Students Coach Young Debaters

Tulane students enrolled in the service-learning course "Aristotle in New Orleans" are coaching debate teams at three New Orleans middle schools. By using the rhetorical and dialectical methods of Aristotle and other ancient theorists, the university students are teaching the younger students how to debate. Watch this video of their debate preparation.

Do zoos do more harm than good? This is the question that dozens of middle school students will debate on Saturday
(Nov. 21) on the uptown campus. Watch as they prepare in this video produced by Alicia Duplessis Jasmin.

"I wanted to teach a course on Aristotle's virtue ethics, which really gets to the core ideas of what education is about and how we are supposed to understand ethics," says Ryan McBride, postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Tulane Department of English.

McBride has initiated debate programs at Sophie B. Wright Middle School, Benjamin Banneker Middle School and Lafayette Charter School, but his goal is to start a citywide middle school debate league in New Orleans.

The final debate for students from the three schools will begin at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday (Nov. 21) in the Stibbs Conference Room on the second floor of the Lavin-Bernick Center on the uptown campus. The public is welcome to attend.

This effort is a collaboration between the Department of English, the Center for Public Service, Newcomb-Tulane College, the Provost's Office, New Orleans Outreach and the International Debate Education Association.