wOn Saturday 13th June, 11 WHS debaters congregated with GDST students and their partner schools from across the country to take part in a rigorous competition. Motions included “This House Regrets the Explosion in Popularity of Romantisy,” “This House Opposes the Stigmatisation of Being Very Online,” and more. How would you have approached these? For the first motion, Bhairavi and I opened as Government, arguing that literature offers marginal gains regardless of genre or movement. If you find yourself forming a strong counterargument right now, debating might just be for you!
We are so proud of our WHS debaters, with all four Year 12 teams breaking to a final. Bhairavi and Elodie reached the Silver Open (the experienced debaters’ category) final; Kiana and Rochelle reached the Silver Novice final; Sarah and Oriel broke first (ranked first before the finals) overall in the novice category and won the Gold Novice final, their very first debating competition; and Imogen and Sophie KC broke to the Gold Open final, finishing 3rd and 4th best speakers overall.
Debating may currently intimidate you, but this was Sarah and Oriel’s first ever competition and they won so if you it may not be as scary as you think! If you are in Middle School, come along to Debating Society next year to improve your oracy skills and enjoy some fun debates. We will run sessions on how to debate at the start of term and then host weekly debates throughout the year. Look out for Miss Pett’s poster for more info and see the link below for a guide to BP debating. https://cambridgedebating.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/bp-format-and-basic-argumentation.pdf
