In 1978, the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) organised the Inter-School Debate held in Mandarin. At that time, I was a member of Dunman Government Chinese Middle School’s (now Dunman High School) Chinese debate society. After several rounds of training in school, the teachers-in-charge of the debate society, Loh Quee Yah and Ling Han Chuang, chose Lin Yongxin, Su Yuehua, Bao Deming and me to represent the school for the competition.

In the preliminary rounds, we were mainly judged for our debating skills. The four of us were divided into the proposition and the opposition teams. As soon as we received the motion for the debate, we spent about 10 minutes preparing our speeches before sparring with one another. In the end, the four of us and seven other teams advanced to the quarter-finals.

Selection and preparation

In the run-up to the quarter-finals, the teacher leading our team went to the television station to draw lots to decide whether we would be for or against the motion. We were allowed to skip classes for a week to focus on training, with several other teachers guiding us in our preparations. The motion for our debate was: “Singapore does not need privately-run television stations”. We were for the motion while National Junior College was against it. We were given five days to prepare.

On the first day, we identified some key points based on the motion, before taking a bus to the then-Press Centre in Genting Lane to look for relevant newspaper articles to prepare for the debate. At that time, the information resource centre there was not very well organised and we went through hundreds of folders containing press articles, marking those we needed and had them photocopied for our records. We spent the entire day at the centre.

On the second and third day, we focused on speed and critical thinking. We had to quickly scan through the materials gathered the day before, and think about how to rationally structure our arguments. In the process of interpreting the given motion, we were deeply impressed by the sound logic and strong command of the Chinese language of our guiding teachers. The four of us then organised our speeches to make sure that they flow logically and build on one another. Once we were done, we submitted our scripts to our lead teacher, who vetted them and came up with the first draft for discussion the following day.

On the morning of the fourth day, we received our lead teacher’s first draft and started practising. The other guiding teachers listened and provided pointers on how we could better express ourselves. We also discussed ideas and reasoning that the opposition team might present, and wrote down on cue cards possible counterarguments that we could use during the debate.

On the fifth and final day, another group of teachers and students were invited to listen to our debate. They also acted as debaters on the opposition team by refuting our arguments to sharpen our ability to think on our feet. This helped to raise our extempore performance to an optimal level. Finally, we came up with placards to be flashed during the debate for greater visual impact.

The semi-finals

On the evening of the debate, we arrived at SBC with hundreds of students and teachers as supporters. In the preliminary rounds, we debated the aforementioned motion: “Singapore does not need privately-run television stations” with National Junior College. We won and advanced to the semi-finals. In the semi-finals, we debated against the motion: “Traditional cultural values can only be inculcated through the mother tongue language”, with Tuan Mong High School for it. We lost, and thus ended our journey at the 1978 Inter-School Debate.

This experience I had in my younger days inspired me to study political science and later take up leadership positions in schools. While the debate happened many years ago, memories of our preparations remain fresh in my mind, and I still get excited reminiscing about it. These memories are probably shared by those of us who were debaters back then.

Dunman Government Chinese Middle School’s team in the 1978 Inter-School Debate. The person in the front row, first on the right, is the author of this article. Courtesy of Foo Suan Fong.
The finals of the inter-school debate in 1978: Tuan Mong High School vs Nan Chiau Girls’ High School. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.
Inter-School Debate 1978