2022 Debate Champions Reflections Blog

Donald Dewar Memorial Debate champions 2022 Aimee Ross and Orla McMichael of Fortrose Academy share how their interest in debating started and how the skills of debate are setting them up for the future.

Last year we undertook quite a journey, to go all the way from the early rounds of the Donald Dewar Debate Tournament, competing virtually up in Fortrose, all the way to the final in-person at the Scottish Parliament.

The two of us, along with our enthusiastic supporters, visited Holyrood and debated with three other brilliant teams in the Main Chamber. The final round may have been where we showcased our debating on a bigger stage, but we and our teammates, Connor Atherton and Ruby McBride, truly honed our skills in the rounds prior.

The four of us were relatively new to debating last year and none of us had competed on any national scale before. We were, however, friends before joining our school’s club - friends who already enjoyed debating and discussing divisive topics with each other. The step to researching and writing speeches came quite naturally when we joined Fortrose’s debate club.

That is not to say that the Donald Dewar Memorial Debate Tournament was not challenging. Chatting with friends turned out to be very different to speaking in front of the Deputy Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, our chair for the Donald Dewar finale in June. The stages before were when we were pushed to articulate ourselves more elegantly and concisely; to be confident in our arguments and spot holes in others. Our research and writing skills have vastly improved, as have our spontaneous critical thinking skills. Debating has taught us not only to plan consistently in advance but to think on our feet, both highly valuable skills.

Our interests have similarly developed. We all concerned ourselves more readily with politics, national and international, and understand the importance of keeping up-to-date with other current events. Now, we each spend more time developing our own nuanced opinions from multiple sources, given our improved understanding of bias from our debating research.

In keeping with these new passions, two of us are looking to possible careers in politics, international relations, translation and law. For others in the team, debating has consolidated that they would prefer to follow scientific fields. Mostly, debating has allowed us more clarity and more choice. We have had the opportunity to enhance many of our skills, useful for our future studies and any career path, and to see what we liked about the process. It has helped us each to develop our future plans and we can all easily and honestly say that we would recommend debating to anyone.

Aimee and Orla took home the 2022 tournament trophy and £1000 for Fortrose Academy donated by the tournament sponsor Hodder Gibson.