Debating can change your life: Lucinda David at TEDxLundUniversity

I'm here to convince you to start debating which some of you might find strange I mean it's not a new idea and it has spread but that's part of the problem debating is a word that is endowed with a social stamp of approval an affirmation of sorts that when you engage in it you are engaging in something rigorous thoughtful and there I say intellectually challenging so the parameters of what debating is has been negotiated twisted and compromised so today debates are two politicians talking past each other or a group of panelists taking turns are agreeing with one another there are so many debates and arguments online where people settle for FTW or hashtag insert mean comment about your mother we have got to take back debating and reclaim public discourse because if our lives our thoughts and our values are to be socially constructed then let it at least be constructed with meaning but in order to do this we have got to think about debates differently we have to be able to risk conflict and confrontation we want to be able to imagine a different type of world and be able to say it so this will mean you listening to new ideas even if they fly in the face of your own convictions but so what is a good debate well it requires engagement and consensus yes but first it needs adversaries you are expected to attack your opponent but you are compelled take a position to defend it requires you to deconstruct arguments but you also need to build up ideas in debating you must absolutely draw lines between you and your opponent but in the end you must cross it to shake hands the reason why debating is combative temporarily it's because you need to test an idea or a social policy in order to make sure it is stout and sturdy enough for public interest it's sort of like a thought experiment wherein you allow your most fiercely clever thoughts bear down upon an idea with fire and brimstone to see what's left these things I learned by being a member of the debating community unbeknownst to most of you probably there is a worldwide community breathing new life into debating developing it and helping it evolve these are made up of University and school students who with their volunteerism and dedication and concerted efforts in hosting tournaments they are creating hot beds of intellectual discourse across different continents can only imagine and one of which was the world University's debating championships which I was a part of and the thing is when you're part of this community you learn many different things so I'm actually from our luck it's very small city in the Philippines and I began my debating career with delassalle University Manila although my parents would probably contest when I actually started I joined the club because I wanted to hear my own voice and I thought I had a lot of good things to say I didn't not back then anyway I joined international and national tournaments sometimes winning but mostly losing I will say though that in time those heartbreaks have not diminished my great experiences from traveling and competing abroad but anyway so what happens at these tournaments well you usually enter the tournament without knowing which topics will come out and you're only given 15 minutes of preparation until you have to debate aside you cannot choose so as you can imagine we had to be well-read on a diverse set of topics it was from immigration policy to could have been how Google monopolizes knowledge or celibacy in the Catholic Church it was many different things and it was really this training program that I found incredibly edifying to be sure being a university student is great fun but when you're part of debating you realize you are part of something bigger than yourself and because of it you feel alive and you feel present the world of ideas feel almost palpable the conflicts around the world are made more real to you because you have to actively think of how a policy affects people everyday learning cease to be an assignment but a pursuit reading cease to be a chore but a compass sort of like a dung beetle comm-pass ok anyone watching this video think I have really strange analogies if they hadn't seen the other talks but I should say that all those things it felt very much like how education should feel like I think when you're debating you really realize how it can transform you to be sure in the beginning we played the games of debating but eventually became something more as I started teaching debating to what would eventually be hundreds of people and still counting today I started noticing the transformative power of debating a painfully shy girl who would not meet anyone's eyes and could not finish a standard seven minute speech for two straight years eventually became the best speaker of our country a boy burdened by severe stuttering overcame his speech impediment with debating and spoke in one semifinal round as if he was speaking in tongues a self-proclaimed unremarkable young man gives one of the most exceptional graduation speeches I have ever seen a young homosexual finds courage in debating to defend his sexual orientation to come out to his religiously conservative family with debating you learn about the world around you its names its stories and those it has almost forgotten with a command of the spoken word you find the heart to stand up to be heard and with debating you can vanquish your personal demons and stand on the shoulders of giants there was one little girl who was bullied in the first grade her bully was a mean sixth grader who threatened to hurt her older sister with a pen if she didn't give her her lunch money every week of course she truly had no idea how difficult it was to hurt anyone with a pen but she was both petrified for her sister and deeply ashamed of herself so she gave her lunch money years later she realized that she was no longer afraid of her bully because of the bathing so if you're watching this I want you to know I want my lunch money back and I'm charging interest code by the size of our nemesis and the monsters in their heads sometimes we are rendered impotent with fear and indecision kids and us we sometimes have to go through life meek and voiceless because when you're taunted or humiliated or made to feel small in any way it's really hard to know what to say or how to react I've always found it strange how there's so many dimensions of our lives that are truly combative and adversarial and yet we're not really taught how to verbally defend ourselves this despite the fact that speaking up is by no means a natural ability this is why I think you should start debating debating gives people voices it helps people master the physical and mental parts of speaking so that when it's time to stick up for yourself you will know what to say how to say it and at the precise time you needed to say it instead of walking down the stairs filled with regret at having just thought of what you should have said all the reasons that I realized why debating was important it was clearest it was most clear in Mindanao this is an island in the south of the Philippines not all but parts of it are or have an armed rebellion fighting for independence from the national government and I was invited to give workshops there I visited the heavily militarized areas and I was accompanied by an equally heavily armed guard during the whole week and we had decided to hold an exhibition debate for the general public one evening and we had gathered a sizable audience and I was told that there were members of the junior wing of the armed militias from that area present in the audience and that they had come with their guns and sometimes during the debate there was a power outage something quite common in the Philippines in those years in the dimness I saw about six men striding seemingly furiously across the room towards me my heart started pounding and I remember I was holding my breath as one of them reached me and he said very quietly that he had almost forgotten how passionately you can fight for your beliefs with words instead of bullets and that they had come with their guns but they had left it at the door once they saw how did it progress I cried a little then two party from relief but mostly from feeling incredibly privileged at having been able to bear witness why debating matters even if it's just a bunch of words I'm not naive I know they probably didn't give up their guns that night but I'm not cynical either I think they walked off remembering there is another way one that is far more beautiful and inspiring than the piece of metal in their hands today I'm one of the founders of the lune debate Society a first in Luna and my friends back home they ask me why are you still doing this and grown-ups don't play with debate games anymore firstly I never claimed I was a grown-up secondly I have never considered debating something you put on your CV I believe and will probably all always do that debating is genuinely important and it needs to be taught and nurtured in places where the light needs to be lit debating is a life skill you endow people with and for those who embrace it by working hard in exchange they acquire a voice that's hard to silence that is how I'm trying to change the world but admittedly there's a dark side to debating those who emboldened by eloquence might use it to dominate and disparage others but in debating you must not be ruthless you must remember to be kind always so I implore you to debate but if and when you do you must make debating beautiful thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 100,949

Keywords: Global Issues, ted, tedx, TEDxLundUniversity, ted talks, Social Change, ted x, tedx talks, Sweden, English, tedx talk, Community, ted talk

Id: WJaMtU1P-3w

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2013