Topics for the April 30th Championship Tournament:
Children under 14 should not use smartphones.
Topics for March 5 Tournament:
Topics for January 22nd Tournament:
Topics for January 22nd Tournament:
This house supports genetic engineering of human embryos
This house prefers a world in which national secession is widely permitted.
Varsity-only Topic:
Ban Plea Bargains
We are so proud of all our schools and students for participating in this year's program! Congratulations to the ESU NYDL Middle School Debate team from The Dalton School in New York City for winning the 2021 Middle School Debate Championship, and to all of this year's participants. Read more about this year's season.
topics fROM THE MAY 2021 CHAMPIONSHIP
The US should not develop or use lethal autonomous weapons.
Dysfunctional democracy is better than benevolent dictatorship.
Overall, private schools do more good than harm.
Pandemic lockdowns have done more good than harm.
NATIONAL NEWS – posted May 1, 2016
The Hackley School, Stephen Fitzpatrick, Kiri Fitzpatrick, Hannah Ostfield, Alex Goldman
The English-Speaking Union Middle School Debate Program capped off a successful fifth year with its annual Championship Tournament, which took place at Stone Bridge Middle School in Allentown, NJ, on April 16, 2016. All six ESU Middle School Debate Program leagues participated bringing together 250 debaters from 29 schools from New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C.
The English-Speaking Union Middle School Debate Program teaches the fundamentals of argumentation and debate to students in grades 5-8. Established in 2011, the program now includes three ESU-sponsored leagues in New York, two in New Jersey and one in Washington, DC. Some 50 public, private, parochial and charter schools participate in the program, engaging more than 1,000 teenagers annually in weekly after-school debate activities designed to develop and hone student's public speaking, critical thinking, listening and debating skills.
The ESU is pleased to share today's The New York Times article, "A Diverse Mix of Pupils, Learning Civilized Dissent," featuring the ESU Middle School Debate program's New York Debate League. Now in its fourth year, the program, designed to help young adolescents develop critical thinking and language arts skills through public speaking, has reached more than 2,300 students in grades 5 to 8 in New York and New Jersey. There are nearly 900 individual debates through this program annually.
The article underscores one of the Middle School Debate program's strengths—bringing together students from various backgrounds that, as Brianna Scott (a seventh grader at Success Academy Harlem West) says, "prepare[s] you to go out into the world."