Swinburne

Report on Swinburne World Schools Debating Championship 2009

In the month of April, the Debate Club of St Thomas Secondary School sent 2 Senior Teams and 1 Junior Team to enter the Swinburne World Schools Debating Championship 2009. The Championship was held from the 20th to 23rd of April in the Swinburne Institute of Technology.

The Debate Club of St Thomas Secondary School is officially listed under the English Club of St Thomas Secondary school but operates as a separate organization. Since Worlds Schools Debating Championships have a different structure and rules from Parliamentary debates, there were only 3 people in each team. St Thomas Secondary School’s debate teams were as follows:

St Thomas A:
Adam Tiong
Joanne Ch’ng
Kelvin Yap

St Thomas B:
Ian Nicholl
Cornelius Yee
Faris Azri bin Aswandi

St Thomas C:
Jonathan Melvin Sidhu
Aldrin Tan
Joshua Ngumbang ak Joseph

The Championship started on the 20th of April at 8:30 am with a workshop conducted by the chief adjudicator: Dr. Sooch who is an experienced debater at international level. The workshop was mainly for the benefit of the first time debaters and secondary school teachers who wanted to try their hand at adjudicating.

One Practice Debate and one Preliminary round were held on Monday, three preliminaries were held on Tuesday and the last preliminary was held on Wednesday. The first Preliminary was matched at random but the rest were power matched. The motions were chosen via the tri-motion style. The Matchups and Motions were as follows:

Round /St Thomas A /St Thomas B /St Thomas C
Practice /Tunku Putera A/ Batu Kawa A/ Kolej Abdillah D
Preliminary 1/ St Joseph C/ Kolej Abdillah C/ Green Road D
Preliminary 2/ CHMS 1 B/ Lodge C/ St Joseph A
Preliminary 3/ St Teresa C/ Bandar Kuching C/ Kolej Abdillah C
Preliminary 4/ Batu Kawa A/ Tunku Putra B/ Gapor A
Preliminary 5/Lodge D/ Greed Road D/ St Joseph B

Round Motions
Practice:
THW persecute parents of obese children
THW ban physical punishment of children by their parents
THBT the priority of criminal justice is rehabilitation not retribution

Preliminary 1
THBT high school students right to confidentiality supersedes the right for parents to know
THBT arts and science should receive equal funding
THW let parents choose their children’s curriculum

Preliminary 2
THBT the private lives of public figures should remain private
THW make smokers pay for their medical bills
THBT gay couples should not be allowed to adopt children

Preliminary 3
THBT sporting bodies should penalize teams when their players commit criminal acts off the filed
THW make drug testing compulsory for all the athletes competing in the Olympics
THW ban blood sports

Preliminary 4
THBT ecotourism has failed
THBT we should restrict vehicle access to the city
THBT we should tax rubbish

Preliminary 5
THBT third world debt should be cancelled
THBT genetically modified food is the solution to world hunger
THBT third world financial aid should be dependant on birth control

Team /Wins /Losses
St Thomas A/ 3 /2
St Thomas B/ 2 /3
St Thomas C/ 2 /3

Unfortunately, St Thomas did not manage to break into the Quarter Finals, just 6 points behind the last team that did. The three teams: St Thomas A, B and C ranked 14, 20 and 24 out of the 36 teams that competed in the championship with scores of 1284.50, 1285.08 and 1273.00 respectively. This was quite impressive as 7 out of the 9 debaters who took part were debating for the first time in such a championship.

Of the 9 debaters of St Thomas, Ian Nicholl ranked the highest for individual speaker scores with 74.27 points. He was ranked the 28th out of 108 debaters.

Even though the debate teams of St Thomas did not manage to enter the quarter finals on Wednesday afternoon, the team attended the rest of the matches to encourage their sister school St Mary who broke at second place and the rest of the teams who made it all the way to the finals on Thursday.


The Championship ended with the prize giving ceremony and a photo taking session in the Swinburne Lecture Hall. The Debate Club is proud to announce that even though the St Thomas Teams did not make it past the preliminary rounds, the debaters of the club have learnt a lot through this Championship.

Through this competition, the debaters of St Thomas Secondary School Debate Club have made new friends, gained more general knowledge and learned important critical thinking skills.

Debating is a very interesting sport. Not only does a person improve his or her English, he or she also learns the art of convincing people, presenting an idea, problem shooting and research skills. The Debate Club sincerely hopes that more students will join the club and the world of debating.



Written by,


Joanne Ch’ng
President
Debate Club
St Thomas Secondary School