Debate: 27th of Jan. '14

Like last week, debate club today was spent by watching and discussing a video from WSDC. The motion was: "THW legalize the sale of human organs." It was an interesting debate because I personally disagree with the motion, so I had personal opinions on the debate. The affirmative team of this debate is from Pakistan while the opposition team of this debate is from Singapore. In my opinion, the affirmative team started off pretty good. The first speaker had a lot of emotions and facts that support his arguments. However, I believe that the first speaker of the opposition team presented his arguments stronger. He was a better speaker than the first speaker of the affirmative team. He was confident and although he did not have as much emotion as the first speaker of the affirmative team has, he delivered his arguments and evidences clearer and in a more logical manner, thus more persuasive. Throughout the whole debate, the opposition team, however, did not rebut all of the arguments that the affirmative team mentioned. At the end, the affirmative team from Pakistan won. The adjudicator explained that the affirmative team was clear in explaining about how people will be saved by letting the motion pass whereas the opposition team was not really convincing in explaining how they are going to save more lives through their different model. I learned a lot from today's debate club meeting. Even from the adjudicator I learned how to speak in a more organized manner. I realized that sign posting does really help the listener to understand what the speaker is saying. Thus, for my next debate, I should really use sign posting to help my adjudicators understand what I have to say.

Debate: 20th of Jan. '14

Today we watched and discussed a video from the WSDC with the motion: "THBT the police should use racial profiling when fighting." Obviously, the debaters I saw in the video are so much better than I am as a debater. It will take some time before I will, if ever, be that good. But watching and discussing the video is a step for me to get there. It helps me understand what are expected for me to be that good in debating. Through the video, I learned that tone and presentation are really important. Body language also is important because it shows what the person is thinking. There are times when some of the debaters in the video portray a "closed" body language. This shows that they were scared of their opponents, which should be true because their opponents were really confident and poised. At the end, their opponents, the affirmative side, won. I learned from the affirmative team that the first speaker should define every single detail in the motion clearly. He or she should also be very confident. The first speaker should really know what he or she is saying and really believe in the mechanism that his or her team has made. The second and third speakers have to present themselves in the same way but they, especially the third speaker, have to rebut effectively against the opponents' arguments. They have to show that the opponents are talking nonsense and they have to defend their stand on the motion. After watching the video, I realized that it somewhat connects to my daily live. When making a decision or conveying an opinion, we have to be consistent. We can't change from one decision to another or one perspective to another because then no decision will be done and people who listen to our opinions will be confused. Nevertheless, this does not apply to TOK since in TOK we have to stay neutral and accept all decisions and perspectives.

Debate: 13th of Jan. '14

Today the debate class practiced our reasoning skills on the motion: THB mothers should stay home and look after their children. We discussed how we would define the motion if we were the affirmative team and how we would oppose the proposal if we were the opposition team. We discussed this with the whole class. I believe my friends and I came up with some good points. We decided that mothers in this motion should be women with working husbands while children should be anyone under 5 years old. When mothers are defined as women with working husbands, it means that when they are on their paternity leave, the household's economy will not be as much be disrupted. However, this creates a controversy between sexes. Why should mothers have the chance to stay at home and relate with their children? Why can't fathers have the chance to do the same thing? The affirmative side will then argue that it is not fair for women to not have these rights after carrying the baby in their wombs for 9 months and finally giving birth to them at that point. Nowadays is the era of women empowerment. Thus to limit women to not be able to have paternity leaves are contradictory with the objective of today's era. Basically that is an overview of how the debate practice went. I believe that this practice is very useful because it helped me to develop my critical thinking and therefore improve when I case build in my next debate. This skill can however be applied to other subjects not just debate. For example, in Business Management, I can use critical thinking to analyze a given case study more effectively.