By Tyler Katz

In Unit 1 of "What is a Kritik," you will learn the most basic form of what a kritik is and how it is read in public forum. A Kritik is essentially a critical form of argument that challenges an ideology or assumption that is standard within the activity. A kritik is similar to a typical PF argument, it includes a link (that is typically about resolutional action or the debate community), a warrant, and an impact (that is not typical PF style impact, as a K impact is generally not quantifiable.) Unit 1 also discusses commonly used terms including the definitions of deontology, utilitarianism, and ontology, all very common K terms. Finally in Unit 1, there is an explanation of how K impact framing is different from a normal PF argument. Typically, a PF argument is quantifiable with statistics but when it comes to a K, the impact is typically more general either pertaining to the debate community itself or a reason to reject the team.

In Unit 2, you will gain an understanding how to answer the Kritik in public forum. You will also learn the difference between language, philosophical, and identity based K's and how all of them can be run in PF in very different ways. We will go over how to answer K specific impact framing, and the top level responses to every K that you should be reading.

In Unit 3, you will learn how the Kritik is different from the Kritik you may have heard of in CX or LD. There will be many examples of Kritiks that have been read in PF within this Unit, advice on whether or not you should read K's in the first place, what judges to read an argument like this infront of / what tournaments to be ready to face these kinds of arguments, and what do to if you don't have any prep and a K is read.