That single-sex schooling should be encouraged

Judge: 9spaceking
Win awarded to: cooldudebro
Reasoning:
Csareo does not use solid evidence to prove his points, and due to his additional forfeits in comparison to cooldude, Cooldude has more statistics that prove that, indeed, single-sex education works better than co-ed due to higher grades; and the polarization argument was easily refuted because it was non-unique, already happening without single-sex schooling.
Also, Csareo rebutted only one graph and forgot to rebut the other. :P

Feedback:
Don't forfeit. As a super cool rapper (WAIT, that's me!) once said...
*Plays super cool rap-beat with music in the background

One debater, the one I didn't choose, didn't do absolutely anythin'
He got slayed by such laser, like a poor moose--he obviously tried everythin'
The winner is such obvious here, easily spotted as a donkey's rear
It's like the loser drank a gallon of beer, he's got a twisted unrealistic sneer

These people don't know how to respect or even wisely manage 'er time
It's always conduct point lost, the winner may taste victory but I taste lemon lime
This is happenin' so often it should be treated by the mod's as a grave crime
The commit-tors should be "rewarded" like in Brain Sludge--painted with slime

Please don't go and ask me for any advice, I can't be bo'ered with such li'l lice
I'd rather go eat a bowl of poisonous rice; you forfeiter can't be even be saved by Jesus Christ
You really don't fit the description "intelligent mind", compared to it you're really like a tiny mice
You may think your short rounds are "concise", oh sure they are, and you're just being nice

I shake my head at such incompetence, I really want to print this debate out and crumble it
Don't take any more debates from now on hence, you'll just be killed again, smashed like a poor kid
Your forfeitin' is such terrible I feel like vomitin', stompin' my feet on your rude red word carpet
So just don't do it--it belongs in the Town of Wrongitin, I'll just sell your ff's to the black market

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Judge: admin    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: cooldudebro
Reasoning:
First of all, forfeits and people assuming they'd one thanks to them really marred this debate. It definitely made the debate weaker for both sides. The round 1 CX was really epic though.

Pro had BOP, and showed intellectual correlation with single-sex schools, and something about teen pregnancy that I didn't fully understand but sounded legit to me because I went to a single-sex school. It was a decent case with an OK set-up that could have used a little more focus on the second argument if it was to hold a lot of staying power in the debate. Otherwise the second argument is just a waste of characters. I felt like pro should have done a bit more to elaborate on his arguments also, rather than simply quoting from his source material. Hint: learn to paraphrase.

Con countered with a 6-pronged set of arguments and should have probably opened earlier with rebuttals. This all led up to a counter-plan which should have done more to show how that counter-plan actually solved for the harms presented in the arguments con presented. Con also forgot to justify 2 of the 6 arguments they put forward. Con further failed to structure or signpost these arguments. One of the four arguments con did put forward (organizational alternatives to single sex schools) was pretty clearly part of con's counter-model.

In fairness, those arguments were brought up in the CX a bit, but con was generally convincing and pro generally agreed that CX is not for making arguments, so I ignored them.

Con did argue that a polarization of social classes would occur, which didn't make much sense to me, but indirectly I was convinced that a polarization of genders might occur, as in "ha! Girls didn't go to school with me thus they must be inferior!" This point was surprisingly well backed-up with analysis. Con also showed males would be smarter, and name-dropped 4 terrible examples of segregation gone wrong.

At this point, thanks to a depth of analysis, I'm pretty confident in saying that intelligence was the most important thing in this debate. Pro wanted to maximize it, while con wanted to ensure some measure of equality between the sexes. As a lesser point, the issue of polarized genders was important too. I felt like teen pregnancy entirely fell to the wayside as a justification.

I need to explain something now about BOP that's really important in deciding this debate. It is ultimately irrelevant who presents the better model in a model debate. Only the affirmative has any onus to even present a model. If that model stands, they win. This is regardless of whether con also has a better model. Con's onus must be to destroy pro's model, and if they fail at this, then they have failed at the debate.

