key arguments. As is always the case with trying out new arguments, “the first one through the wall is always the bloodiest.” In other words, we recognize that the newer arguments will definitely need development over the course of the season, but our hope is that together we can innovate this relatively stagnate yet critically important part of the debate conversation. With permission of the BJR lab, we have incorporated their work on the topic specific portion of the debate with our own.
Five important things to know about this file:
1- This file is not consistent. There are, in fact, lots and lots ofplaces where you can get into trouble if you try to use arguments inthis file without thinking through the argument interactions. Forinstance, the over-extension K links are based on calling for theballot to carry a symbolic effect beyond simply telling the tabroomwho won or lost the debate. Those links also link to the impacts whichargue that the ballot should be used to influence particular forms ofdebate practice (switch side debate, etc…). If you are reading throughthis file for the first time in the waning moments of prep time beforea debate then chances are things will go very poorly for you.
2- This file is built on modules. Most 2NRs/2ARs on framework aredifficult to organize because there is no coherent vision for thejudge. The 1NC reads a generic USFG violation and then spews throughfairness, ground, etc… During the 2011-2012 college debate season,Northwestern had great success in framework debates by moving awayfrom traditional framework 1NCs and towards a more unified theory ofdebate practices. By articulating a coherent vision of the educationalpractices that came with their interpretation of framework they wereable to leverage specific educational literature rather than simplyhoping that vague fairness claims would outweigh the other team’soffense. Now, don’t get us wrong, there is obviously a place forfairness impacts and hopefully you will see that we have tried toincorporate some actual impacts to fairness in this file. That beingsaid, we have produced a series of framework modules designed to givethe 2NR/2AR a more coherent vision of framework. The modules aredesigned for varying degrees of divergence from the resolution. Forinstance, the stasis module probably works best against a team thatmakes no attempt to cohere to the resolution. The switch side debatemodule, on the other hand, probably works best against a team thatmakes a connection to the topic but argues that the subject of theirargument/their performance in the debate is more important thanparticipating in the conditions necessary for switch side debate. Inthe ideal world, you will feel have the flexibility to pick and choosea module based on your opponent.
3- This file does include traditional debate impacts. As Ross Smithused to explain, most debate practices can be broken down into threevalues: The first question is how does a debate practice influence thevalues of the game we play? Does the practice make it more/less fairor more/less fun? The second question is how does a debate practiceinfluence the types of education we gain from participating in debate?Far too often debaters use the word “education” with littleexplanation of the type of education that is promoted by particularpractices leaving the judge to evaluate a nebulous value that bothsides lay claim to throughout all of their speeches. Finally, how doesa debate practice influence the skills we learn from debate? Are webetter advocates? Are we better decision-makers?
We have broken down the impacts section of the file to reflect thesethree values. We have tried to cut cards that support each value withthe recognition that in any given debate you may be defending that onevalue is more important than the other two. The key to beingsuccessful with these values is to be honest about the strengths andweaknesses of your opponent’s argument. Many times, framework debatersassert that there is no benefit to their opponents’ perspectivewhatsoever. You may be more successful by arguing that your opponents’arguments rely on privileging a particular type of education over thegame values or the skills values associated with your vision ofdebate. If you can then argue why your values are more important youhave a much better chance of winning on framework.
4- There is a ton of repetition in this file. Our goal was to make itas user friendly as possible. As a result, we tried to put terminalimpacts in all of the right places without relying on a debater tojump around the file to find an impact card. That being said,recognize that it would be silly to include every decision-makerimpact card in every module over and over again so the more familiaryou are with the file the easier it will be for you to use it in anygiven situation.
5- This file is not the only file you need for debating a team thatwants to discuss race. The framework group and the debating race groupworked closely to include key points of repetition, but this file doesnot include much discussion of race so you will definitely need toprep both files in order to debate a team that wants to make thedebate a discussion of race.
Best of luck! We hope that you will embrace the spirit of innovationand help us all to have better framework debates.
