Encouraging children especially teenagers to learn and polish their debating skills has become one of the 21st century skillset tick boxes

Within the country’s most progressive schools and colleges, debate is emerging as a popular co-curricular activity to develop children’s reasoning, argumentative, persuasive, conflict resolution and leadership skills. For millennial parents who value the skills of communication and leadership, encouraging children especially teenagers to learn and polish their debating skills has become one of the 21st century skillset tick boxes.

There’s no dearth of research studies highlighting the academic, cognitive and skilling benefits of debate. According to a recent research study conducted by the University of Bedfordshire, UK, and the English-Speaking Union, learning to debate can improve children’s SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores by six-19 percent in all subjects. Moreover, teachers of secondary school students who participated in the London Debate Challenge reported that competitive debates helped “develop students’ skills in gathering evidence and structuring and summing up arguments, with considerable ‘knock-on’ benefits for their written work”.

Aarav Sridharan, a class X student of the Shiv Nadar School, Gurgaon, who won the Best Speaker Award in the prestigious JTM Gibson Debate held recently at the top-ranked Mayo College, Ajmer, says participating in debates has hugely boosted his self-confidence and developed his “research, presentation and critical thinking skills”. “In an increasingly complex and competitive world, communication, presentation and critical thinking skills are more valued than exam scores which merely display ability to memorise and learn by rote. Participating in debates has improved my communication, research, thinking, presentation and most importantly persuasion skills,” says Sridharan.

Sridharan advances 10 reasons why adolescents need to be encouraged to develop debating skills:

• It teaches children to polish their speech and language to become more focused, clear and precise.
• It instills a sense of discipline and order, encouraging them to organise their ideas logically and succinctly for maximum effectiveness.
• Debating encourages the reading habit and research skills, enabling acquisition of new knowledge.
• It increases self-confidence and self-esteem.
• All professions require excellent communication, presentation and persuasion skills. Debating empowers children with these skills.
• It encourages children to become outgoing, sociable and develop into well-rounded individuals.
• It improves students’ academic scores, increases student engagement with classroom subjects, and enhances participants’ cultural awareness and aspirations for higher education.
• Debating also opens up opportunities for careers in mass communication, journalism, content writing, law and sales.
• In debate, opponents respect each other and make an earnest attempt to listen and understand contrary opinions. This teaches children to gracefully accept conflicting points of view and disagree politely.
• The ability to think critically, analyse, articulate, justify and defend personal points of view will prepare children to manage contrary opinions in all spheres of life and resolve them effectively.

(Dr. Mazher Ali is a well-known Hyderabad-based psychiatrist with over 24 years of clinical practice)