Preparatory School Debating

ISDA Debating – Round 1

The first ISDA debate of the year for us was against Loretto. The topic for the debate was that ‘Classes should be based on ability.’ Loretto was affirmative and Trinity was negative. Loretto won this debate but we learnt a lot from it. Trinity focused on the social aspect of classes and that we shouldn’t separate students from their peers as this would negatively impact their well-being. Loretto had a variety of ideas and arguments that mainly centered around the individual learning needs of students and the associated workload for teachers. From an outsiders perspective, I thought that the affirmative had a stronger argument from the start and that the affirmative side would have been the easier side to debate. It was very close, but in the end the affirmative won. The general feedback that we got was to try and make the adjudicator imagine they are in the stakeholders shoes and go more in depth into our arguments.

Written by Ethan

ISDA Debating – Round 2

The Prep School’s ISDA Debating Team had an excellent debate on Friday 25th of February against PLC. The topic was that “Cars should be banned from city centres” and we were the affirmative side.

Our first speaker, Rory, came out with excellent points which all other points from the other speakers revolved around. He explained that banning cars from city centres would help the environment and give us a sustainable future. He also explained that there would be less traffic and it would be easier to get to work.

Our second speaker, Chenyu, made a variation of those points and brought in the idea of congestion where everyone gets impatient because areas are overcrowded. He also rebutted nearly every single point the first negative speaker came up with.

Our third speaker Ethan rebutted nearly PLC’s whole case. Firstly, Ethan negated PLC’s points by rebutting with strong arguments such as it’s not overwhelmingly expensive to create more green spaces. The opposing team stated how taking electrical cars to city centres would be more convenient but Ethan strongly stated the average income of an Australian home is $60,000 and electric cars are a more expensive proposition.

Overall, our debaters and spectators had an enjoyable experience witnessing a close debating field. It all ended on a sweet note with us receiving donuts as a treat!

Written by Christian and Ronak