The Debate

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The Debate

Memory can be so fickle. Like some great book that is slowly loosing

its pages, you begin with an entire novel full of details and descriptions and,

if you're not careful, you end up with nothing more than the cover and the brief

synopsis on the back page. My novel on the subject of the end of summer school

debate has lost its share of pages but the back-cover synopsis, the essence of

the entire experience, is still with me.

“We are about to begin our annual debating tournament,” the instructor

beamed with an enthusiasm that let each of us know how happy he was that we had

made it this far. “It will be the culmination of your six weeks of learning and

will count as a considerable part of your grade for the course. We will begin

at eight tomorrow morning. Get some practice, get some sleep, see you there.”

I don't know what drew me to the course but I can remember my parents

telling me they felt I should go to summer school. I was opposed to the concept

of summer school right up to the moment I was issued the dictum “go to school or

get a job”, at which point I became the world's greatest advocate of off-season

learning. Besides, I was only fifteen and the workplace just wasn't ready for

me. So I thumbed through the course book, singing a chorus of no's until I

arrived on the Debate and Public Speaking page. There resided a large

photograph of a boy confidently standing behind an ornate podium, clearly frozen

in the middle of some captivating and influential argument. I read the passage

describing the course and was immediately sold. How could a stuffy math class

or a trivial course in art compare to “a course that teaches students the skills

and techniques of competitive debate, culminating in a week long tournament?”

So I filled out the forms and mailed them and before I knew It I was sitting in

a lecture hall, learning the skills and techniques of competitive debate.

As I have said, I was only fifteen and perhaps this debating course was

not yet ready for me either. I was both the youngest and least experienced of

the lot. Little could be done to gain ground on the former adversity, but I set

about rectifying th latter by filling a notebook with all the wisdom that the

teacher could impart to us during the hour long periods. When it was time for

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