The Art of Debate and Public Speaking

Debate and public speaking is an art of instilling critical thinking in the youth. By doing so, there’s also child development taking place.

As the regionals took place in some regions already and we’re waiting on the nationals, both the Namibian Schools Debating Association (NSDA) and The Namibian Newspaper Public Speaking and Debate Cup are coming up, debaters will be judged on the merit of content, style and argumentation, a difficult format to master if you are a new debater but easy once you master it.

Some adjudicators expect more than that, that is the merit of judging.

We encourage debaters to be confident and have as much eye contact as they can with the audience. But as a once shy debater, I urge teachers and whoever is adjudicating not to penalise debaters, especially new ones, for that as they come to develop this skills at a later stage.

Debate is the art that teaches you how to be confident and to believe in yourself no matter what. For example, a once shy gentleman Michael Nauta, from ‘a dusty town in the Karas region’, as he puts it, excelled in debating and gained his confidence through the art of debating.

Now he’s pursuing his dream as he is studying engineering at the Namibian University of Science and Technology (NUST). He is a student who has built drones.

Sometimes we just need to believe in ourselves and we are held back by the confidence we lack. Debate gives this confidence and as Michael says, “debate has given me the confidence to pursue my dreams”.

Throughout the years, debaters complained that they lost a debate because of their accent (because the adjudicator said so) or they couldn’t make the national team because they’re too young. Sometimes they would say they lost a debate because the motion was biased and the adjudicators felt that because the motion was biased, the side with less arguments should win.

Judging debates on this merit, there are many more disincentive scholars who want to debate. The aim is to get more debaters but if we keep up the wrong way of judging because of the reasons listed above, then we are going to have less debators and we won’t achieve all we want with the sport.

Let’s inspire children to debate and live up to the merit of judging in a way that won’t affect debaters.

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