We're already in day four here at the Lexington Debate Institute, and charging full steam ahead! We wanted to send a quick reminder to parents that tomorrow we will be spending the afternoon outside. We will provide sunscreen for application, but if you would rather your child use your family's preferred brand/style of sunscreen, we encourage you to lend a bottle or tube to your child to bring in for themselves. We will also be providing allergen-free desserts, but they should still bring their own lunches.
We started out Thursday with our first mini-topic, climate change. After discussing both positive and negative effects of climate change, we ventured into different strategies for responding to the situation. From restrictions on emissions through command-and-control or economic incentives to geoengineering with carbon capture storage to changes in energy mixes with solar, wind, and hydropower, there were plenty of actions we considered the pros and cons of taking. We then broke into mini-debates over whether or not the United States federal government should substantially increase restrictions on private sector emissions through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system.
Lunch held as a constant in our schedule, with the weather still nice enough outside to eat and play under the sun. Hopefully the weather stays nice through the end of tomorrow and our field day!
Coming back in from lunch, we learned about the structure of the debate format we will be using for the camp tournament, Public Forum. With this structural understanding of the form of our debates, we could spend the rest of the afternoon focusing on learning about the content of our resolution. Research will play a big part of our camp until the tournament (and play a large role in debate during a real competitive season), so we want to make sure that students understand the core skills from the get-go. We are spending enough time in camp on this that they should feel no pressure to do research while they're at home. We will be interspersing research with fun energy-building activities to keep students lively and focused.
We're looking forward to seeing them tomorrow, and hope that they're looking forward to the field day!
