NAUDL Distributes Debate Topic Materials Throughout the Urban Debate Network
For the fifth consecutive year the NAUDL has produced its Argument and Research Kit for free distribution and use by all UDL coaches and debaters. This year’s national debate topic – debated by all UDL teams as well as all non-UDL teams that participate in Policy Debate – is “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its public health assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa.” This year’s 700+ page Kit, whose principal author and researcher is NAUDL contractor and Boston UDL Co-Director Andrew Brokos, comprises a full set of Cases and Negative positions in the Core Files, a set of Argument Summaries, a Research Guide, and a Topic Bibliography.
The Core Files and Argument Summaries help UDL teams begin the year debating, right from the start. They are written to be a model of debate brief construction: to be instructional materials that promote clash-intensive and sophisticated debating as early as possible; and to be sophisticated, well-researched files usable all year as part of more-experienced debaters’ larger files. One of the ways that they achieve this instructional objective is they are designed with “clash” (or, as it is also called, “responsiveness”) foremost in mind. All Affirmative and Negative arguments in the Core Files answer each other through several layers of development, leading to the recognition of the structural need to respond to one’s opponent’s arguments in academic debate, and also prompting the next level of development: the need to analyze the text of evidence (both your own and your opponent’s) in order to resolve points of direct clash.
This year’s Core Files include a Case arguing for the replacement of in-kind food aid with cash foreighn assistance transfers; a Case arguing that the use of generic anti-retroviral drugs within the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in Africa, rather than the current policy of using patented drugs, would enable this initiative to prevent millions of additional deaths due to HIV; and a Case arguing that free distribution of female condoms in Africa would empower African women to take control of their reproductive lives. These Cases are bundled with full Case and Off Case Negative positions. The Research Guide and Bibliography will help to scaffold urban debaters to the next level of sophistication: devising, researching, assembling, and writing their own Affirmative Cases and Negative positions.
The complete package offered in the NAUDL’s Argument and Research Kit has been recognized by veteran debate professionals as a uniquely valuable contribution to the array of academic debate materials available on the market each year. Thirty-year veteran coach and administrator Brent Farrand, who converted his program at Newark Science into a directorship of one of the nation’s most successful UDLs (the Jersey UDL), has said that he starts all of his urban debaters on the NAUDL Core Files, as they are “the most valuable teaching tool available, simply put.” An estimated two thousand urban debaters currently have access to the NAUDL’s Argument and Research Kit, and the kits have been distributed to more than 350 urban public schools in 19 cities this debate season.
If you need a copy of the Argument and Research Kit, either electronic or paper, please contact info@urbandebate.org and the NAUDL will be glad to send you one.
