Food Chain

"People generally quarrel because they cannot argue."
--G.K. Chesterton

One of the requirements, nay, duties of every volunteer in the Inglés Abre Puertas program is to help coach an English language debate team. The program, when founded, did a wonderful job of creating and organizing a country-wide competition that sees the best teams from schools in every region battling it out for the top honor in Santiago each year. Coaching the debate team at Liceo Lucho is by far one of my favorite aspects of my job. If anyone reading this has met me and spent more then two hours in a confined space with me, you are probably well aware of my predisposition to argument. For better or worse (usually worse) I have the ability to engage in debate with the utmost of ease, and no small part enjoyment. To my chagrin, my high school did not offer me an outlet for such talents, and as such I am more then delighted to live vicariously through my fumbling pupils here in Chile.

Part of each meeting (or sometimes the entire meeting) is of course devoted to helping the kids on the team enunciate, pronounce words correctly, and just generally get a better grasp on the language they are being called on in which to argue. These kids are on the team voluntarily, which means they already speak decent English and wish to improve, which is worlds apart from the classroom setting of obligation and, inevitably, apathy.
However, the really interesting part of the endeavor is the actual debating; working on their reasoning and ability to improvise and adapt. To this end, we often give the kids a topic to think over for the week, such as "this house believes that television is damaging to child development", and then when we meet we split the group into pros and cons and let them duke it out as best they can according to the established protocol. The last meeting was particularly awesome because I gave them the topic of "should animals be afforded the same rights as humans?" This topic was brilliant for two reasons: one, Chile is covered in stray dogs and thus violence against animals is a relevant topic, and two, because if this weren't already a real issue in the States it would immediately be dismissed as absurd. Thus I was eagerly looking forward to what these 2nd world children would come up with (excuse me, "developing world").

On Tuesday, when we met at lunch, we split the kids into pro and con, five against five, and then let them form a thesis and supporting points. We then sat them across from each other and let them fire away. Of course the pro side argued first that animals have feelings and can think, and thus are deserving of humane treatment and thus crimes against them should be punishable as the similar crimes against humans; standard bleeding-heart modernist basura. I couldn't help but smile in anticipation of the counter-argument, and the niños didn't disappoint.

The opening thesis of the opposing team was thus: animals can't really think, they only act on instincts. I put a hand over my mouth to cover my creeping smile. They followed this up with,
"What about the animals we eat? Should butchers be arrested for murder?"
I was now stifling giggles.
The teams went back and forth over categorizing animals, whether instinct and thought co-exist, ect. Then came the hammer; the closing arguments.
The pro side offered a very eloquent, very logical closer that involved a nice anecdote about how a mother elephant can pick out her child in a crowed simply by it's pleading.
Ok, good.
Then the closer for the con team stood up. He glanced at his notes, cleared his throat, and then said,

"We have to kill them before they kill us!"

I exploded into uncontrollable laughter. I was seriously in tears.
I had to give the victory to the pro side simply because of the strength of their English and delivery, but in my heart the con team had won by a mile.