We were delighted to begin our Debating club with Kensington Wade. It was great to see such enthusiastic groups and some great public speaking skills already across both our senior and junior sessions!Â
In addition to introductory points on debating format (proposition and opposition) our skill focus this week looked at Explanation - and the combination of Point, Evidence and Explanation.Â
For our warm up in addition to a Newsround (we encourage all members to engage with First News or The Week Junior or BBC Newsround), we turned to our interview style question with an emphasis on 'why'?:
What were your highlights from the Easter break? - from family time, to travel at home and abroad including skiing in the Alps, football and tennis camps, China, Japan, American adventures, it was great to hear such exciting breaks.Â
Each week we will look at a debating motion. For this week we discussed amongst other ideas/topics
The motion: 'This House would make public transport autonomous'; and Â
The motion: 'This House would abolish cash'.
Whilst initial voting rejected the motion, the groups saw, that, as with almost any debate, there are two sides to the argument. Arguments in favour of the motions looked at practicality, safety, helping HMRC with tax avoidance, tackling crime and banking efficiency. Arguments against the motion turned to budgeting, travel, helping those on lower incomes, jobs, children learning to save and learning about money and the implementation - how would it work? What would happen to collect coins and small change? How safe would vehicles be?
It was a great set of debates and we also saw some excellent structure and use of rhetorical questions already.Â