Slovenian Worlds debaters meet their president, Danilo Türk

President Danilo Turk with Slovenia World Schools Debate Championship team, coaches and those responsible for the popular television documentary about their experience in Korea

Report from Maja Cimerman:

Slovenian Worlds debaters meet their president, Danilo Türk

It was about three years ago when I as a debate newbie stood up for first time at the podium to give a speech to an audience of one – the adjudicator. From then to now it was a rocky path of practice and enormous amount of work that had to be done. With my debate partners I won (and lost) many national and international tournaments, attended debate camps and fundraised money for all debate necessities. But three years later it is me who is given a speech by my country’s president.

This is as my story as it is a story of all other four debaters that represented Slovenia on World Schools Debating Championship 2008– Anna, Filip, Bla_ka and Teo. Together we not only broke as eighth best team, won the first award among the countries that have English as a second language but also snatched the award for the best speaker in the same category. We started to receive a great deal of attention in the middle of January this year, when the documentary about Slovenian high school students at Worlds in S. Korea was aired on Slovenian national TV. It seems the documentary was one of the best possible promotions Slovenian debate could imagine. Since it was shown we got loads of admiration and more importantly recognition from non-debaters. One of the unexpected results of showing debate to wide audience was an invitation for all 5 of us, our mentor Bojana Skrt and the TV crew to an official reception with the Slovenian president Danilo Türk.

The reception was held on the 3rd of March at the President’s house in Ljubljana. I have to admit we got everything you could wish for when meeting a high official. After the necessary 5 minutes of waiting for the president in a straight line in a fancy room, he entered, shook everyone’s hand and, as required by protocol, took few pictures with us. While we also loved the cake and the drinks we were offered, what we truly appreciated are the 40 minutes following the official reception Mr. Türk devoted to the conversation with us.

What I as a debater welcomed the most in our talk is that the president did not just flatter our knowledge on issues of international importance or rhetorical skills, as many non-debaters do, but also tried to understand the essence of debate. He challenged us how could have we defended not to ban the use of models who are below a healthy weight, when we clearly see the industry is abusing loose regulations and deliberately harms their employees for profit. Dr. Türk did not want to out-trick us in debate, but rather engage in weighing pros and cons so he could see our perspective on how to deal with the moral implications that defending a certain position might bring. This is an open question in debate but an even more pressing issue in politics and international relations, where he built his career.

The second issue we covered was how good education is essential for raising internationally successful debaters. In 17 years since gaining independence Slovenia has developed a strong educational system. We have students that speak fluent English, but also have wider knowledge and confidence to stand up and speak about in front of a crowd in a foreign language. But what might not be clear is that internationally successful debaters are a conformation Slovenia is doing things right. Successful debaters contribute to good reputation of our country. What is twisted here is that regardless of our success we have to individually fund ourselves for big international competition. Even Mr. Türk was surprised to hear the Ministry of education (which is not under his governance) does not financially support debate and promised to appeal to the government in this direction.

Overall I am one of those who really do not care about the whole official protocol to which many public figures are reduced to. I believe we can be thankful to have a president that takes time to engage in conversation with us alongside the whole “playing nice” thing. One might argue being accepted by your president can happen only in small countries, where the president does not have better things to do. I am fine with that. I am happy my president does not throw bombs, or stop riots or corruption all the time and therefore can give some attention to debate. I am happy my president does sometimes put debate first. Because everyone who has ever been involved in debate knows it is the better thing.