Each Friday evening since mid-Term 1, several of the Year 7 boys have dedicated a huge amount of their time to debating. They meet each week during their lunch time and then debate against other schools on Friday evenings. Earlier in the year it was in the Fed Cup and ISDA competitions while this term has seen the start of the official GPS competition.
Mr Mark Halsted and Ms Donna Curtis have been working hard with the boys and this evening, when asked about how the boys went, Ms Curtis replied “we came second place in both debates but the boys did us proud, tried their best and really are lovely boys”.
One of our debaters is Finn Waugh (Balmain) and below is a short report that he wrote after tonight’s debate.
The debate against Sydney Grammar was never going to be an easy one. Our team, consisting of Matthew Sally (West Pennant Hills), Fred Maher (Cherrybrook), myself and Felix Habib (Balmain) lost the coin toss and it was decided that we would negate the topic “That We Should Ban Video Games That Glorify Crime”. We felt that this topic may have favoured the affirmative but we were certainly going to give it a good shake.
After a constructive 45 minute preparation time the debate began. After an intimidating speech by the opposition Matthew rose and spoke very well. The Grammar second speaker rebutted our case expertly and we knew that things would be tough. Fred Maher tried his best to give us the advantage and again, did a wonderful job. Their third speaker again refuted our case exceptionally well. At the end of my own speech, with all speakers having had their say our team thought that we were in with a shot at victory. Unfortunately the adjudicator disagreed and gave the debate to the affirmative.
It was a good experience for everyone involved and although we lost to Grammar, we know that they are one of the best debating schools in NSW and if we can defeat the rest of the schools starting with Sydney High next week we are still in with a chance to win the GPS competition.
Photo: Back row – Fred Maher, Rory McHugh (Pennant Hills), Matthew Sally, Finn Waugh. Front row – Felix Habib, Nick Jessup (Lane Cove) and Nathan Calingao (Lane Cove). Absent – Alec Mackinnon (North Bondi)