Debates on historical topics will be held Friday afternoon, Novmber 09

• The actual debates conclude a three-part, Friday afternoon series in debate training for students in grades 7-12.
• Lake Pointe uses the formal "Lincoln-Douglas format" to focus upon civil presentation of argument and rebuttal. The L-D format allows for adjusting the length of each section, so that debate lengths can be shorter in middle school grades and longer in high school grades.
• Parents, teachers, and students not involved in a history course are invited to join the audience of encouragers -- including parents and students in grade 6 who want to peek ahead at the secondary program opportunities.

The schedule

To print a schedule for this year's debate day, click here

• Because of scheduling needs, students in grades 7th, 8th and 9th will hold their debates during third and fourth periods
• 10th graders will begin the afternoon event.
• There are two separate debates for the larger 7th, 9th and 10th grade classes.

The debate event ends by 4:00, to allow athletes travel time for the night's home basketball games.

The importance of incorporating debate in academic training

Lake Pointe shares parent desires to cultivate critical-thinking, confident communicators. Structured debate practice is a proven method in classical education to sharpen skills in argumentation and presentation.

As the academy continually seeks to integrate subjects and skills into a holistic and self-reinforcing program, history is an excellent subject choice for practicing the art of debate. In history, the facts of what did happen are available, but since people were involved, there is no shortage of decisions, actions, and motives that can be debated from the evidence. “Should” he, she, or they have done that… is a recurring opportunity to discuss and to argue the pros and cons.

Using Friday afternoons to cultivate debate is important. Since the skills benefit the student and all of his subjects, co-curricular time allows us to take advantage of students already being on campus in order to coordinate coaching and preparation time – without taking more history class time than is necessary.