The Charles Dickens Museum played host to an excellent set of debating and public speaking competitions for our Junior and Senior Socratic Club members. We were extremely fortunate to be joined by Andrew Kopkin as our judge for the debates. It was a privilege for the group to hear from an Oxford and Cambridge alumnus and to take onboard his wealth of expertise and knowledge in legal argumentation, advocacy, and jurisprudence.
From introductory philosophical and interview style questions and mock scenarios we looked at key debating skills and body language covered this term before turning to our debate for the competition on the motion:
'This House would lower the voting age'.
Our judge for the debates looked for: interesting vocabulary, an ability to think on your feet, teamwork, POIs (both given and taken), and evidence/stories/rhetorical questions to strengthen arguments. His crucial word was ‘because’ – and this was in widespread evidence, with superb justification throughout. It was great to see such an impressive array of speeches - both on the proposition and opposition sides.
In the voting the majority did not feel in the Junior group that the voting age should be lowered. Our Junior members belied their years in terms of sophistication of argumentation and it would have been hard for anyone to deny the vote to any of the group if they had so wished to participate in the General Election!
In the senior debate we tackled motions that included:
‘This House would move to a cashless society’ and ‘This House would ban fast food’.
Here we saw excellent rebuttal, sophisticated POIs, and a very good use of evidence to support arguments on both sides of each debate. It was also great see summary speaking of an extremely high standard, and attempts to modify the motions, to create more nuanced and tactical debating.
We were delighted that our members performed impressively in the certification process, with merits and distinctions handed out across debating grade thresholds. Well done all!
We much look forward to our autumn debating competition.
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