Michigan 7 Week AFHM Seniors
**GAME VALUES**
*fairness*
1NC-- fairness
The fairness of a process is essential to cooperation and outweighs any substantive benefit—decades of social science confirm
Pearce 7
(Pearce, Nick, March-May 2007, “Fair Rules: Rethinking Fairness”, director of International Public Policy Research, Public Policy Research, Volume 14, Issue 1) FS
In the 1970s, social psychologists began to develop theories of procedural justice in order to understand behavioural responses to different ways of resolving conflicts over resources and the allocation of goods and services. This ‘third wave of justice research’, as it has been described (Tyler et al 1997), studied whether evaluations of the fairness of decision-making processes impacted on reactions to the outcomes of those processes, that is, to the question of who gets what. Researchers discovered that, counterintuitively, people will accept outcomes that are negative or adverse for them personally, if they believe that the manner by which they were arrived at was fair. For example, Thibaut and Walker’s pioneering study (1975) of adversarial and inquisitional legal systems found that people choose dispute resolution mechanisms that they think will be fair and yield a fair outcome, rather than those that might stand them the best chance of winning. Similarly, they found that people are more satisfied with trial procedures that they experience as fair, regardless of the trial outcome.Subsequent procedural justice research demonstrated that people care about the fairness of procedures in a wide range of settings: from trial procedures to arbitration mechanisms, performancerelated pay at work and police-citizen interactions (Tyler 1990; Tyler et al 1997; Tyler and Fagan 2006). Moreover, not only are people more satisfied with procedures they deem to be fair, and more readily accept the outcomes of them, but their loyalty and willingness to help the organisation concerned also improves. Fair procedures and fair treatment generate loyalty and cooperation.
--fairness ext.
Fairness is a prerequisite to clash and in depth education
Speice and Lyle 3
(Speice, Patrick, Wake Forest ,and Lyle, Jim, debate coach at Clarion, 2003, “Traditional Policy Debate: Now More Than Ever”, Debaters Research Guide,
The structure of intercollegiate and high school debate builds on to this competitive framework. Judges not only answer a yes/no question regarding the resolution/plan, their decision generates a winner and a loser for the event. Judges assign winners, determine who does the better debating, and give speaker points and ranks to determine which teams are excelling more than others in advancing particular claims that provide an answer to the question asked by the resolution. And, the competitiveness of the activity extends across rounds as tournaments promote the better teams to elimination rounds and crown a champion. Participants at tournaments such as the Tournament of Champions and the National Debate Tournament are determined by evaluating competitive success across the entirety of the debate season. Debate, neither in an ultra-generic form nor the specific form that we participate in can be classified merely as discussion or dialogue.If it were decided that the promotion of education is of greater importance than preserving debate as a game, then the activity would begin to fall apart. Imagine that if instead of having two teams argue over competing viewpoints about a particular resolution/plan that debate instead asked debaters to simply inform the other participants of a different viewpoint regarding the plan. What would the activity look like then? Instead of hearing why the plan was good and bad, or why one policy alternative was better than another, we instead would hear why the plan is good, and why the plan reminded us of a story about one’s childhood. How would the judge evaluate such claims? If the desirability of the plan loses its importance and debate ceases to answer a yes/no question, what criteria should be used to resolve the “debate” (Smith, 2002)? While promoting intellectual development and enterprise are important components of the activity, the promotion of these values at the expense of the value of clash can only lead to the transformation of debate into discussion. In fact, it is not only that such a development spurs the loss of competitiveness, such a turn for the activity risks the loss of debate itself. Teams can begin to argue however they wish, and the “2 + 2 = 4” strategy becomes viable. What comes to matter then is word choice or performance. The result is a loss of depth of the education provided by the activity. Learning loses direction and begins to wander into the realm of acquiring random trivia. The entire purpose of having a policy resolution is rendered moot. Certainly one of the things most debaters enjoy about debate is that it really has no rules, however, if we decide to completely throw away “rules,” even as guiding principles, then the activity becomes something other than debate as an activity premised on fairness and competitive equity.Does any of this mean that there is no room for experimentation in the activity? Does any of this mean that there is no room for critical argumentation in debate, in policy debate? The answer to both questions is “No.” What this does suggest, however, is that before we adopt, and use, these newer debate practices we need to consider how these tools fit into the overall scheme of the activity and its goals.
