On June 19th, fifteen members of the Senior School went to Tanglin Trust School for a debating match. We were given two motions one week ahead of time for each age group and we began preparations. The motions concerned the legitimacy of civil disobedience and the prevention of the exploitation of foreign domestic workers. Teams followed the World Schools Debating format, with two main speakers, one speaker dealing with rebuttal and one speaker doubling up with the role of summarising the points of clash and why their team was by far the superior! When we arrived we went into a room and were greeted by a very friendly opposing team. I believe my whole team and I were very impressed with the quality of debate from the opposition and we really enjoyed the debate itself. The debate structure we followed included Points of Information (POIs) during each speech and this was something new for our team. I think it was a really useful technique and fun to keep the debate engaging and interesting. It was such an enjoyable experience to have the opportunity to debate against other young people who have high ability in debating in another school. Although winners were not announced, I really enjoyed the flowing argument and passion coming from both teams. Our team found the debate challenging but a really great platform to voice our ideas. We did struggle sometimes with answering POIs and ensuring our points were always clear and logical, but I believe we conducted ourselves with great diplomacy. I have grown in confidence from the experience and I would really like to do it again.
Surya Singh | Shell
