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"Heeelp me - Debate Help"

'This house believes that private education should be banned'

I'm Proposing this motion for a debate on Thursday.
I completely forgot about it until now, I DO have some basic ideas on a piece of paper somewhere... I just need to find it...

AAAHHH

Did the debate today.

And I bricked it. Hard.

The opposition had spent the previous night in the school library together... while we (me and team-mate) had spent about 1 hour preparation in total, seperately.

And they had a much easier argument.

Cubist wrote:
> I was merely making the point that Private schools should be banned
> from society because they promote segregation within our educational
> systems between the rich and the poor.
>
> You may so there is segregation within healthcare your car and so on
> but as the saying goes two wrongs don't make a right and private
> schools should be banned to element the option of segregation in that
> area. Yes we still have segregation in other places but that is not
> the issue is it.
>
> Finally I am not saying that no one deserves high quality education
> but that no one person deserves it more than anyone else and money
> should not be the deciding factor.



Unfortunately Bell is right. You may not think that money should be the deciding factor but it decides practically everything in our lives - why should I have to drive an old, unsafe car, or use an old, slow computer - because I can't afford to replace them. No Government has the right to say the rich can't educate their children above and beyond what the poor are able to - would you consider banning after school classes, scout groups or swimming lessons as well?

You may be a master debator but I am a cunning linguist! :p

I can help, i am a master debator LD

Belldandy wrote:
> Anyway, real debates are much harder than internet ones because there
> is less time to think or find examples. Unless you can get someone to
> sit in with a wireless laptop with windows open on Lexis and Google.
> Which may be conspicious.


Heh. In one of the few debate competitions I've 'competed' in we went up against a few teams from Oxford. They all had big level-arch files packed with notes on every subject that might come up, which they furiously studied in the half-hour preperation time before each debate.

One of the things I loved about debating was the challenge of being given a totally random subject, and have to create the argument for whichever side I was, blagging and bluffing through the gaps in my knowledge.
Notes and stuff seem to destroy all that - where's the challenge in reciting someone else's opinion?

HálloHowArtThou wrote:
> Can't I technically make this into a 'Communism vs Capitalism'
> debate?

I don't think so, at least if you want to ground it in reality - the school system in Russia under communism were ever wider apart than ours in terms of quality, resources, and so on.

On the other hand many Marxist writers (like David Harvey) believe that the driving force behind difference\changes in the Capitalist world are all economic, so I suppose in a way you could bring Marxism into it.

I still think that economics is the ultimate key to this subject, you could argue that all public schools could be brought up to (in terms of quality, resources, equipment, class sizes and so on) those of private schools if people would pay for that - private schools only have what they have because people will pay for them. Which brings it to: Will everyone whose children go to public schools be prepared to pay ? I'd wager the answer is no, so does the group that does want to pay (in terms of taxation or subsidy) want to pay for everyone ? No, because in a capitalist society wealth is used to pay for services for the person with the wealth, not generally for a group of people (at least in terms of private individuals).

So if people will not pay, in the same way that those who cannot pay cannot attend private schools, then how can they expect the service to be there? But surely it's not fair to remove a service for those who can pay for it - and that requires no government financial aid - , just because a majority cannot afford it, and since when was it the task of any group to decide to do so in a free society?

Anyway, real debates are much harder than internet ones because there is less time to think or find examples. Unless you can get someone to sit in with a wireless laptop with windows open on Lexis and Google. Which may be conspicious.

If you're first prop then I'm sure you can define the debate to steer it that way, and it looks like it could quite easily go that way.


Bell: Easy tiger. He has to argue it on some points. Sure, you can produce counter-arguments, but then it'd be a pretty crap debate if you couldn't!
And equally you can produce counter arguments to some of your points.
A couple that stand out in my memory:

'People are free to spend their money as they want, within reason'
Sure, the key part is 'within reason', and the proposition side would have to argue that all the social injustices of not giving kids an equal chance would put pvt education beyond what was within reason.

'Kids form social circles anyway...'
Sure, but despite that, they'll still interact with other social circles and groups more than if they were at a pvt school.

'The segregation happens anyway / is part of a capitalist society'
Ecstacy use happens anyway, that doesn't mean it should be legalised / encouraged to happen all the time.
We're a capitalist society, sure, but it's shades of grey, not black and white. The left and right are both present in balance, and any one feature of society can be adjusted to slightly shift the balance. Just because we're predominantly capitalist doesn't mean we can't go left with our schools. We have the welfare state and nhs, right?


I'm sure you can come up with counter agruments to all these points too, and it'd probably help HHAT anticipate how the debate could go if you did, but neither argument will ever be irrefutable, and the bottom line of the thread is knocking some ideas around that can be used in the debate. Hell, this isn't even my personal opinion on the subject.

Nice points, I'll reply to them and go through them when I can, after discussing it with a couple of mates today.. I was thinking;
Can't I technically make this into a 'Communism vs Capitalism' debate?

Okay, but whichever way you look at it private schools are not segregating anyone, the economy is.

I was merely making the point that Private schools should be banned from society because they promote segregation within our educational systems between the rich and the poor.

You may so there is segregation within healthcare your car and so on but as the saying goes two wrongs don't make a right and private schools should be banned to element the option of segregation in that area. Yes we still have segregation in other places but that is not the issue is it.

Finally I am not saying that no one deserves high quality education but that no one person deserves it more than anyone else and money should not be the deciding factor.

Anyway they were just some points a wanted to put forward to help with the debate. I didn't want to actually debate the topic here and now Belldandy heh.:D