Forensics education? How the structure and discourse of forensics promotes competition.

• Author: Burnett, Ann

Ann Burnett, Jeffrey Brand and Mark Meister (*)

The 1998 American Forensic Association (AFA) National Individual Events Tournament (NIET) hosted in Flagstaff, Arizona was acclaimed a successful tournament by most tournament attendees. A proud Northern Arizona State University student newspaper staff, eager to report on the success of the "home school," touted their university's third place placing in their newspaper, The Lumberjack (Donley, "Forensics Third," 1998). Anxious to interview the most successful competitors, the Lumberjack staff sought out NAU team members but could not locate two of them. After questioning the dean of the NAU School of Communication, an internal investigation ensued, revealing that two NAU team members (who happened to be very successful) were ineligible for the competition (Donley, "NAU Forensics," 1998; Haworth, 1998). The students were working as interns in California and were not registered students at NAU. Officials at NAU notified the NIET and withdrew the students from the tournament (Haworth, 1998). The director of fore nsics at NAU resigned two weeks later (Donley, "NAU Forensics," 1998)

This was not the only incident involving rules violations during the 1997-1998 individual events national tournaments. A finalist from Bradley University in After Dinner Speaking (ADS) at the National Forensic Association (NFA) tournament was later disqualified for plagiarism (NFA Newsletter, 1999). His finals award, individual sweepstakes points, and team sweepstakes points in ADS at the AFA-NIET also were later revoked ("disqualification letter # 2," May 5, 1999).

These ethical violations may only touch the tip of the iceberg, (1) but their existence suggests that the educational value of forensics has been supplanted by the desire to win. That is, people do not cheat in order to learn; they cheat in order to win. In this essay, we argue that the value of competition has come to outweigh the value of education in intercollegiate individual events practice. (2) We will examine the educational and competitive values of forensics, assess the problems associated with the overemphasis on competition, and make recommendations as to how to bring education and competition back in balance.

THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF FORENSICS

Throughout its inception, forensics has been promoted as an educational activity. The emphasis on education in forensics began in 1952, when Ehninger promoted forensics as a cocurricular activity, and emphasized the need to provide an educational experience for our students (p. 237). Years later, participants at the 1974 Sedalia retreat defined forensics as an "educational activity" (McBath, 1975, P. 237). In an oft-cited passage from the 1984 conference on forensics, McBath states that "forensics is an educational activity primarily concerned with using an argumentative perspective in examining problems and communicating with people" (1984, p. 5). Ulrich (1984) notes that the individuals attending the 1984 conference concurred with the primary emphasis on education, and that learning ought to be emphasized above competitive success. Members of developmental conferences since 1984 have echoed this educational philosophy (Davenport, 1989; Friedley, 1989; Hefling, 1989; Inch, 1991; Larson-Casselton, 1991; Littl efield, 1991; Whitney, 1998). Recently forensic educators also have echoed the educational value of forensics (Allen, Berkowitz, Hunt & Louden, 1999; Gernant, 1991; Williams, 1990), and the revised AFA Code of Forensics emphasizes education as well ("American Forensic Association," 1998).

Perhaps the most common focus from the education perspective is on forensics as a laboratory (Dreibelbis & Gullifor, 1992; Friedley, 1992; Swanson, 1992; Zeuschner, 1992). On a college campus, a laboratory suggests two different kinds of activity: to educate students in the practices of a discipline (such as biology and chemistry lab courses) and to discover knowledge (such as research labs on college campuses). Collegiate forensics, particularly individual events, seems to adhere to the same educational philosophy that is promoted in a scientific laboratory. Individual events has borrowed, in a sense, both aspects of the "education-laboratory" metaphor. Forensic educators seemingly teach students how to argue and interpret literature, and, through experimentation and coaching, also discern new sources of arguments and interpretive strategies and learn from what we do.

THE ROLE OF COMPETITION IN AN EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY

While historically those involved in forensics have promoted the educational role of forensics, the value of competition has been acknowledged as well. For example, Friedley (1989) places emphasis on both education and competition. She begins her article on ethical issues for coaches by reminding us of the Second Developmental Conference theme that forensics is an educational activity, then proceeds to argue that our second ethical responsibility is to establish rules "that govern the activity to guarantee equality, consistency, and a sense of 'fair play' within the competitive [emphasis added] arena" (p. 84).

Others acknowledge that forensics is a competitive activity, thus emphasizing the game paradigm. Rieke and Smith (1968) and Muir (1993) easily attest that debate is competitive. On the individual events level, Greynolds (1991) admits that circumstances such as school size, budget, and past record exert pressure upon coaches to "be more or less successful in competitive situations" (p. 30).

Essentially, we have "nested" our educational laboratory in a competitive setting. In theory, these two sets of values do not conflict, but complement each other. For example, competition provides the incentives to teach our students more thoroughly, to discover new sources of arguments and interpretations, and then to submit those ideas to peer judgment. Much like the ways that various university scientific labs compete against each other for grants, publications, students, and resources, so, too, do forensics teams compete against each other. The incentive of competition pushes everyone to "be the best they can be"--students learn, and new knowledge results.

Unfortunately, much like the abuses that have occurred in various science labs, so, too, competitive pressures create abuses in forensics. Others have noted this trend. Rieke and Smith (1968) contended that the competitive nature of debate "provides temptation to employ unethical behavior as a means to victory both in school debates and later in life" (p. 223). In their study of ethics in forensics, Thomas and Hart (1983) found that, while respondents in the study said they favored the educational approach to forensics, the contest behaviors they approved were rooted in the game paradigm. In fact, some respondents failed to see a relationship between education-rooted rules and the actual contest. Inch concurred in 1991. He wrote that there is a gap "between the educational ethic we promote and the competitive ethic we practice" (p. 52). The problem of too much focus on competition has two main causes in intercollegiate forensics: structural (e.g., organizational structure, hierarchy, tournament focus) and dis cursive ("talk" about the forensics activity).

Structural Causes

The organizational structure of forensics emphasizes competition, both from the top down, and...