Fairness outweighs--- it’s the internal link to all other experience in the activity
Ross 2011 (Don is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Economics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.) "Game Theory", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), < Herm
The mathematical theory of games was invented by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern (1944). For reasons to be discussed later, limitations in their mathematical framework initially made the theory applicable only under special and limited conditions. This situation has dramatically changed, in ways we will examine as we go along, over the past six decades, as the framework has been deepened and generalized. Refinements are still being made, and we will review a few outstanding problems that lie along the advancing front edge of these developments towards the end of the article. However, since at least the late 1970s it has been possible to say with confidence that game theory is the most important and useful tool in the analyst's kit whenever she confronts situations in which what counts as one agent's best action (for her) depends on expectations about what one or more other agents will do, and what counts as their best actions (for them) similarly depend on expectations about her.
Fairness outweighs– allowing affirmation without rules makes research impossible and destroys communication in debate
Hanghoj 8 Thorkild Hanghøj, Copenhagen, 2008 Since this PhD project began in 2004, the present author has been affiliated with DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials), which is located at the Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Research visits have taken place at the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the Institute of Education at the University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the School of Education, University of Aarhus, where I currently work as an assistant professor. Herm
Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include descriptions of issues to be debated, educational goals, game goals, roles, rules, time frames etc. In this way, debate games differ from textbooks and everyday classroom instruction as debate scenarios allow teachers and students to actively imagine, interact and communicate within a domain-specific game space. However, instead of mystifying debate games as a “magic circle” (Huizinga, 1950), I will try to overcome the epistemological dichotomy between “gaming” and “teaching” that tends to dominate discussions of educational games. In short, educational gaming is a form of teaching. As mentioned, education and games represent two different semiotic domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge: assertions, modes of representation and social forms of organisation (Gee, 2003; Barth, 2002; cf. chapter 2). In order to understand the interplay between these different domains and their interrelated knowledge forms, I will draw attention to a central assumption in Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy. According to Bakhtin, all forms of communication and culture are subject to centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981). A centripetal force is the drive to impose one version of the truth, while a centrifugal force involves a range of possible truths and interpretations. This means that any form of expression involves a duality of centripetal and centrifugal forces: “Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject serves as a point where centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear” (Bakhtin, 1981: 272). If we take teaching as an example, it is always affected by centripetal and centrifugal forces in the on-going negotiation of “truths” between teachers and students. In the words of Bakhtin: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction” (Bakhtin, 1984a: 110). Similarly, the dialogical space of debate games also embodies centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus, the election scenario of The Power Game involves centripetal elements that are mainly determined by the rules and outcomes of the game, i.e. the election is based on a limited time frame and a fixed voting procedure. Similarly, the open-ended goals, roles and resources represent centrifugal elements and create virtually endless possibilities for researching, preparing,presenting, debating and evaluating a variety of key political issues. Consequently, the actual process of enacting a game scenario involves a complex negotiation between these centrifugal/centripetal forces that are inextricably linked with the teachers and students’ game activities. In this way, the enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that combines different pedagogical practices (i.e. group work, web quests, student presentations) and learning resources (i.e. websites, handouts, spoken language) within the interpretive frame of the election scenario. Obviously, tensions may arise if there is too much divergence between educational goals and game goals. This means that game facilitation requires a balance between focusing too narrowly on the rules or “facts” of a game (centripetal orientation) and a focusing too broadly on the contingent possibilities and interpretations of the game scenario (centrifugal orientation). For Bakhtin, the duality of centripetal/centrifugal forces often manifests itself as a dynamic between “monological” and “dialogical” forms of discourse. Bakhtin illustrates this point with the monological discourse of the Socrates/Plato dialogues in which the teacher never learns anything new from the students, despite Socrates’ ideological claims to the contrary (Bakhtin, 1984a). Thus, discourse becomes monologised when “someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error”, where “a thought is either affirmed or repudiated” by the authority of the teacher (Bakhtin, 1984a: 81). In contrast to this, dialogical pedagogy fosters inclusive learning environments that are able to expand upon students’ existing knowledge and collaborative construction of “truths” (Dysthe, 1996). At this point, I should clarify that Bakhtin’s term “dialogic” is both a descriptive term (all utterances are per definition dialogic as they address other utterances as parts of a chain of communication) and a normative term as dialogue is an ideal to be worked for against the forces of “monologism” (Lillis, 2003: 197-8). In this project, I am mainly interested in describing the dialogical space of debate games. At the same time, I agree with Wegerif that “one of the goals of education, perhaps the most important goal, should be dialogue as an end in itself” (Wegerif, 2006: 61).