As a man thinketh

The recent live debate between the Opposition De Facto leader and the Information Minister last night shows that we’re clearly hungry for debates and welcome it with open arms.

People are naturally thinkers; with a billion thoughts running through the neurons of our grey matters. This is what differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. And perhaps, this is why we are already famous for turning the local ‘mamak’ stall into our choice of debate hall on various issues.

If yesterday we lament the way we think our graduates are churning our memorized answers (the ‘skema jawapan mentality’) in exams, today we know we are looking for answers, not afraid to question policies thrown down at us and accept decisions with blind faith.

It is a great move toward what our friend the Australian Prime Minister calls ‘a vibrant democracy’. With that in mind, we also acknowledge the glaring power of the media to disseminate information and even influence the way the masses think.

This brings to mind the nationwide spelling bee competition that is televised on a local channel. It is interesting to see our students spell out words that even I would struggle to get right.

And while we can certainly go ‘ooohh!’ over watching students get tough words right, it would also be interesting to watch our students’ debate. I remember a debate competition I watched that was organized by the International School of Kuala Lumpur. The two finalist schools were debating in the style adopted by the US. That is – debaters were asked questions by the public or opposition after their prepared speech. The debaters must answer on the spot.

It was obvious one needed more than a well-researched and prepared speech to survive such a debate. Clearly, it also encouraged independent thinking and placed a great emphasis on knowledge.

The finalists were merely high school students, 17 years of age. And of course, the eventual winners were from the international school itself, possibly from having groomed their students to be thinkers from day one.

The question is, if we can televise a spelling bee competition, then we can certainly televise debates. Better still if the debates were by our university students (thus future Dewan Rakyat MPs) or even NGOS, political parties, lobbyist etc (in which the possibly higher viewership will bring in sponsors or advertisers).

The audience, of course, stand to gain the most from this. Issues such as development of World Heritage Sites be discussed in public and not relegated to the obscure parts of a newspaper. Along the lines, we may see the quality of debates in Parliament increase from the already fascinating yet sometimes hilarious level that we currently enjoy.

But hey, the world doesn’t have to revolve around politics. We want more people to be able to display the composure and rhetorics of the speakers last night. So, why not make debates more common?