Africa-Press – Uganda. The adjudicators under the Debate Academy Uganda have asked the Ministry of Education and Sports to make debate a compulsory co-curriculum activity in schools in the revised new curriculum.
Ms Belinda Amanya, the academy’s programmes coordinator Northern Uganda, who also doubles as national deputy chief adjudicator of Uganda Students Association’s debate competitions, said the government should make debates more significant right from primary schools in order to curb the increasing number of incompetence among children.
“Each school should be practicing these debates because they are helping the students. What is the use of having students who cannot present themselves at the end of the day when they move out of the classrooms?” Ms Amanya said in an interview with this publication on Wednesday.
She added, “Debate has many benefits with students being awake and alert in mind, being able to think on their own and have responses to critically analyse the situations and also being confident.”
She noted that many schools in the country are still using traditional debate format which she said does not allow learners to articulate motions and analyse views very well.
“Debate over time has taken a trend and different kinds of format have come out to help the students to be more engaging and to think deeper on different problems that are in societies which are always addressed in these motions,” she added.
She further said that formats such as the world school debate, Karl Popper as well as the British parliamentary debate which is basically done at university level, help students to have an in-depth understanding of the motion
“The students have not been helped to understand debaters’ debate because they are used to give the high number of points yet chronologically when we think, analyze and weigh these points, they do not make sense or solve the problems,” she said.
Hindrances
Ms Amanya urged teachers to stop writing scripts for students but rather empower them to be able to work on their own as well as present and understand issues in their own understanding.
“Teachers write scripts for students. So someone comes and reads for you a script and you realise that if you isolate this child without that script, he/she is unable to think and give those ideas they were giving on the floor,” she said.
Ms Amanya said that teachers also need to be trained and equipped with new formats of debates.
“Even when they are writing these arguments, you look at teachers’ arguments that have been written and you feel that it is still lacking to a certain extent. Although it is from the teacher, it also needs to be re-sharpened and reformed,” she argued.
Ms Amanya also urged the government to support debate associations and academies to revamp debates.
“It becomes difficult when your work is not paid well. In most cases you give in effort and do the judging and training but sometimes the pay is not worth it,” she said, adding that; “We have written curriculums for public speech, debating and drawing guidelines that can help students to specialise and be better at debate, however, we need finances to publish these books and manuals so that they can reach to all schools in Uganda because what we are doing is not only benefiting us but every student.”
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