After the huge success of our English intensive course at the Debating Contest at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium in Koenigs-Wusterhausen, we happily received the message of a second chance to compete with other schools in Berlin and Brandenburg. This year’s host was the Leibniz-Gymnasium in Kreuzberg. Mrs. Herrmann signed us up and we were looking forward to January the 27th , 2010.
Shortly before Christmas we received the topics which are open to debate.

Here they are:
1. THB University fees should be abolished. (We <-- Pro|Con --> Beethoven)
2. THB “the West” is hypocritical in its approach to human rights. (Leibniz <-- Pro|Con -->We)
3. fun round (We <-- Pro|Con --> Kyritz)  (topic was published 30 minutes before the debate :
  THB dogs should be abandoned out of big cities)

Unfortunately in the New Year a basketball tournament took place on the same day as the Debating Contest, so only a hard core of 3 people, Moritz H., Emil H. and me, participated in all three debates.

1/27/2010. With us there were approximately 200 other pupils, among them about 25 other debaters in the foyer of the Leibniz Gymnasium. Marc Scott (language assistant), Mrs. Herrmann and Mr. König (both have been teaching our “Leistungskurs”) came to support us and as members of the jury for the debates of other schools. Shortly after a quick welcome speech the debates were opened.

You can imagine a debate as a well organized discussion. (Rules may differ a bit, these were ours) Every house is represented by 3 speakers. Each speaker has 6 minutes to present the main speech. During this speech the opponents are allowed to yield Points of Information, but not in the first and last minute. This is the so called “Protected time”. Finally an initially elected one can present a reply speech with a length of about 3 minutes in which weak points of the opponents should be revealed and the jury convinced.

After 3 rounds (and about 5 hours later) we finished. Each of us received a certificate and we were done.

Overall it was again a lot of fun and since we will be leaving school this year, we would be happy to hear from other pupils that they have taken part in debating contests as enthusiastically as we did.

Tobias Ebbing, Schüler des Beruflichen Gymnasiums
19.02.2010