This was an excellent final session of term with our St Andrew's School Debating and Interview Club. It was super to see the group focussing on debating skills for maximising point scoring in competitions. Our skill of the week looked at Summary speaking and how to round-off a debate to maximise impact.
With the Easter holidays just around the corner, our warm up question asked:
'What is your favourite holiday destination and why?'
From the Australia to the Alps, the Seychelles to Cornwall, China to Florida, and Suffolk to Finland we had a tremendous array of locations mentioned with family, language, food, scenery and sporting opportunity all featuring.
Our newsround saw topics raised from the war in Ukraine, to the conflict in Gaza, Space exploration, to the issues over the Mothering Sunday photo released by the Princess of Wales, to the Volcanic eruptions in Iceland.
With technology and AI much in the news, our central debate turned to the motion:
'This House believes books are better than e-books?'
Here voting by the second telling still saw a majority for the traditional book format, but with a narrow margin that at the start of the debate. Those in favour of e-books, liked the flexibility that a kindle or tablet provided for travel and the fact that you didn't need to cut down trees for paper. Whilst those for the motion disliked the need for electric charge for the device and liked 'turning the page' in a real book and the idea of passing books down between generations.
Well done all on a superb term of sessions with super contributions throughout. Looking forward to the Summer term.
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