Chapter 27 — Two Sides of an Argument

The conference center where the National School Debate Tournament was held was larger than anything Hạ Vy had ever imagined. The main hall is three stories high, white light from the LED system reflects off the polished marble floor, and everywhere are groups of students wearing colorful uniforms from all over the country, each group has its own confidence, some are noisy and bustling, others are silent and tense, reviewing documents right in the hallway. The large electronic board hanging in the middle of the lobby displayed a list of forty-eight participating teams, divided into eight groups, and right below the words "Chu Văn An High School - Hanoi", the names Hạ Vy and Việt Bách appeared clearly, making her feel both proud and indescribably confused.

"Look at the way half the teams here are looking at last year's performance rankings," Việt Bách said quietly, standing next to her, his eyes scanning the crowd with familiar calm. "Everyone is trying to guess who the strongest opponent is. Strangely, this year, not many people seem to know about us."

"So isn't that an advantage?" Hạ Vy asked, trying to keep her voice calm even though her palms were starting to sweat.

"That's right," he replied, the corners of his lips curling up. "Being underrated is always a good place to start."

The first round took place in the morning, the opponent was a team from a provincial school in the Central region, their style was still quite young, their arguments were not coherent and they were easily led astray. Hạ Vy opened with a brief but sharp story on the topic of school environmental policy given, and Việt Bách followed it up with a series of logical evidence that left his opponents with little time to react. The match ended in an overwhelming victory, with three out of three judges favoring them. It was a good start, but both knew clearly that the upcoming rounds would be the real test.

That same afternoon, they faced off against the strongest team in the group - two students from Sông Hồng High School for the Gifted, Nam Định, a school with a rich debate tradition, having won medals three years in a row. Lý Gia Bảo, their captain, had a confident, almost arrogant demeanor, a sharp voice and a dizzying speed of presentation, constantly bombarding the opponent with a series of memorized figures accurate to the percent. Đinh Thảo My, his teammate, plays the role of the main critic, specializing in finding the smallest loopholes in the opponent's argument to exploit mercilessly. Looking at the way they operate, Hạ Vy couldn't help but remember the image of Việt Bách nearly a year ago - absolutely believing in reason, seeing everything else as a weakness that needed to be eliminated.

The topic drawn for this round is: "Should students' test score rankings be made public to the whole school?" Hạ Vy and Việt Bách were placed on the opposing side, while their opponents stood on the supporting side.

Lý Gia Bảo immediately opened with a series of strong evidence. "According to last year's Institute for Educational Research survey, seventy-three percent of students surveyed said making their rankings public helps them become more motivated to learn. Transparency isn't punishment — it's a motivational tool based on real data, not emotion."

Sitting in the audience behind the judges, Hạ Vy felt the pressure on them from the first seconds. But when it was her turn, she stood up, her voice calmer than she expected.

"That number of seventy-three percent," she began, "doesn't tell us what happened to the remaining twenty-seven percent. I would like to tell you about a classmate of mine in tenth grade, a very hard-working classmate but always ranked at the bottom of the rankings because of his difficult family situation, not having the conditions to take extra classes like other students. Every time the scoreboard was posted on the classroom wall, he was the first to arrive and the last to leave, not because he studied harder, but so that no one else could see herself standing in the last line. At the end of that year, she asked to transfer schools, not because of her poor academic performance, but because she couldn't stand the feeling of being publicly evaluated every week." She paused for a moment, letting the story permeate the exam room atmosphere. "The problem is not transparency or lack of transparency. The problem is that we are turning an academic assessment tool into a form of public exposure of shame for the most vulnerable students."

Việt Bách continued as soon as she sat down, his voice calm but firm. "And the story that Hạ Vy just told is not an isolated case. According to the same study that the opponent just cited, if read more carefully in the appendix, the group of students in the bottom twenty percent of the rankings has a rate of reporting school anxiety three times higher than the other group, and the dropout rate is forty percent higher than in schools that do not apply public rankings. In other words, the data that the opponent uses to support his argument, when read in full, shows the opposite—public rankings do not create equal motivation; they motivate groups that are already strong and hurt the groups that need support the most."

