Carbon Emissions Debate Begin In Earnest As The World Is Posed For Discussion
United States of America (Press Release) September 28, 2007 --
I was totally amazed and very excited when The People Speak Organization announced this year about their new public debate format. My school has participated in The People Speak Debates before, but this year’s topic not only hit a responsive cord with my students, it allowed our school to begin to bring a greatly enhanced learning environment into the classrooms at Del Valle High School.
If the goal of debate to increase knowledge and the goal of education is to facilitate knowledge, then I call for revolution in the way we teach. “Let the people speak!”
What better words can we hear than those? What truer knowledge can we learn?
At this point in time one may ask what this man is talking about. It surely can’t be debate? I thought debate was the playground of rich, affluent schools of privilege, opulence, and student parking lots full of cars that cost more than average income of working class family. If the French Revolution was fought for "liberty, equality, fraternity," then the revolution that call for today is to change the very paradigm of teaching.
How can you make some people inherently unequal equal? In Plessey v Ferguson the message was Separate but Equal was okay as long as it was separate. Today under the Brown v Board of Topeka Kansas decision, we would view this decision as inherently unequal. However, we are doing many of the same practices of the 1896 decision that we found so abhorrent in very own classroom today. Money can not be a factor in learning. We must educate all students to an ever increasing higher standard. Not a standard riddled by the dictates of four large testing companies who are amassing a fortune sucking the very innovation out of our educational process, but a standard that allows all school classrooms to become world class schools.
There is a great deal of difference talking about a foreign country and then talking to people in foreign country. There is great deal of difference in taking a multiple choice test and defending your knowledge against an opponent. Debate is the world’s best kept secret no longer. Thanks to people like The People Speak, students from the United States are debating students from Russia, Georgia, Italy, Poland, and Sweden in a debate over carbon emissions.
For twelve days in October and twelve days in March, the debate world will be rocked when high school students participate with unparalleled access to discuss such issues as carbon emissions. The real inconvenient truth may actually be simply this- no child left behind was simply a law, The People Speak was truly a call for the revolution. Let the debates begin!
If the goal of debate to increase knowledge and the goal of education is to facilitate knowledge, then I call for revolution in the way we teach. “Let the people speak!”
What better words can we hear than those? What truer knowledge can we learn?
At this point in time one may ask what this man is talking about. It surely can’t be debate? I thought debate was the playground of rich, affluent schools of privilege, opulence, and student parking lots full of cars that cost more than average income of working class family. If the French Revolution was fought for "liberty, equality, fraternity," then the revolution that call for today is to change the very paradigm of teaching.
How can you make some people inherently unequal equal? In Plessey v Ferguson the message was Separate but Equal was okay as long as it was separate. Today under the Brown v Board of Topeka Kansas decision, we would view this decision as inherently unequal. However, we are doing many of the same practices of the 1896 decision that we found so abhorrent in very own classroom today. Money can not be a factor in learning. We must educate all students to an ever increasing higher standard. Not a standard riddled by the dictates of four large testing companies who are amassing a fortune sucking the very innovation out of our educational process, but a standard that allows all school classrooms to become world class schools.
There is a great deal of difference talking about a foreign country and then talking to people in foreign country. There is great deal of difference in taking a multiple choice test and defending your knowledge against an opponent. Debate is the world’s best kept secret no longer. Thanks to people like The People Speak, students from the United States are debating students from Russia, Georgia, Italy, Poland, and Sweden in a debate over carbon emissions.
For twelve days in October and twelve days in March, the debate world will be rocked when high school students participate with unparalleled access to discuss such issues as carbon emissions. The real inconvenient truth may actually be simply this- no child left behind was simply a law, The People Speak was truly a call for the revolution. Let the debates begin!
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