Debating Update

Ballarat High School has wrapped up our participation locally in both the D.A.V. Schools Competition and the Royal South Street Debating Cup. Our Year 9 team competed in their first year as debaters, winning two of their five rounds in the D.A.V. competition held at Ballarat Grammar.

Beginning the year by arguing against the proposition “That we regret the rise of social media as a primary news source” and ending with their third secret topic — which turned out to be arguing against the proposition that 16- and 17-year-olds should be given the vote — the boys were often tasked with taking on the more challenging side of a debate. They should be commended for competing in the combined Year 9–10 C-Grade competition in only their first year of learning how to debate formally. The good news is that they have qualified for the D-Grade playoffs and will be competing against Melbourne Grammar on the evening of the 20th August, at Lowther Hall in Essendon.  Roles within the team have been shared between Saksham Garg, Jay Kanthiya, Lishanth Gobi Anand, Yuvraj Miterani and Sam Kendrick, with Antonio Daineesh typically acting as a perceptive-third-speaker-anchor across the year.

A personal highlight (lowlight?) for me, as their coach, was helping the team develop a strategy for arguing that AI will make teachers redundant in the future. Our Royal South Street adjudicator, Fergus McLaren, noted that the wording of the topic almost defined our team out of the contest. Unfortunately, the lads from BHS were unsuccessful in persuading the audience that it was “the traditional role that would become redundant” rather than the teachers themselves. Oh well, onwards and upwards. We remain grateful to the wonderful organisers at RSSS for the event - and also for that hospital pass of a topic!

Best speaker honours have been shared around across the year, but the real prize has been the growth in confidence and clarity of thought, along with the bonds formed between members of the team. Debating remains hard to beat when it comes to developing student leaders, both for now and for the future.

Speaking of the future, we should also commend our new Year 8 debating team - Aashima Jmeel, Stella Hargreaves and Aleisha Mohamed Ishahan - for taking up the opportunity to participate at South Street. They suffered a very narrow loss to a team from St Patrick’s while arguing that there is too much violence in modern media content. The three-minute speaking limit presented a genuine challenge to both teams, but they handled their first competitive debate admirably. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon testing our skills as thinkers and speakers.

Ian Morley

Debating & Public Speaking Co-ordinator