Eighth Grade Debate Unit
Burke’s eighth graders were feeling the heat!
In their English class, eighth graders went head-to-head with each other in serious debates. Should drugs be criminalized? Is it reasonable to lower the legal drinking age to eighteen years old? How about eliminating the use of standardized tests for determining college admissions?
Facilitated by Upper School English teacher Juliana Neves, each student was assigned a stance on their respective topics and had one week to research and prepare. During the debates, students had three minutes to present their opening arguments. Then, each debater had one minute to counter and question their opponents before responding to each other for two minutes. In the last segment of their debates, each student answered questions from Ms. Neves before concluding with their closing statements.
“I want to challenge them by giving them both a topic and position that they might not agree with, so they learn about a different perspective and understand what someone else might think,” Ms. Neves explained. “The hope is not to teach students what to think but how to think, and hopefully gain an appreciation that many controversial topics are nuanced.”
This debate unit is the second part of a larger endeavor designed to instill in students the values of and confidence in thinking critically, questioning sources, and engaging in meaningful dialogue. The unit builds on the foundation of what they learned in seventh grade, in which they found and analyzed reliable, informative sources and wrote informative research papers. In the unit, students first chose their respective positions based on provided evidence and then wrote a persuasive letter about the appropriateness of role-playing simulated violence. This assignment prepared students to argue and defend their positions rhetorically.
The eighth-grade class will end their debate unit with a discussion in which students will pretend to be judges at the International Criminal Court. Unlike the previous two assignments, they will have to come to a consensus on whether or not child soldiers should be punished for war crimes. Both of these activities are designed to teach that there are spaces for debate as well as dialogue, and citizens need to be open to changing their opinions based on new information or compelling arguments.
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