DEBATES @ SOTA
​
An artwork may not necessarily make sense to an onlooking debater.
But when observing a debate, the Artist cannot help but slowly realise that debating is very much based on the same principles that empower Art.
As debating artists, Team SOTA strives to explore this unique relationship between both worlds - the Arts and Debates. We believe that the many links between both are what allow us to work in conjunction to nurture our journey as Artists.
The critical cultivation of thoughts, creative expression and the principles of intellectual development form the foundational basis of both the Arts and Debates.
We hope to gain the best of both worlds and be able to share our experiences with those around us, promoting an even more advantageous environment for creative exploration by the Artists in SOTA.
​
​
​
“I have said this before and I will say it again— perhaps debate is nothing but a saturated space where intellectual friction, in its sharpest edges, in its fighting cruelty and humbling learning, in its zealous spirit, is permitted and even promoted. For once, it is okay to have a sharp tongue in this quiet society. I've said this again and again, but the fire from cleaving minds and the knives of intellectual friction will only sharpen me, if we engage and take and give. This complex and dynamic tension founded not on the floor, but in the one hour of anxious and focused preparation before it.
And: what does debate mean to me in the context of this arts school? I suppose, having been one of the pioneer debaters, it is to me an emergence, a new and beating pulse. I remember I was in the art studio when I got wind of a cluster of people meeting in a Year 3 classroom after school to debate. It was then and there that I met new faces — faces that would grow to be some of my closer friends, people I would spend years practicing with. The weeks that followed were our unanimous tumbling, fumbling, falling and rising in laughter and earnest spirit. We could not help it — it was all so funny, our lack of experience and our first attempts at taking ourselves in the position of a speaker seriously. I look back on those days as a golden time of growth. Motions googled online on marijuana and prostitution, reading awful speeches from questionable sources. That was weeks before we found guidance under a coach through the relentless support of Ms Rosie Leong, and a month and a half before we stepped foot in our first competition, where we would hear people ask what on earth an arts school was doing here in a debate. That was a week or two before we sat in the proposition table of the finals of another competition, emerging runners-up to a far more experienced team and learning so much. And that was months before we stepped into the semi-finals of the national secondary school debating tournament. Which was months before we hosted the international World Schools Debating Championships in our arts school. Which was, again, months before we started training our new juniors, and months before we organized and ran the first interclass debate tournament for our Year Ones and Twos. And that was months before I stepped down from the pioneering Executive Committee of SOTA Debates; months before our first handover to a new and promising EXCO. All this is what debate is to me, in this small arts school in the middle of the city: an earnest emergence, a new foot forward, and a sharper mind onward, always.”
​
-Nicole
​
​
"Mainly, debate encourages us to be more aware of current affairs and general knowledge as a whole as we are required to debate on many different issues or policies. This in a way, makes reading up on current affairs mandatory in order to fare well in the debates. Also, debating in SOTA enhances our ability to think on the spot and come up with logical and convincing answers, especially when we rebut or argue on our own points. As a whole, debating in SOTA is a huge benefit to our abilities to enunciate our ideas, communicate confidently and reasonably, which is important in our individual lives outside of debate."
​
-A SOTA student