The Great Debate

by Lanz Aaron Tan, Year 10

The Great Debate in the Senior Assembly Hall

How well have you mastered persuasive skills? Have you researched enough to know your strengths and defend your weaknesses? How intently could you listen to the argument of the opposing team? How articulate and brave should you be to take on ‘The Great Debate’? These were a few of the questions that went through our heads as Year 10’s ‘The Great Debate’ drew near.

Since Year 10’s first English lesson this year, we embarked on an exciting debating season preparing for The Great Debate.
                                         
The Great Debate is a much anticipated (and dreaded) annual event, which showcases the persuasive skills that the Year 10s have learned in their English lessons from the onset of the school year. This prestigious event has two phases: the first phase debate, which was held in class, whereby the class winners moved on to the second phase - The Great Debate. This year, The Great Debate took place on the 4th of September in the Senior Assembly Hall with the topic: ‘Who is the most positively influential figure of the 20th and 21st century?’ The judges were Ms. Catherine Johnson (Head of KS4) and Ms. Helen Olds (Head of Senior School).

The first phase (the class debates) was held on 3rd September. Each class started off with 6 teams representing different influential figures and each team comprised of three members: a proposer who introduced the group’s chosen figure, a seconder who backed up the proposer’s points with facts and statistics, and a summarizer who wrapped up the group’s views. Each round of debate featured two teams facing head on. A deciding vote then picked a winner for that debate. At the end of the first phase, 2 winners were selected from each of the 3 classes to participate in the second and final showdown the following day, September 4th – the day of The Great Debate!

In my class, I served as the Proposer for the team representing Bill Gates and my team was matched up against the Coco Chanel team. Our debate must have been extremely entertaining to many of our peers, considering the many successive shouts of “sunog” (Tagalog for burnt). But for me and my groupmates (Adam Clarke and Drei Ty), it was undoubtedly a challenging yet fun experience.

The Finals featured three match-ups: Helen Keller vs Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey vs Malala Yousafzai, and Tim Berners-Lee vs Mother Teresa. The Finals showcased the same format as the class debates. After each debate, the audience members were prompted to ask questions. Throughout the debates, the focus revolved around these influential individuals' achievements. As such, we delved into broad and complex themes.

Groups in the Finals

One of the judges, Ms. Johnson, said that groups “debated on financial worth vs spiritual worth vs social worth. People talked about big themes and it was really, really interesting.” Ms. Johnson also mentioned that the judges were “impressed by the extensive research” undertaken, in addition to the “well prepared and well presented arguments.”

Year 10 English teacher, Ms. Fenton, commented, “The finals showcased the best teams really thinking on their feet. It was great to see students applying the argumentative skills they learnt in class to real life scenarios such as debating.”

Finally, Ms. Olds announced the winners, but not before declaring how tough a decision it was and that it all boiled down to how the ‘Question and Answer’ portion was tackled. 3rd Place went to the team representing Tim Berners-Lee (Seth Argar, Micheal Rynne and John Dwyer), 2nd Place to team Mother Theresa (Jason Ng, Zeth Santos and Billy Ko), and 1st Place went to our team, Bill Gates (Lanz Tan, Adam Clarke and Drei Ty). After that, Mr. Brian Taylor (English Curriculum Leader) made the closing remarks and concluded the 2014 Great Debate.

Judges of the Great Debate – Ms Olds (right) announcing the winners and Ms Johnson (left)

All in all, the most important part of the Great Debate was that every student learned from this event. For me, The Great Debate was a truly nerve-wracking experience and it really put my public speaking abilities to the test.

In response to this year’s debate, our Year 10 English teachers were pleased with the overall quality of our year group’s debates:

“I think it's fantastic that students learned how to compose themselves in an intelligent and articulate manner,” said Mr. Taylor.

“All the students took a lot away from the great debate both at the class stages and the finals,” said Ms. Fenton.

“It was enlightening to see pupils to have such a strong viewpoint which they felt so passionately about,” said Ms. Horgan.

I asked few of the Year 10 students how they thought the debate went:

“It was really great to see such a great debate. I could debate against anyone who says otherwise,” said Ethan Utting (host to this year’s The Great Debate)

“The intensity of the debates was extremely impressive. All those debating defended their opinions well,” said Alexa Sy.

“It was intense; the room turned into a battlefield where ideas clashed,” said Jason Ng.

After what seemed like a long half term of debating, it’s now time to pass on the baton to the next year group. Good luck to the Year 9s in next year’s debates; I’m sure that you’ll all experience as much adrenaline-surging fun as we did!

Happy Debating!

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