Good evening my dear readers!
It has been another three weeks since my previous post and I have decided to start writing about yet another topic on my blog. I will of course continue writing about my travelling experiences and the process of applying to the universities, but starting from now, I will also take up the topic of debating, which has been my hobby for three years. I will start writing about different tournaments that I have been a participant in and maybe I will also add just a little bit about different cases.
In the last couple of weeks, I have been a participant in two different tournaments, one in the format of Karl Popper, the other in the format of British Parliament and now I will turn towards writing more about those experiences. If You have not debated before, then maybe now You will feel more like trying it out and if You have, then I think You will still find some interesting thoughts that may be interesting for You.
Have fun reading the rest of the post!
The first phase of Estonian National Championships 2012/13 - in the Karl Popper format
First I will give a quick overview about the format for those who have never heard anything about debating.
---
In this format, You have two teams of three people, one on the proposition side and the other on the opposition side. The idea is that You are given a motion and a side that You have to defend. The motions vary from Legalization of Marijuana to Intervention of Syria. Usually You are given a day or a week to prepare Your case, but in the case of a tournament, You usually have about three weeks to prepare and in some cases, You might just have 15 to 60 minutes to prepare.
When going a bit deeper and talking about the rolls of the debaters in the teams then it goes as follows: The first of proposition has to bring the case on the table - the problem, the plan, sometimes a definition and two to three arguments (Statement, Explanation, Example and Impact). The first of the opposition then has to do rebuttal and sometimes build their own contra-arguments. The second speakers of both side then just have to rebuild their case and do rebuttal. The third speakers of both side have to conclude the debate, showing why they were better than the other team, how their arguments and logic was better. The first speakers have always six minutes and the rest have just five minutes to do their speech. In between of all the speeches, each teams has eight minutes of thinking-time, that they have to spread between themselves and after first and second speakers, there is always a time for questions, where a member of the the other team can ask every kind of questions for three minutes.
---
Now that a brief introduction has been made, I am going to talk more about this tournament itself.
Our team, named Übermensch, for the second year in a row, consists of Risto Laanemets, Ethel Pruss and me - all of us are going to the Pärnu Sütevaka Gymnasium of Humanities and we are all doing our senior year. When we are proposition, then Risto is always doing the first speech, but when we are opposition, then Ethel takes over and Risto does the second speech. I, in the other hand, am always the third speaker.
The motion of this tournament was: Countries that wish to continue being a part of eurozone have to be able to come out from their state budget crisis on their own.
The idea of the case that we were using with Risto and Ethel was to show that we have problematic countries, like Greece and Portugal, who keep receiving help from eurozone, but do not really seem to recover in any way, which means that they suck out all the funds from eurozone that were meant for mending all the countries that are in problems, which means that if we were to have some countries that are functioning today, but not tomorrow, then we would have no money to rescue them, before it is too late. The plan was stop giving aid to countries that are in chronic budget crisis (which means that we would still help countries, that for example will have a one-time banking problem that would be devastating to their economy). We also had two arguments: sustainability of the system and change of attitude. The first was talking about finance, political capital and capability of European Stability Mechanism (aka ESM) - how we have no money nor political capital for future problems if we continue helping out the ones that do not want to help themselves. The second was all about shock and how countries that at this time are relying on the help of ESM, would now have to start changing or they would just fall. In the opposition, we also had lots of arguments, such as domino effect and countries turning violent, but I am not going through all of them.
When it comes to the tournament, then we had to debate four rounds on this topic and one round on the motion: Government would ban all commercial advertisement. Generally, the tournament was really great and individually I got a seventh place in individual speakers with scores of 24, 23, 24, 25 and 26 (speaker scale goes from 18 to 28), although as a team we managed to make a mess by only winning the first round, when we were proposition of the main topic and also winning the "advertisement"-round, where we were proposition as well, therefore as a team, we got lousy 17th place.
The result of this tournament has been obsessing me since, making me think whether our team just does not work and either I should try to get into some other (read: better) team or we should find a new third member in our team, in order to cut loose our weakest speaker or our team just needs more and more practice. In any case, some change has to be carried out.
The final event of Debate@Europe project - in the British Parliament format
---
In this format, You have four teams of two people, two on the government side and two on the opposition side. In this format, You are also given a motion and a side that You have to defend, but this time You are either the first or the second team of your side. The motions vary as well, but usually, as this is mainly a university debating format, then they are a bit harder. Another thing is that You are always given just 15 minutes to prepare Your case and unlike Karl Popper, where usually only the first speaker brings new arguments, then in British Parliament, everybody but the fourth speaker have to bring new arguments on the table.
