Debating Club

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A debating club or debating club is an association whose members meet regularly to hold debates in the form of a sporting competition ( debating ). The rules of the debate are determined by the respective format, with British Parliamentary Style (BPS) and Open Parliamentary Debate (OPD) being the most common in student debating in Germany . The participants are grouped into teams and a jury in the manner determined by the format, choose a topic, assign the positions to be represented (for and against) to the teams and usually start the debate after 15 minutes of preparation time. The usual speaking time per speaker is seven minutes. Debaters improve their rhetorical skills as well as their analysis and argumentation skills through this leisure activity. The topics of debate often take elements of current political events, cultural life and social events as an occasion. As a result, the debates offer potential for political education.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland

In Germany there are more than 70 university debating clubs, with an increasing tendency, which are organized in the Association of Debating Clubs at Universities , the umbrella organization for German-speaking countries.

In Austria there are so far nine debating clubs, although most of them are currently only active to a limited extent or not at all (as of January 2011). The Austrian debating clubs are the debating club Vienna (active), the debating clubs of the Academic Forum for Foreign Policy in Vienna (active), Salzburg (active), Graz (active), Linz (little active) and Eisenstadt (inactive), the debating club Innsbruck (inactive ), the Uni Graz Debate Club (inactive) and the 1st Klagenfurt Debate Club (inactive).

In Switzerland there are currently four active debating clubs in Bern, Geneva, St. Gallen and Zurich.

Anglo-Saxon area

Debating as a sport has a much longer tradition than in the German-speaking countries in schools and universities in the Anglo-Saxon region, where it was developed centuries ago. England is the motherland of debating, and the Cogers Society , founded in London in 1755, is considered the oldest debating club in the world. The oldest student debating clubs are the Cambridge Union Society (1814) and the Oxford Union (1823). Numerous clubs in the United States also look back on a long tradition. Since the early 20th century, many high schools and colleges in these countries have been setting up debate teams that compete against teams from other schools in local, national and international competitions. Competitive debating had its heyday in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s, but it has continued to this day.

In addition to the British Parliamentary Style (BPS) commonly used at international tournaments and the Open Parliamentary Debate (OPD) developed in Germany, as well as the Wartburg format, there are numerous other formats, such as that of the American Parliamentary Debate Association or that of the Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate .

See also

literature

  • Christian Blum: Debating - learning the royal form of rhetoric.
  • Dana Hensley, Diana Carlin: Mastering Competitive Debate , Clark Pub Co, 1999. ISBN 0-931054-58-3 (English)

Movies

Documentary:

  • Spew: The World of Competitive Debate (USA 2005, director: Steven Kung; short documentary)

Feature films:

  • Listen to Me (USA 1989; Director: Douglas Day Stewart)
  • Debating Robert Lee (USA 2004; Director: Dan Polier)
  • Thanks to Gravity (USA 2006; Director: Jessica Kavana)
  • Rocket Science (USA 2007; Director: Jeffrey Blitz)
  • The Great Debaters (USA 2007; Director: Denzel Washington )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clubs | VDCH. Retrieved February 11, 2020 .
  2. ↑ VDCH | Association of Debating Clubs at Universities. Accessed on February 11, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Assessment based on the data on the AFA website
  4. ↑ There is no activity on the club's website
  5. ↑ See the club's Facebook group .
  6. ↑ See the club's Facebook group .
  7. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/debattierklub.bern
  8. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/DebatGenevois
  9. ↑ http://www.debatingclub-unisg.ch/
  10. ↑ http://www.debattierclub.ethz.ch/