It was great to begin the new Academic year of our Debating & Interview club Knightsbridge School – we were delighted with the talent and potential of the group.
In the first two weeks we will be doing an introduction to debating and public speaking. This week we turned to debating structure and our skill of the week how to build a proposition argument and the best use of body language during a debate or interview setting. We will continue to review these skills over the coming weeks.
For warm-up question we looked at the Philosophical question(s) (with 'Why'/justification absolutely crucial):
(i) What qualifies as art? / Who decides what art is? / is beauty in the eye of the beholder?
This led to a fascinating discussion - from purpose, to contemporary and renaissance examples, to whether animals could also produce art / or if this was solely in the domain of human beings?
Well done all!
Each week we aim to cover a Newsround (and we encourage the groups to be as aware of news and the world around them as possible, we recommend for example First News, Newsround, The Week Junior). This week we touched on:
The US Presidential Election
The Kamala Harris & Donald Trump debate
The Olympics & Paralympics
The International Space Station
Flooding in Central/Eastern Europe
The War in Ukraine
Football contests and Man City vs Arsenal
Our debates covered the motions:
(i) 'This House would ban junk food online advertising and television advertising (before 9pm)'
- here we saw an excellent debate with jobs, finance and practicality battling against the importance of health for children and adults as a whole. The majority rejected the motion in favour of freedom of choice as with many of our schools in the past week or so, when addressing the subject. In the context of health we also looked at an unseen - seeing if students could recognise the health secretary (Wes Streeting), and if they had that role, what would they prioritise in the UK system? Prevention or Cure?
(ii) 'This House would ban phones in school' (following a recent decision by one of England's largest academy trusts)
- having split into teams we saw voting begin move against a ban. This remained at the second telling. Many felt phones were useful to learning if managed well, and helpful for safety when going to and from schools. Those against felt they were distractions from day-to-day learning. Plagiarism/Cheating was also raised, along with the risk that children would socialise less.
Great debating from all! Well done.
Comments