Preparatory School Debating

The topic for round 5 of ISDA was ‘That all children aged 10 and above should have a mobile phone,’. We got our second win of the season versus SCEGGS as we debated for the negative. The main focus of our debate was to defend the status quo whereby children can have a phone, rather than requiring they must have a phone.

Our first speaker, Rory, spoke about how kids having phones would expose them to inappropriate content and could result in them being excluded by their peers. Chenyu, our second speaker, explained that mobile phones could present distractions to student learning and that young children can easily misuse or break phones. Christian concluded our debate by rebutting the other team’s arguments that phones are good because they help students access content by stating that this can cause more harm than good. He also pointed out to the adjudicator that the points presented by Trinity were far more important to a child’s well-being than those presented by the affirmative team.

SCEGGS opened their debate without presenting a model, which made it easier for us to debate against their ideas. They spoke mainly about how it would be safer and more accessible if students had a mobile phone and argued that access to the internet from an early age would spark curiosity in the children’s minds.

– Ethan