Why our learners need to be equipped with debating skills
Nairobi gubernatorial candidates Polycarp Igathe of Azimio la Umoja (left) and Johnson Sakaja of UDA during their debate at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa on July 11, 2022.
What you need to know:
- Objective debating seeks to improve society by convincing its members to adapt more beneficial positions.
- Learners ought to be taught how they can use their emotional appeal in a bid to put their points across.
The recently concluded Deputy-Presidential debate in Kenya did emphasize the need for learners at all levels of education to progressively cultivate their argumentative and persuasive skills.
It is essential that teachers heed the call of not only making learners passive listeners to their lectures but also allowing them role play acts that could help them perfect their debating skills.
Many would wonder what the role of these debating skills is in case a person is not interested in professions where one has to talk his way to the top.
This fallacy ignores the apparent role that coherent communication plays in the lives of students after school.
The truth of the matter is that not many of them will ever be on stage to debate like the candidates we witnessed on Tuesday.
However, they will need to have persuasive skills in their own jobs.
They will require to back up their project proposals with concrete facts and respond to challenges raised against their theses in future, and these are all skills that would come in handy in such circumstances.
It is essential that the students are guided in developing the right temperament while debating and arguing.
Calmness
The test of a great debater is in how they are able to maintain their calm even when the other one loses theirs.
Often, the opposite debater would test the extent to which one would go before they can degenerate into name-calling and personal attacks.
A good temperament allows a debater to maintain their calm and stick to what they were saying to its logical conclusion.
Often, people mistakenly believe that the one who makes the most personal attacks and puts the opposite debater on the defensive about their personal lives wins the debate.
This fallacy is referred to as the ad hominem attack. A good debater steers clear of the personal attacks and instead focuses on the issues that are raised.
What they do is attack the premises of the opposite arguments, showing the weaknesses that are inherent in the arguments themselves rather than the people who advance them.
Confidence
The learners have to be guided on how they can use accurate facts and statistics while speaking clearly and confidently.
The poise, general appearance, gait and confidence that one exudes are essential when it comes to being convincing in an argument.
It is not enough for one to simply be confident, the confidence must be accompanied by well-researched facts and statistics.
Even in everyday conversations, one must learn the art of drawing from examples from the top of their head and using them to drive their points home.
In addition, it has to be emphasised that having different opinions and paths to which something is to be done is not to be enemies.
Some people hold the beliefs they do because they have not been shown how better the opposite positions are.
This is what objective debating seeks to attain — to improve society by convincing its members to adapt more beneficial positions.
Even more importantly, learners ought to be taught how they can use their emotional appeal in a bid to put their points across.
This includes teaching them the use of sensory language, imagery and descriptive criteria that brings to the fore a convincing emotional standpoint.
The listeners have to be convinced that the speaker is passionate about the topic they argue about and that they are not simply in it to pass time.
Appealing to the emotions of the listeners is essential in ensuring that they are able to relate to the situation and react accordingly.
On the debating stage, the debaters last week exhibited some of the best practices of rhetoric and at the same time exposed the soft underbelly by often digressing from these practices.
The fact that the debates were for the most part centred on issues that affect Kenyan society and their suggestions on how the situations could be remedied pointed at a move in the positive direction.
Moving forward, the issues that are presented during these debates must be sufficient enough to enable the electorates to make up their minds one way or the other.
With its beginnings in the era of Sophists, rhetoric has a rich tradition from the Greacen, Roman and even modern civilizations.
The teacher has to ensure that his or her learners are well equipped in the basic principles of debating to ensure that they can argue their points not only on stages like the Tuesday one but also be convincing enough in other areas of life.
The writer is a teacher of English in Vihiga County
