Yesterday we had our “Simpsons” Debate Test in my Mon/Weds/Fri cohort middle-school debate class. Today we will have the same debate in the Tues/Thurs/Sat cohort.
I created a unit for my debate class that focuses on learning about the types of mistakes one can make in a debate – meaning reasoning errors and logical fallacies. To make it more interesting, I decided to go with a tongue-in-cheek, humorous theme, and so the debate topic is the “Simpsons” (all the kids love the Simpsons, of course). The other quirk of this unit is that I tell the kids I want them to deliberately make mistakes in their debate speeches. They really get into this – they’ve come up with some pretty humorous and silly reasons to support or oppose the proposition that “Bart is smarter than Lisa.”
One of my favorites, which I paraphrase: “Socrates once said a wise man is a man who says he’s not wise. Bart says he’s dumb, so he must be smart.” Yes, they’re really quoting Socrates (of course, they find the quote in Korean, and so it’s Socrates via translation through Korean, but I do remember a sentiment of this sort from him). Isn’t the internet wonderful?
I took some video and might post some of that later, if I get around to it. Meanwhile, here are some drawings by two of the talented students in that class. It’s a very small class – only 6 students. Claire drew a cartoon of the day’s theme.
Then she drew a class portrait. I’m not sure why she made the two boys in the class so small – Alex is taller than I am. And note that she gave me only 4 hairs on the top of my head. In the picture, my name in Korean is “왜저래” [wae-jeo-rae] which is a sort of joking “Korean name” for me, because of how it sounds similar to my name. If you type it into google translate, it says it means “What the hell?” – I don’t think it’s that strong, but the pragmatics are similar.
Finally, Jin drew a portrait of Claire.
