I took part in a debate today for the first time in 19 years. On the previous occasion I was in Apex. The time before that was four years earlier in high school.
The debate was part of a “Lifelong Learning Festival” in Mount Gambier. I was on the community team, arguing the negative to: Learning is more important today than it was in the past.
Our opponents were a lecturer and two students from the University of South Australia.
The good guys won (us). We trotted out the names of past intellectuals and challenged the opposition to say they were less important or less learned than today, such as Florence Nightingale, Aristotle and Hildegard of Bingen.
Hildegard was my inspired choice. I wanted a woman scientist and she was renowned in Germany during the 1100s.
I figured we could win the debate in one hit if the opposition didn’t know who she was, so I challenged them to explain what she was famous for. If they didn’t know, they were gone. If they did know, I would brush it off as showing the value of their education.
The students on their team had no idea, but the lecturer nailed it. Julie has a phD in nursing (front right), so it wasn’t a shock, I suppose.
She correctly said that Hildegard was famous for extolling the virtue of boiling water for sanitation. I was able to add that she was also the first western woman to write about the female orgasm, but the potential moment of triumph was lost.
I was more nervous than I expected. Twenty years is a long time between experiences (debates that is, not female orgasms).
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