top of page

St Philip’s School - 3rd October

Dr George Gross


It was great to see our St Philip's debating club kick-off the session with so many items from world news (delighted to know the group has been following/engaging with current affairs): including inter alia the UK political party conference season, the PM and HS2, Donald Trump's fraud trial, ice melting in Antarctica, and the tragic news of yet more knife crime.


Building on our key skill of last week that focussed on endings and summary speeches, we looked at speaking with conviction and with an affirmative voice in order to persuade or keep an audience on side. For this week we looked at the warm-up question: 'what would you like to be when you are older?' We had a tremendous array of options from law, to diplomat/ambassador, from chemist or inventor to business and tech entrepreneur. Sport featured heavily too, from cricket, to tennis and football. The key here was detail and explanation.


We then turned to our central debate on the ban of single use plastics. The group voted roughly 55%/45% in favour of the ban, with many looking for a via media or alternative that gave small business (takeaway restaurants) an option that was less costly. Overall, rhetorical questions that pivoted on cleaning up the oceans of the planet held sway and at the second telling, the proposition had the majority of support again, now nearer 60%.


We briefly touched on taxation (on the back of Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, and his comments on lowering tax at the Conservative Party Conference) - the aim here to discuss with the group what their top 3 priorities would be for the spending of taxes raised.


Well done all! Looking forward to next week.

1 view0 comments

Comments


bottom of page