After a great deal of building anticipation I have finally seen a Tanzanian Secondary School Debate. Other volunteers across the country have told me stories about how these debates proceed, and so I was not entirely surprised about what awaited me, given especially my intimate knowledge of the English ability of my students. I was, however, surprised that a debate was taking place, as nobody thought to tell me that there would be a debate in the afternoon.
After discovering that the debate had been organized by the Academic Prefects at my school, I was excited to see what Tanzanian debate was all about for myself. All the students carried their chairs into our assembly hall, and the proceedings began. The hall was packed, and I could hardly imagine what it would have been like if all Forms were present. Typically, debates are held between Form IV and III, but since Form IV had already graduated, Form III students faced off against Form II students (with some help from Form I). As I am currently teaching both Form III and Form II, I have a fairly intimate knowledge of the level of English that both these Forms have. The best students in Form III are literally a year ahead of the best students in Form II, but sometimes it seems like they are even further than that. My strongest Form III students can write decent essays, given their level of English, though they have a lot of trouble providing evidence to support their points. My strongest Form II students still struggle to construct sentences (though, to be honest this applies to my Form III students as well), and their vocabulary level is pretty low. Also, almost universally, Tanzanian students have a volume problem, meaning that they have difficulty speaking loudly. I frequently have to tell them to talk louder.
So, given that my Form III students have a lot of difficultly answering the question “why?” and that my Form II students can almost never answer “why?” I did not have particularly high expectations for the quality of the debate, especially since the Form III students were taking on the Form II students, and they had not received any help from teachers. The topic for the the debate was “Globalization has caused more harm than good,” and Form III was the proposing side (what Americans would call the affirmative). Form II, given the clearly apparent skill level differential was the opposing (what Americans would call the negative). So, not only did they have far less English ability, but they were also stuck with the more difficult side of the debate, in a situation where none of the students are able to properly do research as they would in an American-style debate. Basically, they had no chance.
The debate began, and the affirmative (I am going to use American terminology because I am more familiar with it) listed their first main arguments. Even though I was right next to the stage the only one I was able to catch (because of the low volume level, and the noise in the hall) was that globalization was the “ultimate of evils.” I suspect there was little evidence to support this contention, and there was definitely no warrant. The rest of the debate proceeded like this. The speakers would offer up some ideas, but fail to appropriately connect them to the topic of globalization, or provide any substantial evidence. Not once did a students have a discussion about the other sides’ contentions. Evidence is difficult in the Tanzanian setting, as the resources the students have to draw on are very limited, but it is possible to argue about the points – it’s just not something the students know how to do. For instance, a point the negative made was that globalization has allowed women across the world to have rights. That was it. So, as the affirmative it would be easy to respond and say not only that rights are a construction of the globalized West, imposing their views on the rest of the world, but also that while women may have more legal rights, in fact their lives are worse off a result of globalization. Of course, it would have been difficult to provide actual evidence to this point, but then at least there would have been a back and forth, to which the negative could have responded that actually no, the lives of women have gotten better, and given the example that more women are able to get education than ever before. Additionally, given the definition that was provided of globalization, many of the affirmative’s points could have been refuted by the negative by simply identifying globalization as a process that began over 1,000 years ago.
Obviously all this is a little beyond the English level of my students, but if the importance of evidence was emphasized in the debate it could have been much stronger, even without the resources that we typically use for evidence in America. On top of this, the audience was allowed to participate, and the Form IIIs would raise their hands and shout “Question!” as the Form II and Form I students tried to speak, making it even more difficult for them to say anything at all. In the end Form III won with 32 points, while Form II/I had 18. I think each team was awarded a point anytime they came up with anything new to say, but I am not entirely sure on this.
At the end, I suggested that in the future they should split up the Forms, and emphasize the importance of evidence, which I said I would help them with. I guess that makes me the new debate coach, which is good because they need some assistance, and there is a lot of potential for progress, given that everyone seems to love debate (or at least their version of it).