As it turned out, the judges ruled in favour of the debating students.
Six of Beaconhouse A’ Levels campuses were represented in the final round of the debate competition at the Finance and Trade Centre auditorium. They had sparred against each other earlier during preliminary rounds. Both English and Urdu debates were organised, and the campuses were represented by three students in each of the formats.
The PECHS chapter’s Urdu debaters extended their unbeaten streak to four years, after Habiba Nafees, Ahmed Furqan and Sanam Mir Ghazi managed to convince the judges that the media was not covering criminal activities in a responsible manner. While referring to the endless streaming of the video by news channels in which a Sialkot mob tortured to death two brothers in 2010, a speaker said that the media creates depression among the viewers.
Another student, however, said that the media has also identified culprits in many instances, and therefore made the job easier for government authorities.
The PECHS chapter’s English debating team, comprising Aisha Haque, Abdul Rafay Shaikh and Tarab Majaz, successfully opposed the resolution, “Only the elite can successfully manage state affairs”.
The auditorium was full to the brim with Beaconhouse students, who cheered every time a debater from their school drove home a point. The speakers also used emotional rhetoric to their advantage, coupled with the occasional stanza from Iqbal.
Apart from focusing on style, content and delivery of the speeches, the judges had been asked to award extra points to debaters for making reasoned arguments and drawing valid deductions. A poet and former dean at Textile Institute of Pakistan Qamar Zaidi, editor of The Financial Daily Shakil Jafri and veteran TV news presenter Nighat Iftikhar judged the debates.
The speakers were not aware of the topics they were supposed to defend, or oppose, until an hour before each round of the debate. However, they had been told to conduct extensive research over a broad range of topics, most of which were related to societal problems and concerns, informed Khalid Uzma, Urdu teacher at the Jubilee campus. Students had to do this while taking care of their regular schoolwork, added Uzma.
Humera Javed, who heads the Jubilee campus’ A’ Levels section, told The Express Tribune that Beaconhouse has been conducting inter-chapter parliamentary style debates for the last eight years. “The competition helps [sharpen] students’ research skills. It also enables them to communicate their ideas with the understanding that they can convince people through dialogue.”
One of the judges at the event, Qamar Zaidi, observed that the young debaters were “more polished” than those that belonged to his generation. He also lamented that the inherent divisions in Pakistani society could not be reconciled after the passage of 65 years. We can tackle crime if we understand its underlying factors, said Zaidi.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 15th, 2012.
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