Disclaimer: Somewhere on this blog are multiple grammatical mistakes, spelling errors and obscure Star Wars references.

Friday, November 10, 2006

You've been Debated...

Three weeks ago, due to an outburst that Khalid made in the classroom, all of year 13 was involved in a discussion about Hitler. Specifically the legacy that he left behind. Was it a good one or a bad one?

Amongst the girls, Heena was extremely anti - Hitler and so, just to play with her the guys went around ranting, "Hitler was a GENIUS!!!" One argument led to some laughter and before you knew it the coordinators heard about what was happening and a date was set when this topic was to be debated in front of years 12 & 13. I was put on the team that had to speak for his legacy. For it. We had already lost.

Eventually time rolled by and yesterday (Thursday,9th of November) arrived... Teams were set. Heena and Reyna spoke against it, while Awais and I spoke for it. Uzma and Ahad also decided to help us since we were debating a lost argument. The nice Mr. Kamath treated the audience and speakers to Ice Cream and Sodas. Heena was the first to go. She pulled out a fact sheet and began firing off points showing how bad a legacy Hitler had left behind. Daym. The For team was already getting hammered. When she finished the crowd gave her a warm applause. Awais then jumped on the scene and spoke about Hitler's economic developments. Possibly the only good thing that could have been debated about him. As he signed off the crowd gave us a lukewarm response. But it was better than we had hoped for.

We were then given 5 minutes to prepare our Rebuttals. The teams left the hall and began preparing their speeches. After a quick 5 minutes the teams were ushered back into the hall. Reyna was up next. Her speech was well received by the audience where she spoke about how could yo possibly link Hitler to a good memory. It wasn't getting easier for us.

Eventually it was my turn. I stood up and made my way to the front of the audience. I actually hesitated there for a few seconds, knowing perfectly what I was going to say, just not how to start it. I began slowly, and then worked it up into a well voiced speech about how you can't ignore the economic & military development that Hitler brought to Germany from 1933 to before the fall of the Third Reich. We did not have much to go on but I tried to make whatever we have sound phenomenal.

When I finished the crowd gave the biggest applause yet. Reyna and Heena themselves acknowledged that I spoke the best and that the For team had a HUGE chance of winning this. The judges then asked to take their leave to tally the points. As they were doing their thing, us 4 speakers were wondering who would win. The Against team had the best points, but the For team had the best speech. Who would win? Each team thought the other would win. Although, to be honest I did have that little glimmer of hope that my speech could have turned it for us.

The judges were back. Mrs. Khan stood up in front of the audience. She gave a quick explanation on how the scores were evaluated and how the points were tallied. 4 fields: relevance, clarity, accuracy and speech. Each speaker would be given points out of 100, and the total for both speakers would be tallied. The team with more points wins. She then commented on each speaker. Heena had the most points, Awais focused on Economics, Reyna re-stamped what Heena began, and I spoke with the most confidence. Then she annouced the scores.

Heena 91, Awais 77, Reyna 84,


Muhammed Ali 73


Pwned.


A resounding, "Gasp!" was heard throughout the class. "How on EARTH did Mali get 73?!?!" It wasn't half bad though. I was told I lost points for lack of material. The good part was that some of the audience went to the judges and asked how it was possible for me to score the least. Many of them also stopped by me and said that they disagreed with what the judges thought, and still thought that I spoke the best. Even so...


Pwned..

xx

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i still think u were the best speaker n u deserved more marks ..u spoke realyy well n evrybody knows that the decision was unfair...

Anonymous said...

Well, You know how I feel about this.
I do think it was awfully convenient that two out of the three judges were BEST friends of Mrs Ibrahim, a staunch anti-Hitler preaching history teacher. Nonetheless, the against team did deserve to win. But I still stand by my beliefs that he had a brilliant yet twisted mind.

I am not all for Hitler, but the reason why I was so persistent on being in the FOR team is because people make pre-conceived notions about a great mind just because they've been taught to hate him. It's all propoganda. People are too afraid to think beyond what's in front of them and what they've been told to think. I am a firm believer that what Hilter did to the Jews was wrong (feel free to love/hate me for that) but people need to hear both sides before jumping to conclusions.
Someone, I'm not naming who or when this was, said that they liked Hitler because he killed hundreds of thousands of Jews JUST because they were Jews. That, again is a narrow minded and almost immature reason to go off liking someone. When I asked the person concerned if they had ever met a Jew, they responded with a "No. I'm sorry." Topics like this should be discussed more freely so people get the fuller picture.

"If you follow the media around believing every word they say, then YOU ARE BLIND."

:)

Anonymous said...

You spoke well..

Anonymous said...

You were the best speaker.>..mmore convincing than the others. You deserved the most points.