October 8th 2015
Debating Whether our Debate was Successful
During our last class, we debated whether the legal drinking age should be lowered. Obviously there was a side arguing for lowering the age, and a side that was arguing against lowering the age. When looking back on the debate, I think that it was clear that both teams were not prepared for what the debate was really going to be.
The debate started with an opening statement from Hannah which was delivered fairly well, but she got nervous at times and spoke too fast for anybody to understand what she was trying to get across. Then Josna came up, and it seemed that she was not really sure what she was going to say, or froze up when she realized that her time was running out. The middle part of the debate consisted of an opening rebuttal, followed by three more. Ella went up and made it clear that in Europe the drinking age is 18 or younger and the death rate due to alcohol related incidents are significantly lower. She failed to get across reasons to why the drinking age is a direct correlation to the lack of alcohol related deaths. Next was jack Palmer who came up looking as confident as ever, which didn't surprise anyone. He got his initial points across, ran out of things to say, dropped the mike, and walked back to his seat but not before taking a jab at Ella. His jab at Ella made him seem arrogant and lost him a lot of credit. David was next and to be honest, I'm not really sure what he said. Mazie then came up and prepared to rebut against Ella's statement about Europe but froze up when she saw the time was ticking down. Finally, the closing statements came. I started off strong by saying that alcohol was dangerous which we all could agree on. I then completely forgot what I was going to say and frantically looked down at my iPad for answers. I finished strongly which was good but could have done a lot better. Evan's closing statement was really good. It was clear, well spoken, and had valid points. He did, although, run into a problem when faced with going off the paper and arguing statements that were said during the debate. He even backed up one of my arguments about basement drinking which lost him some points.
Overall, I think that this was a good learning experience for the class. We now know that if we want to have a successful debate, we need to be much more prepared. We can't just look up facts and ease drop on the other team. We must look into the opposing argument and prepare for what the other team is going to say which takes a little more effort. Debating is a tool that is used ever single day and I think that for the next debate, everyone will be much more prepared and with the experience of the first debate under our belts, we will have a much more successful debate.
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