Lý Gia Bảo immediately counterattacked, his voice somewhat harsher. "So you suggest we should protect students from the reality of competition? The outside society is not that fair, the sooner we hide it, the more shocked we will be when they come out."

This was the moment Hạ Vy most clearly realized how natural the chemistry between her and Việt Bách had become. She didn't need to look at him to know exactly what he was going to say next, and so did he.

"No one proposes to hide reality," Việt Bách replied, his voice still calm. "We propose a different form of feedback — a private, specific, constructive evaluation between the teacher and each student, rather than a public ranking that only indicates relative standing without saying anything about cause or direction of improvement. In pure logic, a good evaluation system should optimize for the progress of all students, not just the temporary sense of pride of the top group."

"And," Hạ Vy immediately joined in, not leaving any silence between the two turns of speaking, "my friend, if that day he had received a private feedback sheet, clearly stating what he had tried and what could be improved, instead of a public number placing him at the bottom of the class in front of everyone, maybe he wouldn't have had to leave the place he once called home."

At that moment, she clearly felt how Việt Bách's logical argument lifted her story to a different level - no longer a simple touching anecdote that was easily brushed aside, but a living demonstration of the principle he had just presented. And conversely, her story also made his dry numbers had real weight, turning an abstract education policy debate into an issue with a face, a name, and a concrete pain that anyone in the audience could feel.

Đinh Thảo My tried to restore the situation with some additional evidence, but by the time of the summary, even her voice had lost some of its initial certainty. When the jury announced the results, all three judges favored Hạ Vy and Việt Bách. One of them, an old professor from a university in Hanoi, especially commented: "This is the rare time I have seen a team actually make emotions and data complement each other, instead of choosing one or the other. Very impressive."

Leaving the exam room, Lý Gia Bảo proactively shook Việt Bách's hand, somewhat reluctantly but still remaining polite. "Your team plays differently than most opponents I've ever met. Good luck in the next rounds."

The following days passed in a hectic pace — the third round against a team from Could Tho with a solid defensive style of play but lacking breakthroughs, the quarter-finals against a team from Hai Phong with a strong emotional attack style but lacking a logical foundation to withstand the overwhelming criticism, something that Việt Bách fully exploited while Hạ Vy took on the role of calming, avoiding the match turning into a one-sided attack. Both matches ended with victory in their favor, although not as easy as the match against Nam Định.

The night before the semi-finals, when the whole group gathered in the hotel room for the teacher in charge of the group to announce tomorrow's schedule, Hạ Vy received an unexpected text message. Not from Mỹ Duyên or Tuấn Kiệt, but from a strange phone number, she later realized it was Mr. Trần Quốc Hùng's number, perhaps Việt Bách had given her number to him before. The message was just a few words, so brief that it was almost dry: "I hope you two do well in the semi-finals. I will be in the finals if you make it all the way there." There was no flowery congratulations, no lengthy words of encouragement, but Hạ Vy understood that for a person like Mr. Hùng, proactively texting, using the word "children" instead of just mentioning his son, was a significant step forward.

She showed the phone to Việt Bách. He read the message in silence for a long time, his expression unpredictable, then nodded slightly. "You're still not used to showing off, but this is already more than I dared to expect half a year ago." He put her phone back in her jacket pocket, his eyes looking distantly out the hotel window, where the sparkling lights of Da Nang city stretched to the dark horizon bordering the sea. "Then tomorrow, we must win for real."

"We will win," Hạ Vy said, holding his hand tightly, her voice filled with determination, not because of the pressure to prove anything to Mr. Hùng, but because she truly believed in the team they had built together, brick by brick, over nearly a year full of stumbles and growth.

The semi-finals took place the next morning against a team from Hue, whose style was technical, tight but somewhat rigid. Hạ Vy and Việt Bách operated so smoothly that there was almost no need for further discussion between speeches, each automatically filling in the space left by the other, juggling smoothly as if they had been practicing together for a lifetime, not just a year. The victory came, not completely overwhelming but clear and worthy, and when the organizers announced that their team had officially won one of the two spots to enter the national final, Hạ Vy felt a shiver run down her spine, a mixture of bursting joy and a new thrill, greater than anything she had ever experienced before, because she knew that tomorrow, on this very stage, the final and most important chapter of the whole journey was about to be written.