Rotary in Great Britain & Ireland has been running a youth competition for many years now. This year it has been changed and rebranded as “Youth Speaks: A Debate”. Instead of a Chair, a Speaker and a Proposer of the Vote of Thanks we now have a Chair, a Proposer and an Opposer to a proposition chosen by the team. The teams are drawn from local secondary schools. The competition is divided into Intermediate and Senior age ranges.
We held the Chelmsford heats at Hylands School on the evening of Tuesday, 21 January 2020, Unfortunately we had two teams drop out at very short notice this year. A member of one team fell ill and a member of another team suffered a bereavement. That meant we only had three teams in total across the two age categories.
The titles the teams had chosen for their subjects did not necessarily give much of a guide to the issues they were actually going to address but we are used to that.
The first Intermediate team had as their topic “Where have all the bees gone?” The Proposer argued that we cannot survive without bees, that bees are dying in unprecedented numbers and that we need to do something about it urgently. The Opposer argued that we should instead spend the money on things with a higher priority, such as reforming the NHS.
The second Intermediate team addressed the question “Do filters affect the self-esteem of young people?” The filters they meant are those available on social media platforms to allow users to alter their appearances in photographs. The Proposer argued that they are harmful because they help promote false body images and make users dissatisfied with their real appearances. The Opposer argued that there is nothing wrong with being aspirational about our appearances.
The sole Senior team asked “Is higher education essential”, by which they meant “Is a university education essential?” The Proposer argued that a university education is not essential for everybody as there are plenty of other useful options people can pursue, such as apprenticeships. The Opposer reckoned that a university education is essential because we would not, for example, want to be treated by a doctor who was not properly qualified, and universities allow students to pursue at a high level subjects which interest them but do not necessarily lead to a definite career.
No votes were taken after the debates, so we don’t know whom in each team the audience found most persuasive. The adjudicators chose the Intermediate team that discussed filters, which came from Beaulieu Park School, as the winners of their category. The sole Senior team, which was from Hylands School, got an automatic bye to the next round.
The photograph shows the Mayor of Chelmsford with students from Beaulieu Park School.