Delhi Public School South Workshop

The day was one of excitement, satisfaction and hope for us. The excitement came due to the prospect of promoting the magic of debating to yet another bunch of school students. The satisfaction resulted from the ease and confidence with which the students surpassed our expectations. And at the end of the day, our hopes for a future where reasoned debate and thoughtful communication would be the main tools employed by a generation were that much surer.

On that day, six of us from the National Law School of India University set off to hold the Debating Workshop at DPS South, Bangalore. We were tremendously encouraged to see the large number of students who had volunteered to take time off from their usual activities in order to attend the workshop. Even more interestingly, the diversity of participants – from tiny denizens of the 8^th Grade to the stronger, wiser ones just about to graduate from the 12^th Grade – brought a colourful variety of insights and perspectives to the workshop. Over the course of about four hours, we had a delightful time interacting with this cross-section of tomorrow’s citizens.

Speaking of citizenship, we were pleasantly surprised to discover the level of civic awareness and engagement with contemporary affairs that the students exhibited. In keeping with the times, Anna Hazare formed an inevitable example in illustrating many aspects of public communication that were covered in the workshop. However, it didn’t take long for the interactive nature of the workshop to draw out responses from the students that went far beyond the standard generalisations that seem to be everywhere. On a variety of topics, ranging from Hazare’s movement to something as simple as asking parents for pocket money, the students exhibited clear and often innovative thinking. As the potential debaters in them started to surface during the course of the interactions, our hearts soared.

The workshop itself was segmented into different components. So during the Language segment, the students were exposed to the drastic change of meaning and connotation that a simple substitution of words can achieve. In the Logic segment, on the other hand, the students realised how hard it often is to express the logical links that we intuitively and effortlessly make in our daily lives in clear words and sentences. They also gained practical experience in trying to reason out various situations in a logically correct manner. The segment on Perspective introduced them to the relatively complex idea of how certain ideas that most people take for granted as being objective, are in fact significantly subjective. Like the other sections, it was peppered with situational questions that encouraged the students to think outside of the box.

Finally, after all these sections that introduced the students to the components of a good argument, they got a chance to experience the intricacies of debate argumentation live. Four DPS South students and two of us, split into two teams, debated the idea of whether hunger strikes are legitimate in a democracy such as ours. It was a joy to see the recently initiated debaters unleash their newly-acquired skills enthusiastically, with the crowd cheering them on every time they made a good point. It was also a familiar sight of mesmerised fascination in the eyes of the spectators, as they suddenly realised how the very components they had just discussed – Language, Logic and Perspective – were being used by the debaters to sway them so effectively in completely different directions.

As we departed at the end of the day, we could only hope that the fascination and passion for debate that was demonstrated by the students would last throughout their lives. For apart from ensuring the quality of competition at the NLS-D Junior, and apart from imparting skills that hold you in good stead pretty much anywhere, we felt like we had contributed at least marginally to a much larger goal – a better-informed, better-thinking society tomorrow. 

Anil Sebastian

Debater
II Yr. Student, NLSIU