On Friday 25th of May the first round of the Independent Schools Debating Association (ISDA) debating finals were held at Newington Senior Campus. Despite having to adapt to a new type of debating with only one hour to prepare and practise before the debate, both B and A teams qualified for finals. The B team were on the negative side with the topic Primary aged students should learn self-defence. They were up against Kincoppal, a school that had only lost once. After an extremely challenging debate the B team lost unfortunately being knocked out of the finals.

The A team had the same topic and were on the affirmative side debating Ascham. The Wyvern team were trying a widespread selection of our best tactics such as anecdotes, jokes, Jake even talked about the movie Karate Kid, but Ascham kept hammering down the point that we shouldn’t be teaching victims violence but rather teaching criminals the wrongs of violence. Not even 3 rebuttals and a quote from Winston Churchill was enough to really stop that point, and in the end, not even Finlay’s Two peanuts were walking down the street, one was a-salted joke, was not enough to convince the adjudicator and we faced a loss and were also knocked out of the finals.

Despite this I am still very proud of the way both teams debated, especially because of having to work with a new style of debating and am looking forward to next season.

Isaac Holmes 6B