Ah, I remember the good ol’ days when my parents would tell me not to argue with my sister. Back then, arguments to me were more about who could yell, “no, I’m right!” louder than the other person. Nowadays, arguments have a completely different meaning and importance for me. Arguments are what allow you to voice your opinions and worldviews to other people. They show what kind of person you are and they portray where you position yourself with different topics. More importantly, arguments can ignite change. They can bring opposing forces against one another to see which one comes out stronger. Whether or not these sides might be right, change is still brought from arguments.
But “argument” might not be the best word. There are a lot of similar events that can bring two different opinions to one another. For example, debates can really apply to the first point that I brought up earlier. Debates allow you to fight for what you think is right in a peaceful manner. Ongoing problems or disagreements can be solved (sometimes) with debates and they’re what separates us from any other animals on Earth. With that in mind, it’s an important skill to learn and what better time is there than to learn it than now? To go with our debating, we started a Lord of the Flies unit in class to learn more about human nature. To go along with that, we would also be put in groups where we would debate against other groups on mysterious subjects which none of us knew at the time. So without further delay, I’ll just get right into it.
ASSIGNMENTS:
This was a big unit though. We weren’t just going to get away with a project and reading a book. There was more learning to do! So we started off by making groups of around four people. The thing is, the groups would be decided by the whole class without the teacher’s supervision. So we got started and things were hectic. All the groups were empty at the time and everyone was yelling out possible groups to the crowd. I started by putting myself in a group and encouraging others to join each empty group. We then started having order and we picked people that we thought we could work well with as well as making it a boy-girl rotation for choices. Afterwards, the groups were arranged according to how everyone wanted them and eventually, we had our groups. I ended up being with Claire, Hannah, and Aiden. Check out this page if you want to see a deeper analysis of the whole exercise!
These were the groups we’d be with for the rest of the unit which meant we’d be debating together and we’d be reading our book together. To make sure everyone was doing what they needed to do (showing up on time, handing in homework, etc), a point system was put in place to reward the people who did what they needed to do and to penalize those who didn’t. There were a lot of exercises that we’d be doing throughout the unit that could get us points as well as simply learning more about debating, politics, and human nature.
For example, we’d commonly be tested as a group on our knowledge of the book. Unfortunately, I had a concussion and missed all of them but I know my group did great because they were all very inclined to have the most points in the class.
We also focused on the symbols and character dynamics that went into Lord of the Flies as it was chock-full of both of those. For example, we answered questions that were given to us which asked us about the meaning of several items and moments in the book as well as the meaning for some of the main characters and what they represented. You can look at that here.
Another thing we did to help us with that was a character chart that focused on all the main characters, what they meant to the story, what they were like, and key moments in the story that affected them as characters. This helped a lot with picking up more hidden symbols in the book as we were completing this as we did the book and it kept us sharp when going through the chapters. Check it out!
At the same time, we started practicing our ability to formulate arguments on the spot in order to help us with our mystery debate. It started off simple like playing Four Corners where we were given a controversial topic and we got to decide whether we: completely disagreed, somewhat disagreed, agreed, or completely agreed. This was really fun as we got to see where everyone was in the class when it came to our beliefs, but it also forced us to figure out where we positioned ourselves on the topic as well as being able to fight for our beliefs. It was very on-the-spot too, I should say. We then got a little more advance with activities such as Pass the Buck where one person from our group would be pulled aside and given a topic. They would then come to the group with an argument on the topic and everyone would go around trying to support the argument on the spot. For example, one of the topics was gum, and being the one that had to start the argument, I said that it isn’t good to chew it (for a few reasons). My group then had to help support that argument which was difficult because we all like to chew gum, which is why I chose to go against it.
We also looked at politics and what goes into the dynamics of the political world. We did exercises such as looking at different kinds of political structures, and trying to figure out what they are and why they work/don’t work. None of them were too difficult to understand and it gave us a better idea of how different kinds of order lead to different results with people. (Sorry for the terrible quality, it’s a pretty tall picture)
We also did a quick questionnaire to see where we all are on the political spectrum which ranged from very left-wing to very right-wing. I ended up being pretty much in the middle but more as a liberal as my test results leaned just a smidge more towards the the left-wing side.
Eventually, we moved on to impromptu speeches which I wasn’t there for because of my concussion. I would completely think that this would have been the most difficult but useful exercise as it forces you to be able to take in information which you then have to expand upon in front of a lot of people. We also started to look at podcasts which dealt with debates. The channel we focused on was a debate network called Intelligence^2. We were told to listen to a few in order to get a better feel about how our debate’s layout would look like along with how we should go about planning our debate.
But how could we plan for a debate on which we didn’t know the concepts on which we would be talking about? Well, we couldn’t, so we finally got to see the different concepts on which we’d possibly be talking about:
-Power and Authority
-Humanity and Inhumanity
Violence and Destruction
-Human nature
-Civilization and Savagery
-Individualism and Community
Before any groups were assigned to a certain concept, we all filled out empty pieces of paper for each concept. We filled in the pages based on what we thought went along with each subject. So on a page like Human Nature, people could put on heroic people were in WWII, how we all feel the need to survive, or asking if people are truly selfless.
