Should Elizabeth II be the last queen? And should police officers be banned from using guns? Pupils at Redden Court School, a state high school in London's eastern suburb, compete with interesting topics when they give up their lunch breaks for debate club.
The school is one of many public ones to have taken up debating in recent years. Last year the English-Speaking Union (ESU), Britain's main debating organization, began to provide free help to 100 schools with lots of poor pupils. It hopes to change the view that debating is for rich kids.
Advocates propose a range of benefits. Duncan Partridge of the ESU argues that the confidence and fluency debating inspires will help children in future university applications and job interviews. Teachers at Redden Court say it has improved pupils' ability to set out their arguments logically, in writing and in class, and they believe debating can be of wider use still.
Yet, despite these organisations' best efforts, success in debating competitions is not just becoming more concentrated in private schools, but in a few of them that take it most seriously. Some hire international debating superstars to tutor their pupils. In 2015 Eton College, one of Britain's grandest schools, opened a debating club that cost ￡18 million. In the past decade just two state schools have won the ESU's annual debating competition in England.
Joseph Spence, master of another top private school, says another problem is that "there is something quite white, middle class and male about the debating form. " Some worry that school debating promotes skilful rhetoric (虚华辞藻) but not critical thinking.
To respond to such criticism, the ESU is designing a new debating format that encourages teams to shift their position in response to their opponent's arguments. It has also introduced a policy that from this year, at least 30% of its competition members must come from state schools. However, is affirmative (积极的) action a just response to continuing inequality?
