On the weekend of May 7th and 8th three aspiring students made their way to the International School to participate in an international debating tournament. Twelve teams from Frankfurt and Berlin International Schools among others and a whole congregation from the Czech Republic representing their National Team of competitive debaters in several smaller teams had enrolled in the event.
All the schools are either boarding schools or private schools and often are part of the International Baccalaureate system so Muriel Olschewski, Anton Weinert and Ella Macheleidt did stand out a bit.
Debating essentially is arguing according to a set of rules about different viewpoints on one motion. For the first round they introduced an impromptu motion about introducing a 4-day-work-week which was lost to a future semifinalist team from Czech but hooked the team. They were hungry for more and eager to display what they had prepared for the second motion which had been dealt out 2 weeks prior to the tournament. Luck was not on their side though and they drew the other subsequent semifinalist team. It was a hard decision by the judges but ultimately they gave the victory by a very narrow margin to the opposing team. Partly frustrated, motivated and happy about the progress they would face a third team from Czech with another impromptu motion stating “it should be mandatory for students to go abroad for a year”. All the feedback and conscientious preparation finally paid off and they won by quite a few points which led the MCG Debating Team to finish on a strong 9th place. The best 4 teams advanced to the semifinals which were held on Sunday and resulted in the final Debate.
The courage and compassion that it takes to step up to the podium and deliver a suspenseful speech in front of a jury and an audience, to refute and rebut the opponents arguments meaningfully is only rivaled by the commitment of the three students. Especially when being in the middle of their Abiturprüfungen like Muriel and Anton. Muriel finished 14th among 40 Debaters, which is a cherry on top.
Competing against schools which are exclusively bilingual and have extraordinary funding for such activities the performance displayed by our students was simply amazing and they can be rightfully proud of that result.
The team enjoyed the Sunday observing the final debates, getting in contact with other students and simply cherishing the overall hospitality of the event.
There will be more tournaments to come and we look forward to seeing many more students taking up the challenge of becoming debaters.
