The Landscape of Competitive Debate In Aceh: Benefit, Achievement, and Challenges

Abstract

With a huge amount of budget allocation, Aceh education, however only reached 32 position out of 34 other provinces in Indonesia. Indonesia itself ranked last out of 50 countries in a landmark education report. On the other hand, competitive debate is an effective tools to improve students’ academic attainment, critical thinking skill, problem solving skill, and other soft skills. However with many challenges in debate proliferation, its practice is still uncommon and developed unevenly only in Kota Banda Aceh and its neighbour,Kabupaten Aceh Besar. This research paper aims to explore the impact of debate activities in Aceh, Acehnese students competitive debate experience and achievement, challenges of competitive debate proliferation and quality of debate competition in Aceh. The study was quantitative in nature. A questionnaire was designed on Likert scale in order to collect data from a group of 54 varsity or secondary school students who had experienced debating activity. Finally on the basis of finding shows that competitive debate improved Acehnese students ability in English, critical thinking, problem solving, logical thinking, team work, self-confidence, networking, social awareness, and competitiveness. Lacking of Acehnese students’ participation in national and international level resulted uneven distribution of good qualified debaters in Aceh. The absence of standardized debating curriculum and the lacking of financial assistance and information access were seen as the major challenges of competitive debate proliferation in Aceh.