When going a bit deeper and talking about the rolls of the debaters in the teams then it goes as follows: The first of the first government, also known as prime minister has to bring the case on the table - the problem, the plan, sometimes a definition and usually two arguments (Statement, Explanation, Example and Impact). The first of the first opposition then has to do rebuttal and sometimes build their own contra-arguments. The second speakers of both side then just have to rebuild their case and do rebuttal. The third speakers or the first speakers of the second government and opposition have to do the same as the second speakers, but they just have to prove that their arguments are also better than the ones brought by the first half of the table. The last speakers of both side have to conclude the debate, showing why they were better than the other team, how their arguments and logic was better. Depending on the tournament, all the speakers have five to eight minutes for their speeches. There is no thinking time between the speeches and no questioning time as well, although apart from the first and the last minute of every speech, opponents can raise and ask questions, if the speaker allows them.
---
Now that a brief introduction has again been made, I am going to talk more about this tournament itself.
The tournament was a part of a project known as Debate@Europe, that for the last seven months I have been one of the coordinators of. It took place in Amsterdam from 28th of November to 2nd of December. From the previous competitions, every country (participating countries were: Estonia, Macedonia, Romania Slovakia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) chose twenty young people from their country to be participants in this tournament. First I was supposed to be a judge, but due to lack of participants or them falling ill, I had to be a debater as well and I was put into one team with a guy from Romania, named Lucian Valsan. We had to debate for four rounds and the motions were as follows:
1. THBT the European Union should ban all forms of art, including film or literature, that directly insults any religion.
We were the closing opposition and our arguments by the end were that art is perceived differently by different people, which means that in essence, all art can be offensive towards any religion, which now if I think of it was not the best argument, since the motion clearly states that they only mean the art that directly insults religion. Other than that, we were also talking about freedom of speech, how fundamental it is and how banning this kind of art would downgrade it and why it would be bad. Last, but not least, we were also talking how we all have a chance to not to look at the art if it really insults us, but still we should be free to create all kinds of art. We also had some other even worse points, but those are not worth mentioning at all. Therefore it is not surprising that we got a fourth place in that round. The points that we probably should have made are that we should not censor anything that does not really put anyone in clear danger, how art will not turn to violence as there is no correlation between watching violence and committing crimes, of course continue with the freedom of expression argument and last, but not least talk about how we can not really ban any types of art and if we do, we just give it more power and push it underground, but it will not make the problem go away.
2. THBT the EU should force member states to include positive references to LGBT individuals and issues in their high school textbook.
This time we were closing government and managed to do a bit better job and receive a second place after the opening government. This time we were mostly focusing on whether people nowadays know enough about LGBT, do they have prejudice and if so, then why. We also looked at whether we can do it and how it will lead to awareness which would mean that there would not be that much discrimination and the LGBT themselves would feel better as they would see that they are as normal as heterosexual people. In order to receive a better place, we should have just go deeper in our analysis, but everything else was already good.
3. THBT the EU should guarantee the membership of regions such as Catalonia and Scotland that wish to secede.
This time we were the opening government that got the first place and we used the following arguments to do so. We said that the countries are already a part of the EU and they have already fulfilled the requirements, while being a part of the old country, more importantly, they are the better parts of those countries and therefore we have no need to doubt that they would start doing worse after seceding. Although if we would not guarantee them a membership then their economy would turn unstable and they might start having problems.
4. THBT Europe should weaken austerity measures in order to guarantee its citizens greater social support.
In this round, we managed to do quite a good job as opening opposition and our arguments were as fallows: Today the stability is lost and it is because of too big social support, therefore it is not the time to weaken the austerity measures, but maybe make them stronger instead. We have put in so much money to those countries, but if we would now stop being strong-handed, the problematic countries would stop making any changes towards a better future. First we have to fix the problem, maybe even let people suffer for a bit, but later on, we can again live better.
---
Other than debating, we also managed to see some Amsterdam as we had a scavenger hunt across the town. We also had some great workshops and went to some really nice pubs. On the last day I also managed to get together with one really nice friend from the Netherlands and we spent a day together, before I had to go to the airport in order to return home.
On other notes
* Second term of the last school-year has almost ended and it was quite good, considering I put quite few effort into it, due to all this debating and university application process.
* On Sunday we will have a dancing competition at school.
* On Monday I will finally go to Cambridge for the interviews - I really do hope that it will be a success.
---
Now I am really tired from all this writing and I do hope that the quality of the post did not go worse by every second sentence...
Best regards!
Sander Gansen
No comments:
Post a Comment