All through the year, our world history class has been leading up to this one debate with the subject of, "Was the 20th century one of progress or decline?" My team was assigned to argue the side of progress. We started by choosing one aspect of the world that we would like to use for our contention and did a little more research and review on the subject. We then made a rough draft of our contentions and began a two week long period of critiquing and revising. During those two weeks, we also had to prepare for another part of the debate that was assigned to us. I was selected to be the cross examiner to question the other team and I spent about four days preparing questions to counter the opposing teams contentions. The actual debate took place in front of a panel of eight professional judges who decided the winners of the debate. My team was able to successfully convince the judges that the 20th century was one of progress. Inquiry was the main quality used for this project as we had spent the entire year studying major issues in the world and trying to find evidence of both progress and decline so that we could argue whichever side we were assigned when it was time for the debate. ​