Bar­rack­pore West Sec­ondary School is the cham­pi­on of this year’s Dr Roodal Mooni­lal In­ter-Sec­ondary Schools’ De­bate Com­pe­ti­tion.

The win­ning team was an­nounced at the fi­nals on Tues­day at Achie­vors Ban­quet Hall in Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do.

The top­ic was: Where­as school vi­o­lence may be seen as a re­flec­tion of so­ci­etal ills and where­as schools may be the im­me­di­ate en­vi­ron­ment of school vi­o­lence, should the Gov­ern­ment be more re­spon­si­ble and more in­volved in deal­ing with cur­rent vi­o­lence in schools?

The fi­nal teams, Bar­rack­pore West and Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, put for­ward com­pelling and im­pres­sive ar­gu­ments, but the judges even­tu­al­ly award­ed Bar­rack­pore West the most points, push­ing Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege in­to sec­ond place.

Some eight school de­bate teams par­tic­i­pat­ed in the com­pe­ti­tion, which was held for the sec­ond year. Ad­dress­ing the de­baters, Mooni­lal said that it was im­por­tant for young peo­ple in the school sys­tem to be ex­posed to the art of de­bat­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing.

“We felt that the time was right giv­en all the crises we have in ed­u­ca­tion and chal­lenges fac­ing our young peo­ple to re-en­er­gise the arts and in­clude de­bat­ing that in­cludes dra­ma, pub­lic speak­ing, artis­tic dis­plays.”

He said de­bat­ing builds one’s con­fi­dence and self-es­teem and can be con­sid­ered a life skill. Mooni­lal al­so not­ed that sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing judges, en­gi­neers, and ac­coun­tants, were for­mi­da­ble de­baters in sec­ondary schools.