The Socratic Club - 11th January 2026

A great start to the New Year with a superb set of Junior and Senior Socratic club sessions.

Following a recapitulation of debating format, on skills, we looked at discourse markers and list structure for argumentation.

Warm-up questions included:

‘What was your favourite activity or moment from the holidays?’ & ‘what are your new year’s resolutions?’

From Skiing holidays, to family time and wider travel, we had an array of magical holiday moments referenced. New Year’s Resolutions and goals took in PMC progress, skating, sleep, stamina, organisation, reading more, eating more healthily, improving Mandarin progress as well as the Harp, and keeping up to speed with the news.

Our newsround featured items from Venezuela, Switzerland, Iran and Greenland amongst other topics.  

Debating motions included:

• Should video games be seen/regarded as a sport? & should they be part of the Olympics?

• Is it better to give or to receive presents?

• Should we only eat food produced in the UK? (In the Junior group this was rejected at the second telling 44% vs 56%; and by 63% in the Senior group) – variety and practicality trumped all, but all pushed for greater food security for the UK

• ‘This House would make littering a criminal offence/ introduce tougher penalties’

It was great to see such excellent active listening, rebuttal and POIs for our first sessions of 2026!

Very well done all.