As a judge, I tend to be generous enough to ignore any statements by a debater that actually harm their own case significantly, but I feel this is important to point out: when con conceded all of pro's arguments and made it their strategy to present the superior proposal at the start of the first CX, that would have typically cost them the debate for that reason. The point of a counter-model strategy is not to try to outdo the other team. It is to shift the onus on to you to "prove a negative". It hopes to catch the aff off-guard when they might be expecting to defend their case, and are forced on to the attack instead. I thus ignored con's entire model, which was a big chunk of their case. Unfortunately it did nothing to counter the proposal put forward by pro, which misses the point of a *counter* model entirely.

This is unfortunate because the CX also had the best clash of the debate, focusing primarily on sources. I felt both sides were able to throw a bunch of links around that confused me sufficiently that I really didn't know what to think. It was probably a tactical mistake of pro to encourage con to find more evidence to support con's position, as ultimately even if con's sources were flawed, more sources tends to generally give more opportunities to muddy the waters somewhat, which pretty much always works to the neg's advantage.

I felt like it was legitimate for con to say social polarization would increase under pro's model regardless of whether it was happening already. I think what pro was driving at with this is "why aren't places that have segregated genders for education under the status qyuo becoming more classist if this were true?" or something, but I never actually saw the argument made that directly. A stronger line of attack might have been to question the relevance of the anecdotes - comparing separated classrooms to the systematic oppression of a people, for example, probably requires a higher standard of analysis than merely making the comparison.

At this point came a great big forfeit from Csareo. Con really needed to hammer his points down hard. And when he did make his argument eventually, he basically told me nothing I hadn't already realized as a judge.

At this point, only pro made one more argument. In effect, pro had one extra speech. I think ultimately this is why pro won.

Pro lost the polarized genders point fair and square. But pro did push the need to be the smartest the hardest, and ultimately I was convinced that this narrative won out in the end. Con didn't keep up the line of why it's important for everybody to be achieving well, and pro was able to keep the pressure on with numbers and (probably meaningless but still fancy-looking) graphs to show why it's important just to have a smarter "average" student. He said it so much that it sounded believably true. Con, on the other hand, was much more sparse even in his own analysis of why equality was important to the debate. Both sides were roughly tied on the question of what exactly the effect would be.

Still, it was narrow. Con had ample opportunity to shift the narrative focus of the argument, or even to increase the importance of the polarized genders argument to the debate.

Feedback:
A combination of 3 things cost Csareo the victory here:
1) Strategy - Csareo needed to tear down pro's case. There's no other way around that. This is a classic case of a counter-model being an ineffective counter and just coming across as another model.
2) Structure - I felt like the case from Csareo needed to be more responsive, better signposted (meaning indicating when certain arguments will come up later) and more consistent (some contentions had much, much better analysis than others). Oh, and don't end up doing less rounds if you can.
3) Narrative - On the arguments front, nice work on taking a unique approach to the topic. Still I would have grounded the debate more in education by talking about social class through the narrative of what opportunities students miss out on under the model. Performing a play by Shakespeare, for example. Narratives on what little Sue CAN'T do will hit home harder than any reference to slavery, because while slavery is much worse, little Sue is easier to empathize with.

There were a good number of faults in Cooldudebro's argument too, however:
1) Sources - Don't get caught up arguing from/against sources - if you can, try to bring in some logic-based rebuttals along with your sources. Demonstrate your evidence. It isn't a source battle.
2) Formatting - learn from Csareo. His formatting was significantly easier to read than yours. Props for effort though. BTW, just because your opponent forfeits doesn't mean you win. Unless it's autoforfeit. Still, you know what I mean ;)
3) Arguments - kind of the opposite of sources - have more of them! Again, learn from Csareo. Csareo didn't actually say very much in this debate but he did have LOTS of arguments so it reads like he actually had a lot. This added more weight to his case.

Overall a pretty good debate with a somewhat disappointing end. 7/10. Good effort. Be proud of yourselves!

As usual, let me know if you'd like further feedback or have questions.

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2 users rated this judgement as constructive