Eaton House Belgravia School - 1st February 2023
An excellent session today, which ran over and could happily have kept going!
We started by discussing how to strengthen our conclusions. Especially important for debating summaries to deliver a powerful conclusion and for interview answers not to trail off... After practicing a few interview questions we moved on to our unseen image of the week, Cy Twombly's Untitled (Rose) 2008. Is this art? Is this graffiti? Is graffiti art? We delved into the power of colour and how the artist made us feel with this work.
After this we moved on to current affairs and talked about Nadhim Zahawi's recent firing and to what standard we should hold our elected leaders. This club has set the bar high and we built on our discussions from last week, excellent to see everyone develop their answers.
We came to an abrupt conclusion whilst debating whether to send Ukraine fighter jets, if we were fighting a war by proxy and if in the case of defeat war could end up on our shores. A debate to be continued.
Fantastic session all!
Knightsbridge School - 2nd February 2023
Another encouraging session of progress at our Knightsbridge debating and interview club.
This week we tackled summary speaking and how to construct longer and more convincing arguments with bullet-points and structure.
It was good to see these skills being incorporated into our discussions and debates during the club.
We tackled three debating questions after a newsround featuring the Bank of England's rate decision.
The first of our debates was a fully-fledged proposition and opposition split on whether 'This House should supply fighter Jets to Ukraine'. Whilst it was unanimously felt that more support was needed for Ukraine - there was real concern about escalating the conflict and the risk of losing a jet and the sophisticated intelligence that could give Russia. It was fascinating to see those on both sides tackling questions of military intelligence, training and the desire to help.
We then turned to leadership and whether leaders can make mistakes in the light of Zahawi's tax penalty, Rishi Sunak's seatbelt gate, and the US President and classified documents. We looked at previous examples of leadership such as Winston Churchill and saw that even our great leaders have not had a 100% track record. The group, however, voted 100% in favour of Zahawi's sacking. His mistake was seen as too significant to be forgiven.
Finally, we turned to Netflix and other subscriptions and whether the cost of living crisis will see a change in how people view movies and series, with numbers greatly reduced at present.
Well done all! We would continue to encourage the group to keep up with current-affairs during the week.
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