Debating debates with debaters

On Friday, I was invited by some old friends from Awani Television to appear on a forum.  It seems that the Prime Minister’s cup debates are coming and they want to do something to promote debates in general.  Other members of the forum were two representatives from the newly started Orator’s association (one a lawyer and the other a former television presenter), the politician’s right hand man and a student from UKM who was also a former debating champion.  I wondered what I was doing there. 

Still, since I had agreed to be there, I sought a position to defend and settled on the idea of taking it from the perspective of an academician in the education and languages faculty. 

And so the forum went on and it was quite fun. At the end of it however I am still left wondering what exactly are we trying to promote.  The bottomline is still communication: we are trying to promote the art and science of exchanging ideas intelligently and properly. 

On second thoughts however, I wonder if we Malaysians really lack the ability to communicate properly because evidently, we can complain very well even when our complaints defy logic, reason and plain common-sense.  I had a student complaining that her assignment was given zero by two graders.  When the paper came to me and I googled a couple of the lines from it and found that it was 100% plagiarized.  Well, I guess as we say, “kantoi” (gotcha!).

Another student debated with me that she should not have to re-take a paper she failed because someone had told her that she did not need to take the paper even though it was clearly stated that she got an “F”.  A few questions later, I learnt that the person who told her that was NOT a faculty or university member, NOT a fellow student, NOT even the minstry of higher education.  At that point, I began to question the sanity factor of this student. She, however, debated her point very well. The argument defied logic and reason but it was definitely well-presented. If this is the end result of promoting debates skills and knowledge among Malaysians, I think I can look forward to more of this in the future.