Gisborne Boys’ High School has a proud tradition of producing exceptional speakers in the spheres of Debating and Oratory. This was proven, beyond doubt, this year when we won the Super 8 Debating title and Jacob Brown was placed second for Oratory in the same competition. This is a prestigious competition involving the top 8 secondary boys’ schools in our region.
We compete in a number of local events including Race Unity, RSA Speech competitions, book week debates and inter-schools debating.
Additionally, a staff vs. student debate was held with the moot being ‘That rugby is the greatest game of all’. Needless to say the staff won although next year we can expect some tough competition.
All students are encouraged to become involved in the discipline and with strong senior role models; juniors have a positive grounding in the basics of both debating and oratory.
Super 8 Cultural Festival 2009
The Cultural Super 8 Festival, held in May in a somewhat rainy and smelly Rotorua, placed our debaters into their school library that ain’t got nothing’ on ours. Firstly, we faced a strong Rotorua 2nds team, missing their star member and influential captain, Ngarangi Stewart-Hill, from 2008’s clash. Upon questioning the Rotorua coach of his vacancy, she informed us that he did not make the cut for this year’s Rotorua 2nds debate team, which led us to the conclusion that they were going to be extremely difficult to prevail against. Negating the moot “Intolerance is more dangerous than ignorance” was going to be problematic, to say the least. After the careful exchange of many intellectual words and such, each speaker’s five minutes was up and the judge was left with the responsibility of deliberation. The end result - a triumphant victory for GBHS, who were then assigned 30 minutes of planning and writing time for the impromptu debate final against old foes Napier Boys’ High School. The moot was “It is better to travel than to arrive”, GBHS picking up the affirmative side. After an intense battle of words, and a geography lesson from three mathematically superior ruffians, informing us that Mt Everest, [in an Indian accent] “Vot [What] can only be described as a wery [very] dall [tall] moundin [mountain]”. One of the other members also enlightened us with stories of their month-long trips to destinations around the globe that we could only ever explore through Google Street View. Contrary to audience expectations, as well as our own, we emerged the victors and caused major losses at TABs worldwide. To this day, we still cannot comprehend how the wily old fox of a judge chose our argument, or rather lack of it, over our pompous counterparts.