Spring Debate
The Spring Debate Workshop was held from 5th to 7th May.
The workshop was a three-day event that included a two-day intensive debate program and culminated in a one-day debate tournament. The workshop provided students with the opportunity to improve their critical thinking and public speaking skills, as well as develop their use of well-grounded arguments, research skills, and expand their own horizons through exposure to different points of view.
Participants benefited from the skills and expertise of some of the best debaters from the Bishkek University League, including Karina Tolmacheva, Tamirlan Muktarov, Elvira Kalmurzaeva, and Iliyas Nurmambetov. The debate training utilized a wide variety of topics were debated, including ‘This House would allow victims of bullying to use ‘eye to eye’ principle’, ‘This House would choose economy over ecology’, and ‘This House would ban school uniform’.
The first two rounds of the concluding debate tournament saw the topics ‘This House would ban circuses with animals’ and ‘This House would decrease voting age in the Kyrgyz Republic’ debated. The subject of the semifinal was ‘This House, as a university student would prefer to stay in its home country instead of emigrating’, while the final saw the topic ‘This House would introduce debate as a mandatory subject at schools’ being debated.
Roughly forty schoolchildren from Bilimkana-Bishkek, Bilimkana-AUCA High Schoo, Oxford International School, and Silk Road International School took part in the workshop.
The winners of the Spring Debate Tournament 2017 are:
1 place: “Ethno Nomads” (Akmataliev Bayastan and Kish Ihsan) - Silk Road International School
2 place: “Ogurec” (Rafibekova Kamila and Daiyrbekova Elima) – Bilimkana-AUCA
3 place: “Altum Silentium” (Zakirova Zahro and Ruslanbekova Aydanek) - Oxford International School and Bilimkana-AUCA
4 place: “Отряд им. Ким Чен Ына” (Kyshtobaev Bekjan and Shadieva Jannat) – Bilimkana-AUCA
