Thursday afternoons at Olives ... Debate Time!

Every Thursday afternoon Olives Rehabilitation Centre gets together for something of a debate hysteria. It’s a great chance for the students to think on their feet and express their views, representing themselves as “Honourable ‘such and such’, MP of ‘such and such’” in the “House of Parliament”. 

The names of the "speakers" (children from standards 1 - 3) for both sides of the debate are written on the board. Each child stands up and presents their argument.

Our class of Standard 3 chose their own topic  "mother or father, which is better?"

GVI volunteer, Gina, writing down key points for Standard 3's debate

As we gave the go-ahead to this topic, the classroom went into a bit of madness…but in a good way! All 36 students were jumping around with enthusiasm, bursting out with arguments – it was so great to see! 

Children from Standard 3 preparing their points for the afternoon's debate

No matter the level of confidence in English or how shy the student was, everyone got involved, trying to express their argument – some of which were quite crazy! For example, we had some arguments which went something like this:

“Mother is better than father because mother can stand on the other side of the room and just look good and the father will always come over to her.”

“Father is better than mother because he can play football”

GVI volunteers, Annabelle and Gina, watch Standard 1 - 3 debate  mothers vs. fathers

Not quite the arguments you would find in the schools we are used to back home, but nevertheless very interesting, funny and overall the students had a ball!!!

Annabelle & Gina

Thursday afternoons at Olives ... Debate Time!