Debate!

I’ve mentioned before that I was reorganizing the English club and one of our activities is debate. This past weekend, I accompanied three of my students to a regional debate competition which we have been absent from the past two years. Debate is organized by regional teachers’ associations and about a month ago I found out that we had been invited to compete. We were already mid-season when we began practicing but the students showed some serious commitment. They met every day of the school week even though most clubs meet once a week. I have no experience with debate but looking back I think we did pretty well.

Before I could even have my students begin practicing I had to figure out how debate worked. I spent hours on the internet and talking with other teachers to find out the rules and the particulars of debating in Lesotho. The only contact I’ve had with debate was watching friends compete once or twice in high school. Basically, three kids make speeches in support of a statement and three make speeches opposing it. Each side is a team. The adjudicator decides a winner based on delivery, content of argument, and English language usage. The topic is announced yearly and students spend the season researching and debating the same motion over and over. Teams are told if they are supporting or opposing 15 minutes before but are prepared for both sides.

This year the debates were sponsored by the Lesotho Revenue Authority (like our IRA) and so they picked a motion relating to taxes: “This house proposes that it is unfair for Basotho to be taxed on their hard-earned money”. This topic is pretty broad and can go in so many directions so the students need to research well. LRA hosted a briefing about the motion in order to give some basic information and allow for some questions. Other than the briefing, students read newspapers, asked people they knew, and some could even use the internet. My school is rural so we did not have the advantage of the web or even a library for that matter. I don’t think I ever wrote anything without consulting Google or Yahoo. I tried to lecture them on certain tax related things but I didn’t have nearly enough time to teach them everything. I’m really proud of the students for finding their own information. I consulted with other teachers to find our best three and then we sent them to do their best.

I really enjoyed going to the competition. I wore a tie for the event and another volunteer came with me to cheer on my students. I can’t say how many schools participated overall but they had three separate days of competition, each school going only once. The top three teams and the top three speakers over the entire day were awarded trophies. The debaters ranged a great deal in ability and style. Some were either unprepared or extremely nervous others were rowdy. I saw one girl go up greet the judges, state her position, then sit back down without a single argument with 7 out of 8 minutes to go. Real polite but not quite what you need to win a debate. Another school was apparently coached to be very aggressive. All their debaters walked away from the podium to speak and would stand face to face to confront questions from the other side. I’m still not sure if that was allowed.

My students were well suited for each of the roles they played and were excellent speakers. My first student, Mantolo, spoke as the leader. She clearly outlined our position (in this case we supported the motion) and gave a clear direction of the argument. Polite, clear, and a beaming smile. My second speaker was Thabo. His job is to do the bulk of the arguing. He spent the first part of his time ripping apart the opposition’s main arguments then went into detail with his own well supported argument. For 8 minutes Thabo held the attention of hundreds of students and faculty breaking only to cite his sources for the opposition. I’m pretty he convinced his peers to be bitter about VAT. My last speaker was Mphaki. He is a real character. I don’t want to call him sassy but that is what he was. I think he worked it well though. As third speaker his job is to counter argue the majority of the time and summarize his own sides argument at the end. I was a little nervous at first because he had been sitting on stage silent like a man waiting the firing squad. By the second minute he was on his game denying the opponents’ points of information with rolling eyes and one hand waving them away like they were flies. At one point he started dancing around on stage as he realized that his opponent was asking him a question he could shoot down impressively by quoting Adam Smith.

We didn’t win any prizes. The six trophies were split amongst the three judges schools. Think about that for a second. What is important, however, was that the whole room was buzzing about our performance. My students were happy with themselves and excited to have a chance at the prizes next year.