By Ryan Low
The second Student vs Teacher Debate took place at assembly on June 10, 2025. After a long weekend to relax, refresh, and write their speeches, our teams of students and teachers clashed before the whole school. The topic: ‘Do students have a harder job than teachers?’ The student team, of Vishay Modi, Marcus Ke, Daniel Carter and Robbie Lloyd, argued for the affirmative, while the teacher team, with Mr Ansourian, Miss Fowler, Ms Mitreski and Mr Parekh, took the negative.
Teacher team writing rebuttals. Photo: Ryan Low
When this event happened last year, the students came out victorious in discussing ‘That we should have a 4-day school week’. Mr Ansourian reflected that “The ad hominem arguments took centre stage, but the teacher team pulled their knowledge of current Gen Z slang formulated a case that, as the kids say, left zero crumbs.”
Thus, there was tension in title defence for the students this year. As the dust settled over the Taylor Sports Centre, Vishay got up to speak first. He spoke about how learning requires you to actively think, process and apply knowledge that you have never seen before, and how learning is a continuous process. “Thus, while English teachers can recycle information with 2018 powerpoint slides and a ChatGPT Plus account, students have to put in continuous effort to learn this content.” Next came Mr Parekh, under cheers from the staff and slow claps from the students. He took a page out of Mr Ansourian’s book and used his ON2015 power to try to win over the students. They seemed unfazed by his comments on knowing the names of every student they teach, and the pressure of their own co-curricular commitments before and after school.
Marcus stepped up to the lectern shortly after, describing that we must excel in the delicate balance of student life, of academic, co-curricular, service, and sport efforts, which is the expectation of university admissions. “Teachers, however, generally teach fewer periods per day and can reuse content—some, like Mr. Ansourian, are known to recycle the same 150-slide biology PowerPoint year after year.” Ms Mitreski responded with mention of the struggles of marking dozens of exam papers, assignments, and the like, plus responding to student and parent emails, amounting to huge stresses.
Daniel came in next, rebutting all of the negative arguments, and talking on the two main issues of the debate. First on the nature of learning vs teaching, and second on the broader pressures on the two parties. In learning vs teaching, he stated that there is a difference between responsibility and difficulty, teachers get paid whereas students do not, and “it cannot be that bad because Mr Ansourian managed to do it all while also hosting Get Clever.” And on pressures, he said, “I think it is quite intuitive that no matter how often teachers need to justify their GPT fuelled lessons to angry IB parents, their pressures are nothing compared to the necessity of growing up.” Mr Ansourian, as third negative speaker, could not add anything more to the debate, and could only rebut the opposition and identify clashes.
The six speakers. Photo: Ryan Low
After announcements from the SRC about Languages Week and Heritage Week merging, we came to the long-awaited adjudication. The panel of Evan Grillakis, Ben Chamberlain, Ms Wickenden and Ms Goldsmith had arrived at a decision. It was unanimous, well deliberated and…do I sense a hint of bias? Ultimately, they decided that the Teachers have emerged victorious, in part because the students were too concerned with going after Mr Ansourian with the ad hominem fallacy, which was the downfall of the teachers last year. They did not win because they have a harder job. So clearly the students were robbed of a win.
This is just a public demonstration of the strength of the college’s Debating and Oratory program. Newington has performed extraordinarily well over the last couple years, in 2024 the Year 7 Independent Schools Debating Association (ISDA) team won the Grand Final against Queenwood, and this year the Year 7 Friday Evening Debating (FED) A and B teams were semi-finalists, and the Year 8 ISDA team were quarter finalists. The college also provides Public Speaking and Negotiations co-curriculars, which host a Model UN next Thursday 26 June. Next term, the program pivots to the GPS Season, where our debaters will compete against each of the GPS schools, culminating in the End of Season Supper in the last week. We look forward to many successes from each of our debaters in the coming weeks.