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Re: Saving face

Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2016-11-23 17:58

Matthew Simington wrote,
>I have often been in a situation where I could not refute someone else's claim or argument, but I did not accept it. Later I may have come to agree with them, I may have modified my own view, or I may have satisfied myself they were wrong. In any case it was worth the discussion because I learned something.
>

These comments from Tony Pay and Matthew Simington particularly resonate with me right now because my husband and I spent the past Saturday as voluntary judges in a high school forensics tournament. (That's forensics as in speech and debate, not dead bodies. He's a retired trial attorney. I'm a film critic and I was a high school debate nerd, back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.) We judge in several tournaments per year. Forensics teaches participants to hear and understand both sides of an argument. For debates, participants must prepare both sides of each argument. The teams don't know until the last minute before a round which sides they'll have to argue. Impromptu speech contestants draw three topics, choose one, then have seven minutes to prepare and deliver a speech on the chosen topic.

I've noticed that people with backgrounds in speech and debate have a difficult time declaring that we're absolutely, positively, 100 percent sure about anything. Well, I'm often sure I'm not sure, but that's about as far as I'll go. And I've been wrong plenty of times here on this bulleting board -- and Tony Pay has often been the one to correct my mistakes. Post-truth society? Fie upon it!

A couple of days ago, the local public radio station played Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. Listening to that final movement, I realized I had my debate experience to thank for the fact that, when my high school orchestra played this piece in the mid-1960s, I decided to ignore a former teacher's assertion that double-tonguing was not possible on reed instruments.

Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.

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