In an education system where textbook instruction and learning by rote have become the established norms, more often than not, the need to nurture original expression of ideas is being neglected. It thus becomes increasingly important to encourage debates, as early as at the school level — a view echoed by Tejas Subramaniam and Harsith Ravichandran, Class X students of Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan, KK Nagar (PSBB, KKN), Chennai, and winners of the International Competition for Young Debaters (ICYD) conducted at Cambridge. They were sponsored by the Indian Schools Debating Society (ISDS).
“Debate teaches one to logically analyse facts in order to derive meaning out of it. It allows critical thinking about several issues that the traditional education system does not address,” says Harshith. Tejas concurs, “It creates a hunger for learning new things, confers many new experiences, allows you to meet people from diverse backgrounds and interact with them.”
Out of 700 teams from across the world that applied, over 60 teams made it to the finals. For the duo coached by Chandrasekar Sriram, a law student from NALSAR, it was a fight to the finish as they battled it out for top honours, eventually emerging victorious.
Prior debating experience? If yes, how was this different?
Tejas: Both of us have debated in the World Schools (WS) format, which is substantially different from the British Parliamentary (BP) format in which this tournament was held. This permits only 15 minutes of preparation without access to any online resources or books.
Harshith: Though I have prior experience, the BP form of debating involves a greater degree of nuance. It requires more strategy and content, compared to the WS format.
Preparation
T: Topics were announced 15 minutes prior to the debate round. However, we were soon acquainted with the BP format as, while preparing for the competition, we came across multiple common themes, aspects of debate strategy and also did multiple research tasks for various regions, and had practice debates.
H: Hemanth Chakravarthy, a school senior, trained us for these regional rounds. He had been a member of Team India in 2015, 2016 and is participating in WSDC 2017. He was our driving force from the start and was a great mentor too!
On being coached by Chandrasekar Sriram
T: Chan, as we call him, was an excellent coach. He gave us multiple stylistic and strategic sessions, discussing the nature of rebuttal, the structure of arguments, how to think of arguments in 15 minutes, and so on.
H: He gave us the best possible coaching and advice related to a completely new format, within eight weeks. The commitment he displayed was marvellous.
The Cambridge experience
T: Harsith and I debated alternative medicine, organised religion, hacking as a form of protest, and whether corrupt governments should receive development aid.
In all four debates, we won and therefore “broke” into the finals where we debated the topic “Companies should be required to put images of animal suffering on all products which cause harm to animals,” on the negative side (that is, against), and won that debate. Thus, we won the tournament.
H: This was the first time I had travelled to the U.K. I found it interesting to travel around London and Cambridge, though we weren’t able to spend a lot of time there.
We debated against elite schools such as Eton and Dulwich, who had monopolised the debating circuit. This was initially intimidating, but our training helped us overcome our fears.
For aspiring debaters
T: It is crucial to read a lot, to keep pace with the news, and to learn as much as possible. Watch a lot of debates to the extent that generating good argumentation becomes intuitive and natural. Talk to debaters and ensure that you are exposed to a holistic debating atmosphere.
H: It is essential that students watch a lot of debate videos online and keep themselves updated with global and national events. Finally, embrace the journey to become a better debater rather than the best.
