Debate as a tool for social progress, Arlan A. Narvaez R., Universidad Central de Venezuela, Venezuela

For more than 25 years, aggravated during the last ones, the education in Public Sector Schools has many deficiencies and can be characterized as one of very poor quality; these and other problems related to the rough social conditions in many of the areas where they are located, particularly when they are in barrios (shanty towns) or low income neighborhoods, conspire together against both school attendance and the possibilities of a future better life or social progress.

Students from those schools find very little motivations for studying and learning, most of them fall into a sort of resignation that they will have no better opportunity in life and that they have to accept their fate as poor.

In this framework we have started a program for teaching and coaching Debate teams in Low Income Areas Public Sector Schools (LIAPSS), as part of our project to sow and develop Debate in Venezuela. LIAPSS is a social venture, totally free of charge for the participating students and also for the Schools.

The first move was to request permission from the Principal of the School in order to conduct the program; we started with two Schools, “Juan Bautista Castro” and “5th of July” (this one located in a very rough area) with two groups of about 15 students in each school. The students came voluntarily to a selection interview and they committed to have two sessions every week and to submit the homework punctually.

The instructors are university students, all of them debaters from 4 different Debate Clubs related to our organization, AUDAS.

3rd International Conference on Argumentation, Rhetoric, Debate and the Pedagogy of Empowerment, October 2010, Maribor, Slovenia.

Further details can be found at the conference websites:
Basic information at debate.uvm.edu/debateblog/better/Welcome.html
News blog at betterworldconference.blogspot.com/

The conference was organized by the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor in Slovenia uni-mb.si/ , ZIP, Za in proti, zavod za kulturo dialoga/Pro et contra, institute for culture of dialogue zainproti.com/ , and the World Debate Institute of the University of Vermont debate.uvm.edu/debateblog/wdi/Welcome.html .

The organizers are grateful for the support of our sponsor QatarDebate qatardebate.org/ .

Thanks to organizers Boris Vezjak, Alfred Snider and Bojana Skrt. Special thanks to Peter Mesarec, Monica Sobocan and Aljoša Polšak.