Room for Debate?

Today was the "Yom Debate" organized by a fellow volunteer, which I mentioned briefly at the end of yesterday's post.  The students of S4 and S5 were split into teams of 2 or 3, and given last night to prepare topics controversial in Uganda--ranging from whether homosexuality should be legalized to whether teachers are more valuable than doctors.  Two teams would go up at a time, and they were assigned to the opposition or proposition right before the debate started--they had to prepare both sides--and then began the carefully timed debate, complete with questions from the audience.  The three judges scored each round, with one team winning and the teams with the highest scores competing in the championship, where they were given a new topic with 15 minutes to prepare it.
As an observer, and someone who has interacted with some of these kids in other settings, it was quite eye-opening to hear both their views and their methods of argument.  It was an exercise that does not seem to come naturally to students in an environment where abstract thought is never encouraged, but which some students still managed to embrace with an impressive level of proficiency.  While many, if not most arguments, were difficult to back up and easily contradicted in a setting where research is nearly impossible, the emphasis on thought and expressing persuasively was one that was unique to see at a secondary school.
A few observations:
--understanding the prompt--this was something that slowed us down in a lot in the beginning, when each side would end up arguing his opponent's position.  Luckily this issue only took a few rounds to overcome.
--homosexuality came up in many of the arguments (including those with no direct relation) as a harmful outcome of the conditions of the motion--I was introduced afresh to the common cultural attitude of Ugandans on this nationally controversial topic
--general misinformation was pretty common--for instance, that one cannot get AIDS from homosexual intercourse.
--western culture was a common go-to scapegoat--sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly.
--many more things, which I'll try to include tomorrow but am a bit too tired to get to tonight (a conversation of muzungus here went long and before we knew it it was past 1 in the morning).
I took copious notes on the debate arguments, and the window they provided into these kids thinking was was fascinating.  I'll be sure to mention more tomorrow.
Night!