Filipinos Immersed in Lively World Debate

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=128379

The Filipino debater: Engaging the world in a lively debate

By Kris Danielle Suarez
abs-cbnNEWS.com

First of two parts

It is day seven of the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships, more popularly known as the Australs, and inside the Ateneo de Manila University's Leong Auditorium on the morning of July 9, a team from Australia's Monash University was facing off with a team from the host institution.

Miko Biscocho, a member of the local team, was speaking at the podium, defending the affirmative side in the debate about the legalization of hymen reconstruction surgery. And although the topic was given to them 30 minutes prior to the start of the debate, he spoke confidently and convincingly, as did the rest of the speakers.

His two teammates, seated at the right side of the stage, expressed their approval of his points, while the Australian team expressed their disagreement while taking notes.

The adjudicators watched intently at every gesture and listened to every word, as was the crowd – a mix of debaters from all over the Asia-Pacific region and dozens of Filipino students – watched.

The scene was replicated in several other venues within the university, which, for more than a week, played host to the world's second-largest debate tournament.

Debate is a more formal way of arguing, which basically involves two sides trying to present a “better” context or framework of a single issue. It is governed by rules that would facilitate such exchange of ideas. The outcome of a debate could be decided by audience vote, judges, or a combination of both, and is considered one of democracy's hallmarks.

In the academe, competitive debate is usually encouraged among students, and is an organized activity with teams competing at local, national, and international levels, with varying styles and rules.

Debating has brought international recognition to many Filipino students for years. As a result, it is now enjoying widespread popularity among high schools, colleges and universities across the country.

Long road

But the road towards world-class Filipino debaters was a long and hard one.

Debating has been present in Philippine universities in varying formats for years, but it was only as recently as 1990 that debates began using the current formats, derived from the British Parliamentary and Australian-Asian styles commonly used in international debate tournaments.

Raymond Aguas, Assistant Professor at the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) Department of Theology and among the first Filipinos to enter the world debate stage, said that many of the old debate societies and groups "pretty much disbanded" when Martial Law was declared in 1972, but the reasons for their disappearance are not clear.

As such, Aguas said, after the Marcos dictatorship was overthrown in 1986. there were no debate organizations in schools to speak of, save perhaps for a few debate groups in law schools.

Then in 1990, Aguas participated in the World Universities Debating Championships (WUDC) in Glasgow, Scotland, where he was exposed to the relatively new styles and trends.

Back in the Philippines, Aguas was approached by Ateneo students Ian Lising and Niño Achacoso, who proposed the establishment of a formal debate organization. In 1991, the Ateneo Debate Society (ADS), the first local debate group using the new Worlds-based style, was established. And soon, other schools had their own debate societies.

Initially, there was some resistance on the new style, particularly advocates of older debate styles, but eventually, advocates of the new format were able to convince other groups to adopt the style.

"I told them, 'look, we're now debating for the World Championships. We're facing Harvard, we're facing Oxford, and we're beating them,'" recounted Aguas. "The opportunity to travel, opportunity to meet international debaters, the ability to engage in constructive dialogue with people from these so-called hallowed universities like Cambridge and Oxford, that's appealing," he added.

Now widespread

Within a decade from Aguas's Worlds participation, the local debate community has grown exponentially, spreading first among big-name universities in major cities, and eventually, to almost everywhere - from Baguio in the north all the way to Davao in the south.

Claire Jiao of the University of the Philippines-Diliman's UP Debate Society (UPDS) said that the community is "much wider" unlike before, when only big Manila-based universities and colleges were active in tourneys.

"Now, people as far as Mindanao are now interested in it," Jiao said. Aside from this, she said that the level of competition is getting higher, because debaters from provincial institutions "can just as easily beat you."

Davit Jalotjot, member of the Ateneo de Davao University's Ateneo Debate Community (ADC), agreed that these days, debates aren't anymore "Manila-centric." "Manila-based schools used to dominate tourneys, but that was because they had more training, more support, more funding, and more exposure to excellent debaters from abroad. But that doesn't mean that if given the chance, non-Manila schools won't perform just as well," he said.

"It really helps that there are strong provincial teams in national tournaments, so it debunks the mindset of Manila-based adjudicators (judges) that the provincial teams are weaker," Biscocho said. He also said there is no basis for thinking that provincial teams are “weaker” because there are a lot of "strong contenders" from everywhere.

Non-Manila schools have also widened the perspective of debaters, because each debater brings a different perspective into the competition. “It's really refreshing," Jiao said.

"The ability of a team is not contingent on where they come from," Biscocho said. Rather, it depends on how a team trains and how their debate society invests time and resources in them.

The only difference between Manila-based and provincial teams, Jalotjot noted, is the "intensity" of team rivalries, as opposed to the level of competition among teams. "The rivalry [among Manila teams] is too intense," he said.

Reaching out

Some of the factors that have contributed to this growth, according to Biscocho, are the efforts of established teams from the larger universities in helping smaller, upstart teams train and practice, as well as the presence of national tournaments where everyone can send teams to participate.

Established teams such as the ADS, of which Biscocho is president, regularly conduct seminars around the country, especially in schools that are starting out and need help. Many debate teams also conduct cross-training sessions with each other.

Another factor that helped in the growth of debating, which Jiao and Biscocho both attributed to, is the exposure of formal debate in media, specifically on television. Both pointed out the ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC) show Square Off, where teams from different colleges and universities argue in front of millions of viewers. (ANC and abs-cbnNEWS.com are both part of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp.)

This development, meanwhile, also helped in changing the image of debating in the eyes of the public.

When debating was relatively far from the public eye, Jiao said they usually used "big" and highly technical words in their discussions, but when debate eventually became exposed to more people, this style initially turned a lot of people off.

"You realized that you are not debating with your colleagues anymore. You are debating for the public... you're not just arguing for yourself or for your opponent. You're arguing for the public," she said.

"A debater's first responsibility now is to engage the audience," she added.