Sixth Form Extra Curricular: Debating
Every year the Sixth Form Induction Day includes a schedule of debates which encourages students to attend the weekly meetings of Debating Society.
In addition to these regular sessions, there has been an exciting range of debating activities involving G.C.H. students since September 2005.
On October 14th a group of 16 Sixth Form students was invited to participate in a Student Parliament with three other schools at the House of Commons. The Grey Coat contingent was divided equally between Government and Opposition for the debate on the introduction of I.D. cards. All students were active participants with additional responsibilities of serving as tellers and summing up for the Government. In the afternoon a number of students also had gallery tickets which enabled them to listen to speeches delivered by actual Members of Parliament.
Ten days later Sixth Form students were again on the move, this time walking to Millbank Tower for a Sky News feature. On this occasion another 16 students listened to the arguments presented by David Davis and David Cameron in the competition for the leadership of the Conservative Party.
The next event, in addition to the weekly meetings, was participation in the Schools’ Debating Competition, an annual event run by schools on behalf of the English Speaking Union. On December 1st, a G.C.H. team opposed the Bishop Challoner’s proposition ‘That this House would arm the police’. From the six competing schools, the two which went forward to the next round were Westminster School and the host school, City of London Boys’. Subsequent rounds led to the March Final at the London School of Economics.
In December, sixth formers modelled the European Assembly with teams representing countries from Estonia to Portugal. It was noticeable that those students who regularly debated gave the best presentations.
On February 1st members of Debating Society went to the Guardian for an illuminating seminar on Globalisation. Specialists in the field included Saskia Sassen, the Centennial Visiting Professor at the L.S.E. and the Guardian’s Environment and Economics Editors. Respectively these speakers wondered why people are terrified of immigrants, saw ‘globalisation as a force of nature’ and noted that Indian and Burmese forests were being felled by a Korean and Vietnamese labour force in order to meet the Olympic needs of China which is protecting its own woodlands.
Whilst there was little opportunity to debate topical issues seriously, the Daily Politics programme enabled Kafiya Khaireh and Jessica Simmonds to determine whether thumbs should point up or down on a range of issues
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