As a teacher, a debate teacher at that, I don’t think we can refer to any part of the “debate” between Trump and Biden as such without using air quotes. Many of my teacher friends already commented on the grade school mentality of both debaters, mostly instigated by Trump but followed by Biden in his need not to be out-shouted. If you haven’t been on a school playground in a while, you may not know children these days aren’t even this ridiculous.
In the last week, my students have begun Congressional Debate, a competitive event where students participate in a mock Congress. After weeks of preparing, researching, and writing legislation and speeches, we take a moment to discuss parliamentary procedure. Our parliamentary procedure follows Robert’s Rules of Order as a guide, but I’d tell you the specific rules don’t matter as much as the thinking behind them and the respect we hope our students have for them.
If you’ve ever sat through a HOA meeting or bothered to stop on C-SPAN for ten minutes, you might find parliamentary procedure cumbersome and counter-productive. The truth is, though, once you understand the intention behind the rules–to ensure fairness, to provide equal speaking time for all sides, to balance the will of the majority against the need to honor the minority, and to deliberate thoughtfully before finally agreeing to move to the previous question of passing a motion–you might understand why Chris Matthews attempted to remind Trump of the ground rules his representatives agreed to in the first place. Following the rules might cramp Trump’s style, but they might have afforded the American public a slightly better idea about what’s at stake.
The truth is no one respects rules created for the sake of having rules. But when my students understand the values underpinning those rules, they usually choose to comply. I can’t say the same for our current president who believes “law and order” is something we mandate and enforce without any real regard for why members of the community may question the values that underpin our laws. If my students can understand why it’s important to recognize and respect society’s rules for the sake of the greater good, then there might just be hope for the rest of us.
Beyond my critique as a debate teacher lies my general disgust as just a teacher of young people. I commented to a few of my friends that I hope all of Trump’s teachers are dead (I realize it’s likely given his age) because every teacher puts their faith in the next generation, hoping each student makes good on the promise of their education, and I worry the president’s teachers never saw the fruits of their labor.
I mean, wouldn’t it be cool to say you taught a man (or woman someday soon) who became president? The pride I feel when one of my students wins an award, gets something published, or earns a promotion at work always fills me up. So, I guess the correlation would be to feel utter shame if one of your students becomes a murderer or creates a Ponzi scheme. Maybe not, because I don’t feel responsible for those outliers, but if I had been one of Trump’s teachers and watched that debate, I would have been ashamed to admit he never learned how to be decent, how to be humble, how to know when to stop. Because above it all–the reading, the critical thinking, the public speaking, the computing–we do no service to our communities if we can’t figure out a way to teach our students to be better human beings, human beings who recognize the rules to respect and the ones to rage against.