Keystone Magazine Learning the Keystone Way 2015-2016 EN | Page 26

Learning is Fun
What
is Your
Point?
A
Learning the Essential
Skill of Debating
crime is not a crime if there is no victim. What would your
arguments be, if you were to justify this statement? Though a
tad bit tricky, Maggie Yang from grade 4 thought it was quite
simple; she made deliberative distinctions between breaking
a law, and someone bearing the consequences – injury, harm,
etc. – of breaking a law. Why punish a person if there were no
consequences from breaking the law, debated this primary school student.
Maggie won fourth place out of nearly 140 students for a well-made point
in this written debate leg – champion writers – of the Beijing round of the
World Scholar’s Cup that took place at Keystone Academy on 19 and 20
March.
Meanwhile at the Beijing conference of Model United Nations (MUN) in early
March, students debated and negotiated possible international resolutions
on ‘preserving the cultural heritage of rapidly developing nations,’ and ‘pro-
moting social and cultural integration of displaced peoples in Europe and
the Americas.’ “This was my first MUN. I have participated in the World Schol-
ar’s Cup before, but not the MUN. It was exciting for me,” exclaims Justin Jin
of grade 10, adding, “Debates interest me because debating trains your brain
to think out of the box, improves your logic and reasoning, critical thinking,
and confidence.” Debating – written or oral – is an important skill for any stu-
dent, notes middle and high school English Language Acquisition teacher
Audrey Moh for all of the above reasons and more. “It helps students develop
strategy, refine arguments, hone persuasion techniques, and builds confi-
dence and language,” she adds. Keystone now has a few debating teams –
Model United Nations (MUN), Global Debate, World Scholars Cup. The teams
24