This week with our St Philip's debating club it was great to see excellent POIs, argumentation, rebuttal and rhetorical questions in frequent use. Very well done all.
Our skill of the week involved unseen sources/images and how to best analyse these with top tips for interview or source-work style question. Our examples today took on a seasonal twist with early paintings/images of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Christmas trees. It was super to see the group put forward suggestions and ideas incorporating the historical, the religious, the pagan, the royal and more commercial/current themes.
After an excellent newsround from conservation stories involving the blue whale, to the release of hostages in Israel-Gaza, to the events over the weekend in Dublin, we turned to our key debating topics for the session:
This House would not let the COP28 summit go ahead given the UAEs efforts to expand fossil fuel use as chair of the conference as reported by the BBC; and
This House believes that children have the right to protest.
In contrast to other club sessions, the group voted with clear majorities in each case. In the first instance in favour of continuing the conference. Many felt that whilst it was wrong to be overpromoting fossil fuels at a climate change conference, it was at the same time a reflection of the reality of both UAEs role in the global energy supply and the fact the world still requires fossil fuels (and will be likely to do so for years to come). The group did not like, though, the sense that these meetings as reported by the BBC had been done in a somewhat secretive or underhand way.
In the second motion, the majority voted against the motion. Whilst the likes of Malala Yousafzai received much praise it was still felt that if children could not vote then it seemed odd for them to be allowed to protest. The two should be aligned was the view of the majority.
Greatly looking forward to next week!
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