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St Andrew's School - 5th February

Dr George Gross


It has been a superb first half of term for our St Andrew's Debating & Interview Club - hugely impressed with the fantastic contributions from all in the group. This week we covered speaking with 'conviction' and with particular emphasis on affirmative tone, active voice, and careful vocabulary choice.

 

Our warm up question asked:

What would you like to be when you are older?

We had an amazing selection of ideas given including inter alia politicians, marine conservationists, teachers, business leaders and ship designers, to the sporting field and professional tennis players, swimmers, hockey players and riding specialists. 


Our newsround saw every hand raised with topics covered including the bombing of US soldiers in Jordan, to American election politics, and UK news stories.


With the announcement of the loan return of the Asante Crown Jewels to Ghana from the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum our debating motion asked whether these items should be returned to Ghana or should remain in museums or be shared 50/50? 

The first vote saw a majority undecided, but by the second telling the voting went in favour of a return, but with the caveat that the country and journey needed to be made a safe as possible to avoid damage to these precious historical objects. 


We ended the session with a brief look at the Senate in the US and their questioning of major Social Media and AI companies last week, including Mark Zuckerberg. We asked who is responsible for child safety online?

We presented the group with three options: Technology companies; Government; Family/Parents. 

In each telling the majority voted for technology companies, but throughout the discussion and debate it was acknowledged that all three had their roles to play. 

We also asked: 'Are we being too negative on technology, social media and AI at present?'

Here again the feeling was (particularly in healthcare) that we are, but that more needed to be done to keep children safe online.  


Another tremendous session - well done all!

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