In defense of Gakushuu's debate skills
In short: even though it would be pretty funny if he was bad at debating, Gakushuu in fact excels in that, too. I have just realized what the source of confusion is here. This messed up English translation:
Let's compare that to the original Japanese:
善 in fact refers to ethics, and that is also according to the character book Gakushuu's weakest subject.
弁 in the opposite corner, on the other hand, refers to debate (弁論). So the translation has somehow switched the places of those two.
In fact, it seems they've in general just put the words in random order in the translation, probably thinking it doesn't matter. Like, what is leadership in English is language in Japanese, skill is English, body is math...
Actually, this is what the original Japanese says:
Upper row: Japanese, English, math, science, phys. ed., technical skills, statistics Lower row: ethics, money, friends, appearance, debate
It's overall a pretty sloppy translation, in my mind. Like for example translating 体 as body, when it's got to refer to 体育, P.E. Just like 英 refers to 英語, English, and 数 to 数学, math.
...there sure were lots of stupid mistakes in the manga translation. I wonder if they fixed this one too for the later editions, like they fixed calling Nagisa's mom "Hiromi Nagisa" and the Reaper Yanagisawa (on their freaking character info pages!)
