Interview:The debating spirit is still low - Habineza

Jean Michel Habineza is the brain behind IDebate an organisation that has embarked on promoting the culture of debating among schools and Rwandans in general. He spoke to Education Times’ Damian Gahitira after one of the debate and public speaking training sessions at the Goethe Institut and below are the excerpts. How was the performance for this week?The performance was relatively fair, but we always train only those who manage to attend our trainings. We trained them on the skill of debating and public speaking.Any reason as to why the attendance was not impressive? Yes, the attendance was disappointing but again we train those that are interested otherwise I think the issue was that we poorly calculated the timing of the programme. Students in vacation are probably working and others are still finalising with their school examinations.Does this mean that you will have training for them?Actually we usually have a holiday package for them and they do attend, so probably during the time when schools have closed we shall have organised a programme for those on holiday. What people should know is that we are not going to stop conducting such trainings. This will be an ongoing process because the need is still huge. According to you, how would you grade the debating spirit in Rwandan schools?That is definitely tricky since Idebate has really had a small chance to work with a limited number of schools in Rwanda which are fully cooperative by the way, but still we have a long way to go since the debating spirit is still low in some schools. Though for the schools that we have been working with, I can say it’s definitely high. The students are very enthusiastic and recently we even had some of them debating with Uganda schools. What languages do you mainly use and why? We basically debate in English and this is because Rwanda is transitioning from French to English. In other words we are playing our role in ensuring that transition is smooth. I know this is a hard task since some debaters we train find it hard to express themselves well in English than in French but still we wouldn’t want to be the ones lagging behind. I personally was a francophone till my senior four when I changed to Anglophone, it was difficult but worth it.You have trained some of the great debaters in Idebate, after their time with you do they move on or they stay in contact to help?We stay in contact with all the best debaters we train. As you know Idebate is an NGO, so losing the connections of the people we train means we lose the capital (knowledge) that we have invested which would require us to start from scratch again. We have few trainees meaning we can’t spread the debating knowledge to the whole of Rwanda at large by ourselves.What do you think about the idea of personal coaches for debaters?The idea isn’t bad but the funding is what the idea lacks. If the parents of these young debaters can’t appreciate the importance of debating to their children then that idea is really useless because we won’t have any progress that’s why we have not yet gone into personal coaching. Are these programmes meant for the students only?These programmes are mainly attended by students but that does not mean that we organise them exclusively for students. When we invite, we invite the public. The majority of the working class in Rwanda don’t know the importance of debating that is why we don’t see them attending but they are always welcome to attend.