You are representing your school at an inter-school debating competition. The motion is: ‘The policy of reporting students’ class position should be abolished’. Write a debate speech arguing for OR against the motions.
Good morning principal, teachers and fellow students.
Today our motion is ‘The policy of reporting students’ class position should be abolished.’ Our side strongly support the motion for many good reasons.
First of all, the practice of reporting students’ class position pose stress to highflyers. As the class position is revealed, parents and teachers tend to have great expectations for the high achievers. Once their ranks drop, they are often censured by their parents and teachers despite the effort they have paid in revision. This pressure from others may lead to their nervousness before exams. Students will be more worried about performing poorly in the exam or to fall behind in the class ranking. Driven by such policy, some high achievers might focus solely on their studies to live up to the expectations. More seriously, it may lead to anxiety and other psychiatric illnesses. Therefore, we agree that the practice of reporting students’ class position should be banned.
Second, reporting students’ class position discourage low achievers from working hard in their studies. When these students see that they rank last, they will be disappointed and upset. One possible reason may be that they may have tried hard but they still cannot get good results. Another possibility is that they would feel as if they have been labelled as ‘inferior’ and ‘incapable’. They might even be scolded by their parents for their low ranks even though they have made small progress in their learning. Impacted by such policy, students will lose confidence in their learning or even develop hatred towards learning. In contrast, if students’ class position was not unveiled, students would have the opportunity to focus merely on their own learning progress instead of being distracted by the others’ performances or comments. This facilitates and encourages students to do reflection on their performances and fuels their interests in learning. Therefore, it is significant to stop reporting students’ class position.
Third, the competition between students become more intense with class position being unveiled. Since class position is disclosed, students inevitably fall into the traps of comparing oneself against others. It can possibly turn into topics for gossiping and rumours while encouraging unhealthy competition among peers.
No doubt, our opponents will say that competition is in certain ways an incentive for students to strive for excellence. However, let us not forget that the cons of reporting class position far outweigh the pros. The labelling effect would devastate the confidence of most students. If class position is disclosed, many students will be drawn to compare themselves with others and believe they are inferior to others. Even worse, as it is not possible for them to leap from ranking the last to ranking the first over a night, they experience the same powerlessness again and again and the disclosure of class position reinforces their sense of inferiority and eventually lead them to give up their studies. As the old saying goes, ‘Rome is not built in one day’. To give low achievers the opportunities they deserve and to encourage learning to all students, schools should never report the class position of their students.
To sum up, for the above reasons, we are in favor of the motion that ‘the policy of reporting students’ class position should be abolished.’ I hope you will agree with me and will vote for the motion.
