Our Form 4 pupils made their voices heard at an inaugural debating competition held at Culford School. The idea here was to showcase the debating skills and abilities of prep school pupils, with the aim of streamlining and launching an annual prep school debating competition.
Four Form 4 pupils represented the school. This in itself was testimony to the strength of debating at SJCS, as all opposing school teams were in Years 7 and 8.
Teachers from other schools were surprised and wowed by the confidence and the delivery of our younger students.
Our quartet performed magnificently and seriously impressed the rest. We stayed true to our principles of not reading out prepared arguments; this was, after all, a Debating Day and not a public speaking event. As such, John's pupils focused on using language to persuade (rhetoric) such as repetition, emotive vocabulary and patterns of three. All our debaters delivered their arguments using bullet points and this meant that they were able to maintain eye-contact with the audience and focus on keeping their arguments simple yet powerful and, therefore, persuasive.
Other schools included Framlingham College Prep, St Mary's Colchester, The Perse, Langley School, South Lee School, Gresham's and, the hosts, Culford School. Our debate (against Culford A Team) was 'This house believes that computers are better than books'.
We look forward to next year's competition and we are confident that we will offer a stiff challenge to very best teams that we encounter.