World Debate Institute

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July 16, 2005

THURSDAY - Programs at the 2005 WDI for high School Students

USA POLICY DEBATE: Rigorous development of skills, arguments and evidence to debate the 2005-2006 national policy debate topic.
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially decrease its authority either to detain without charge or to search without probable cause.

Thursday saw a series of welcome to students from Admissions, Residential Life, Food Services, Campus transportation, the ALANA Program, and then went into a pair of topic lectures. Katie Baxter-Kauf gave a background lecture on the current state of the law, followed by Gordie Miller's lecture possible affirmative cases (including the one he prepared for WDI as a sample) and the directions the topic may take during the year. This was followed by a partner social where students picked their own partners at which point they were given the complete evidence set. After the dinner break the faculty came to the student dorms to work with them to prepare for tomorrow's practice debate.

HS PUBLIC DEBATE WORKSHOP: This program is a skills based approach for students who want to learn debate skills for brpoad application to various debate formats, life skills, and study skills. John Meany of the Claremont Colleges is directing this program. Students spent the morning learning basic skills like argument building, refutation, note taking, and finally used these in a communication skills lab. They immediately prepared for impromptu debates of their own and staged two of them. Students were given homework and had an informal group on research that evening.

MIDDLE SCHOOL PUBLIC DEBATE WORKSHOP: For the first time middle school students are attending WDI and Kate Shuster of the Claremont Colleges is directing this program. In the morning students were given basic debate format bckground and studied refutation, note taking and other debate skills. After lunch they saw a video of a sample debate and then staged two of their own. They had evening homework and there was an informal small group for them to work in.

Posted by debate at July 16, 2005 02:02 PM

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Posted by: Netpowersoft at November 29, 2005 02:55 AM

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