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Dr George Gross

Chepstow House School - 1st & 3rd October 2024



Another great week of sessions with our Chepstow House debating and interview clubs.  

We have continued our skills work, this time with a focus on rebuttal and active listening as well as how to tackle an unseen image, text or other source. 

In this instance we used Holbein's famous portrait of Henry VIII. The key here was to have a go at making point, explaining items/details in the image, without necessarily centering on right/wrong answers. 

Our warm-up interview style questions included:

(i) What do you find most challenging at school?

Here our focus was to turn this into a positive, i.e. the challenge of a subject, sport or wider activity is the reason for enjoying it, e.g. problem solving in Mathematics or winning matches in Sport, or taking on the challenge of the stage for Drama or a Poetry reading competitions. 

(ii) Is it better to be good or to be happy? 

This philosophical style question saw our groups split when it came to voting. Being in the right headspace with a happy wellbeing was seen as important to being good. The golden rule and helping one's neighbour was also raised in a series of fascinating discussions/debates. 

Our newsround took in:

  • Hurricane Helene 

  • ISS news with the two stranded astronauts 

  • The US vice-presidential TV debate 

  • The growing conflict in the Middle East 

  • Gifts/Donations to Downing Street

We then turned to our set-piece debates on the motions:

(1) Are ticket prices too high for music/sporting events (e.g. Taylor Swift world tours):

Here the voting remained relatively split throughout. Market forces as the key driving point (supply/demand) won the day in voting. 

(2) Should every town have a bank? (with nearly 3 million in constituencies without banks in the UK) 

Overwhelmingly the group felt there should more provision and this was particularly unfair for pensioners, those on smaller incomes and mainly dealing with cash or rural communities with poor public transport systems. 

(3) Should we have a 4 day school week or a 5 day school week?

Voting divided here depending on whether people wanted more home-time for hobbies and extra-curricular activities, over those that worried a longer weekend would mean more homework. 

We ended with a discussion on the role of the education secretary and a key priority for each speaker if they were in charge of education. Answers included:

More Science, Design & Technology, Sport, Mathematics, Languages, Art & Drama and Music opportunities. 

Looking forward to next week!  

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