DebSoc met again today (Monday June 22nd).  The students were enthused by their previous Saturday GDST Debating Competition, so we decided to run our own British Parliamentary Debate over lunchtime.

We debated the motion: “This House believes monuments to historical figures should remain.” It proved an important vehicle through which to assess the arguments for and against this topical issue.

Dunya and Alex represented the opening and closing governments, whilst Ishita and Niamh represented the opening and closing opposition. Alex defined the motion clearly, and thoughtfully linked it to the wider Black Lives Matter campaign. Dunya supported this by developing a wider range of points, considering how monuments might actually encourage change, potentially might lead to non-peaceful protest, the impact on public property, and used cabinet members’ tweets to support the argument that this debate might be distracting from the cause of the problem itself. Ishita and Niamh argued passionately about how subjective the erection of monuments in the past proved, and used examples of how such monuments might cause offence, or represent outdated beliefs. Alex had challenged this by arguing that figures, such as Churchill, were products of their time and we should learn about the context in which they lived. Thought provoking arguments were made by both sides, and the students are becoming very skilled in embracing and tackling those pesky Points of Information (POIs!).

Both teams had 12mins to prepare in separate Google Meets (no listening in to each other’s arguments to give the game away!) before running a whole British Parliamentary debate on our main Meet. Well done to team DebSoc members for their efforts this week; it was really interesting to hear their perspectives. Looking forward to putting these skills into practise with our upcoming friendlies against local schools and other GDST schools in Sept!

DebSoc will have its last session of this academic year on Mon 6th July. It runs 1 – 1:30pm every Monday for Years 7-9. New members are welcome any time, with no commitment to attending weekly! Full details are on the extra-curricular noticeboard, with a link to our google meet. To hear about what we are debating, so you can join in, simply email Miss Gordon.