TBSHS Students Speak Out

November always sees TBSHS students taking part in the Rotary Club’s local “Youth Speaks” competition. In the Senior contest, we fielded two teams, as did Bishop’s Stortford College and Herts & Essex, with St. Mary’s School entering one. Our Sixth Form team was drawn to speak fifth, addressing “Sinister Discrimination”. Chairing the presentation, India Purton (Year 13) took charge of the meeting immediately, speaking in a welcome but authoritative manner. She explained that as “sinister” is the Latin for “on the left side”, the topic referred to the difficulties faced by left-handed people. She also introduced the other two team members, entertaining the audience with amusing anecdotes about them and generally got the team off to a very good start.

After a powerful opening, Robert Gor (Year 12) told us how at least 10% of the population are born left-handed. In his opinion, most of the discrimination that they suffer is unintentional, but often expensive or even dangerous, as items such as fabric scissors or power tools designed for left-handers cost substantially more than those for ‘normal’ use. He finished with a rousing plea for left-handedness to be regarded as a legally protected characteristic under the Equality Act. Robert used no notes at all during his well-structured, informative six-minute speech, which he delivered with barely a stumble, a real tour de force.

 India, Robert & Catherine 

Proposing the Vote of Thanks, Catherine Clune revealed that she was aiming to defeat the school that she had represented last year. In an assured performance, Catherine rightly praised Robert for his research and the range of topics that he covered. In addition, she made an excellent job of commenting on his answer to a question from the audience regarding activities in which left-handers flourish and added a further example based on her experience as an accomplished cricketer.

The Sixth Form team was followed into the fray by the Year 10 TBSHS team with their “Teen’s Guide to the Future”, introduced by Chairman Sam Jurd. He welcomed the audience confidently, introducing main speaker Bede Pinches with warm praise, but was rather less complimentary to the third team member Thomas Leung. In his speech, Bede referred to past predictions and the coronavirus pandemic to remind the audience how unpredictable the future can be, before offering his views on the near future and his hopes for the world in five years’ time. When asked by a Rotary member whether he thought that the future was in the hands of the youth alone, or if older generations had an equal influence, Bede replied that, while the fate of humanity lies in the hands of us all, young people will be most affected by what we do. In his Vote of Thanks, Thomas remarked upon the very diplomatic nature of this response and applauded Bede’s thoughtful and wide-ranging speech. He added a few of his own interesting views about the future to round off a very pleasing team performance.

 Year 10 team  (L to R Sam, Thomas, Bede)

It was generally agreed that the overall standard of the teams was very high and that there was no obvious winner, so the judges faced a tricky discussion while the rest of us enjoyed the refreshments laid on by our hosts at Bishop’s Stortford College. Eventually the adjudicators returned and announced that a team from the College had finished a very close second, but the winners were the trio from the TBSHS Sixth Form. In the feedback afterwards, both our teams received congratulations for their teamwork, their intensive research and the quality of ideas that they introduced.

“Winners + judges”

The following week, the same four schools fought out the Intermediate contest at the College. This time our hosts only had one team, so just six teams were involved. The TBSHS Year 8 team, all in their first-ever interschool event, were unlucky to be drawn to speak first and, inevitably, a few nerves were evident. Nevertheless, Finlay Stewart was an engaging Chairman, revealing to the audience that the title of their presentation, “Furry Rebels” referred to cats. He produced some entertaining information about his teammates and performed all the duties of his role very well. Main speaker Stan Wadsworth made a rather shaky start but, as the judges noted, recovered brilliantly to deliver a very interesting speech. Starting with a brief history of cats as pets and listing several famous cat owners through the ages, Stan went on to explain that cats like to wander independently. They cannot therefore be trained to carry out useful tasks, unlike horses or dogs, making them, in his eyes, rebels. He backed up this conclusion with references to a global trade union adopting a cat as their symbol and the anti-Putin feminists Pussy Riot. Stan’s speech was notable for its clear structure and some excellent quotations, which reflected the effort he had put into his research. Felix Grant completed a pleasing team performance with a lively Vote of Thanks that fulfilled all the requirements of his role. Having been introduced as a forward who rampaged round the rugby pitch, he promised “No rampaging tonight” and kept his word, explaining how amusing and informative he had found Stan’s speech. He was also able to add a further example of cats being used to deliver messages in Belgium that had been a total failure.

Year 8 team (L to R Stan, Finlay, Felix G)

By contrast our other team, drawn from Year 9, was the last to speak, following very strong performances from the Bishop’s Stortford College trio and one of the teams from Herts & Essex. Chairman Joshua Tsang tackled his task with great enthusiasm, speaking without notes and making good use of gesture and varied vocal expression. In fact, he was so ebullient that he threatened to overshadow main speaker Noah Brown. Introducing the presentation “Have you thought about dreaming?”, he praised Noah’s intelligence and speaking ability, but gave Felix Evans, who would propose the vote of thanks, a harder time. Noah’s speech lived up to Joshua’s description as he explained that he would not be exhorting the audience to follow their dreams. Instead, he gave a detailed analysis of different sorts of dreams, including lucid dreams, explaining what influences them and the importance part that dreams can play in helping sleepers to solve problems. When asked why we remember certain dreams, he replied that these are the ones most important to us and they tend to recur.

Felix delivered a well-structured vote of thanks in an engaging manner. Quite rightly, he praised Noah for the depth of his research and his ability to remember so much complicated information. He remembered to cover Noah’s well-informed response to the audience question and amused his listeners by remarking on the questioner’s sweater.

Year 9 team (L to R Noah, Joshua, Felix E)

As with the Seniors, the quality of speaking was very good, with little to choose between the teams, especially the top three. In the end the very polished College team, who had explained why the way we use language matters, were declared the winners, just ahead of TBSHS Year 9 in second. By general agreement, the Herts & Essex team that focussed on the importance of reading must also have come very close. The judges praised members of each of our teams for the way in which they interacted, their use of humour, and the quality of research that their speeches reflected.

A.D.Fraser