To go along with that, everyone would be writing two “concept journals” in which we got to pick one concept for each journal and come up with an inquiry question on which we’d talk about as well as backing it up with evidence from our book and/or the things we learned throughout the year. I was instantly drawn to Human Nature and interestingly enough, the thing that drew me to that concept was the question that someone left down: Is anyone ever truly selfless? With that, I came up with a whole argument based on that question for which I mainly backed up with what I knew from Lord of the Flies. Check it out!
As I was concussed right after that, I ended up being exempt from the second paragraph which I’m not too upset about as I really felt inspired by the Human Nature concept over any other concept. My group all felt the same way about the topic and we were lucky enough to get it for our debate. Prior to the concepts being assigned to different groups though, everyone left possible debate statements that could be the basis of the different debates. Our debate statement ended up being, “be it resolved that it is human nature to put yourself above others.” Mimi’s group ended up being our opposition and it consisted of her, Kyle, Ethan, and Parker. We all wanted the fight FOR that statement so a coin was flipped and they ended up getting to fight FOR the statement while we would be fighting AGAINST it.
We were a little thrown off at first as we felt we were really going to be fighting an uphill battle. That was why we were all the more motivated to make very strong and structured arguments. It helped us to make a table with all the different humanities units we’ve done this years and to include examples that would help prove our point from each unit. Once we had a good compilation of examples, we were ready to start structuring our arguments. I was in charge of the layout for what we’d be talking about and possible times to say it. I made a point of only making quick bullet points for the layout in order for our arguments to:
- Not sound scripted
- So we could remain flexible during the whole debate
This meant that we REALLY needed to know what we were talking about and to have our facts on lockdown. This proved very useful as it allowed for us to come up with new arguments on the spot when the opposition talked about areas we were knowledgeable in. For example, we felt stronger in examples from WWII and the other group felt stronger with the book but in the end, I wish we talked a lot more about WWII.
So the debate came and we were pretty much ready. All of our debates would be recorded in order to make a podcast of them. If you want to listen to our, you can find it below…
Otherwise, here’s a quick recap of our debate. So things went a lot better than we had anticipated. We were all a little nervous beforehand but our fears went away as soon as we had to speak. We had all done a lot of work in remembering our arguments and knowing when to use them which proved very helpful during the debate as we really didn’t need to have a strict format for how and when we should be saying certain points. It also helped us think on our feet as the opposing team did a great job of catching us off guard from time-to-time. Generally, I was the first to speak as sometimes none of us had an instantaneous idea and I just trusted that I could improvise long enough for someone in my group to jump in. This happened EVERY time and although we sometimes didn’t have the strongest rebuttals, we managed to communicate our ideas very clearly and were able to bring the opposing groups arguments back to ours. There was a lot of silent communication going on between us as well and everyone was constantly busy listening or coming up with new ideas. In the end, it was a pretty close score of 12-8 votes (in our favour) in the class. Although I wanted to win, I was more happy that I was able to trust in my abilities to listen and to come up with quick responses that could help shift the audience in our favour as well as trying to throw off the other group. I’m very proud of our group and in the end, everyone did a great job and Mimi’s group was definitely a force to be reckoned with.
So where does that leave me? Well, on top of all the skills I mentioned, there are two I really want to highlight as they were skills I struggled with for a long time and I feel like I really grew those two skills within the project. The first skill is the ability to listen. I generally have a hard time with listening as I’m always in my head, planning what I should say, how I should say it, and what the responses could be. Although it’s good to do that, it‘s important that those things are just in the background of your head as the most important thing to do is to listen. By listening, you are able to fully understand what someone is saying to you. You are able to catch the small details and points that they are throwing at you and it makes it so that you are simply able to reciprocate via your beliefs. I found that I did that a lot during the debate and I was more focused on listening than planning what we should say next.
Secondly, I learned how to trust myself. This came hand-in-hand with listening as the lack of preparations I’m making before it’s my turn to speak means I have less time to come up with a solid argument. That’s where my ability to trust myself comes in as throughout the debate, I was confident enough where I could trust my ability to be able to formulate a strong response based on the knowledge I know as I just need to understand what the other people said in order to come up with a response. This REALLY helped me as it meant I had a better understanding for what Mimi’s group was saying to us as well as helping me feel less stressed about the fact that I’m not planning something ahead of time.
So I just want to end off that this was probably one of the most valuable units for me throughout this school year. It forced me to push new skills onto myself in order to succeed and I had to learn and sometimes fail in order to become better. Even in the podcast, you can see me stumble from time to time as I am not a master of the skills I mentioned. They’re new to me! I’m very happy that I was able to prove to myself that I am capable of learning new things and being able to take on challenges and if nothing else, to be able to trust myself and my abilities when I’m put in tough situations. Thanks for tuning in to my last humanities post of the year!
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