Fort Street’s Year 8 PDC Debate Team prove that a setback is just a comeback waiting to happen!

On Friday the 12th of August 2022, the Year 8 Fort Street PDC Team debated against Newtown Performing Arts High School in their third debate round for the Premier’s Debating Challenge. Since they were previously defeated by Sydney Boys, this round was a repechage and a final chance to qualify for the Knockout Round in Term 4.

Without thinking too much about what was at stake, Chinmay Dixit, Aaditya Venkatraman, Henry Huang and Bhavnish Jain arrived at school bright and early at 8am to start their debate preparation, with the intention of doing the best they can!

The topic for this round was Sport and we were challenged to argue against the point “that we should ban all fighting sports like boxing and martial arts”.

The team put up a great debate. Aiden Sen chaired and kept time on the debate. Chinmay, as our first speaker, presented some excellent points about the importance of boxing and martial arts as a sport in a variety of cultures.

Aaditya then presented a very succinct but poignant argument about how violent sports are very well moderated for both the player and the viewer and Henry backed up those points by talking about how violence exists in other aspects of entertainment but that does not necessarily lead to people becoming violent themselves.

Their collective effort led to the adjudicator quite convincingly declaring our team the winner thus securing our sport in the Year 8 division for the Knockout PDC debate in term 4!

Ms. Truong

Debating and Public Speaking Coordinator