Re: Quizbowl

E_Steinhauser · Tue, 03 Apr 2001 14:46:47 -0700

Rachel Alden wrote
"Sure, the idea of a
quizbowl camp is "nerdy" but so is the game in general,
and if you're willing to admit that, the camp is a
great idea."

I guess it all comes back to one's
general philosophy of what QB is and what QB should be.
I'm of the more relaxed opinion that doesn't think
quizbowl-specific study is a useful or productive use of one's
time. One can become a better player through practice
and (more on this later) writing questions.

List memorization and learning by rote, while useful
in the first few years of education for
multiplication tables and the like, should have no place in
secondary and higher education (I'm sure there are a some
legitimate exceptions specific to a few limited fields).
This is what I envision any quizbowl camp as being. I
would be happy to be wrong in this regard, but my
experiences with most HS coaches leads me to that
assumption.

(As an aside, for anyone with a history or
involvement in Academic Decathlon, my distaste for the idea
of a QB camp stems from my recent disgust at what
that once-fine program has devolved into. The
dominance of schools that operate like Division I football
programs is just disgusting, and I want QB to stay as far
away from that as possible.)

Just a few more
comments on the subject.

"You are familiarized with
different formats of tournament"

Umm ... this
generally takes a whopping 5 minutes.

"you learn
important information in your chosen subject area (science,
social studies, or lit)"

I harken back to the
list memorization, plus this assumes that someone is
going to specialize -- not something I would advocate
at any level of quizbowl. Yes, certain people are
going to be much better at lit, science, history, etc.,
but I would much rather have 4 good generalists on my
team than 4 specialists. A broad range of learning is
good, and it usually means that you can write better
questions.

"You go to soccer camp to become a better soccer
player, so it makes sense that there should be a quiz
bowl camp to make you a better quiz bowl
player"

Two distinctions here: 

It's much easier to
become a better QB player through individual effort
(reading, writing, etc) than soccer, football, baseball, or
tennis. You need people to play with and against. Coaches
also play a much more significant role in sports than
in QB, where they are generally unneccessary, if not
superfluous.

Second, soccer is an outdoor activity, while QB is
indoor. It's not just the idea of QB-camp that strikes me
as wrong, it's things like "computer camp" that hit
me the wrong way. Maybe I'm just old fashioned (and
a veteran of several baseball and Boy Scout camps)
but whatever happened to the great American tradition
of going outdoors and being physically active during
the summer?

-- Eric Steinhauser
... who has
made entirely too much of this, but doesn't really
care ...