Kenza Wilks , a Year 10 debater at Dulwich, offers a personal perspective
on what being involved in this most demanding of intellectual activities has meant for him.
S ome at Dulwich might be tempted to brand the debating society as a place where argumentative boys gather to shout witty remarks at each other. However, debating is far more profound than that – or at least it is the majority of the time. The French writer Joseph Joubert said, ‘it is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it’, and this captures the spirit of what we do. Debating is, above all, a way in which an individual or a team can discuss current issues facing our world today and come to profound and well thought-out conclusions as to how to solve that specific problem. It creates a forum in which you can decide on possible solutions. My experiences of debating started in Year 9 and since joining I have attended many competitions with varying levels of success. In preparation for these, we hold debating practices twice a week in which we work on both the way arguments should be structured and the technical aspects of debating. We then put these into practice in debates on a wide variety of topics. The plethora of topics that we can debate means that we have to gain a wide range of knowledge in order to be relevant or, alternatively, pretend to be so. The progression and improvement as a debater is rapid, not only with the great coaching that we receive, but also the influences of older boys in the society, particularly Louis Collier and Will Cook, who have experience at an international level. I have learnt a lot from watching them debate, and have adopted aspects of their style and tactics in order to improve my own. The competitions that we attend range in quality, with debaters of all calibres eligible to compete for four rounds of debating. In the final round, only four teams compete and this is a great opportunity to learn more skills from other debaters or from the judges of the competition. In addition to this, the many lectures and workshops that we
can attend increase our ability as a school to compete at the highest level in debating. Debating works to develop a number of skills that are helpful not only for debating itself but also for a number of other endeavours that one may choose to pursue. The ability to structure an argument and generate a number of different reasons as to why that argument may be true, particularly in a limited space of time, is exceedingly useful when it comes to writing essays in English or other Humanities subjects. By its very nature, debating requires you to stand in front of a group of people and be able to speak eloquently and compellingly, which is a good skill to have when looking into possible careers that involve public speaking. This is a skill I have been able to develop through debating at the school and hope to put to good use. Finally, knowledge of, or at least an understanding of, current affairs and other issues is intrinsic in debating. You acquire interesting information that you would be unlikely to have otherwise and can apply to other academic areas or general topical discussion. Debating as a whole is a great co-curricular activity in that it allows for conversation about current affairs, produces many transferable skills and, as a result, I am pleased to be a part of it.
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