Been following his german channel for a while now, really cool that he deceided to start an english one aswell
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- Thread starter Villanelle
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Starting to make videos for a new channel of mine, won't give away to much beside the fact it will take a month or two before it arrives and it is diffrent compared to my other videos
So um, I got assigned a project which is a debate against like the four smartest people in my school which is about if Animal Testing for Medical Purposes should be banned. Am I cooked, or am I not. Do you guys or ladys have any ideas!
The point of a debate is not to win, but to share your side of an opinion in a concise and informed way. You aren’t cooked unless you don’t even bother to try.
which side are you on
- Listen well
- Don't get emotional
- Be succinct, make your point once and let it land
- Research and prepare well so you know what arguments they will bring up and have counterpoints ready
- It's school, which means it's low stakes and good practice so have fun!
Let me add to this by asking you to keep an eye out for logical fallacies:
List of fallacies - Wikipedia
Im on the side of banning Animal Medical Testing
Can't be as bad when I was at school with a debate on womens suffrage where the entire history class was split by gender. That was an... interesting time.
Thank you so much for these tips.
Some people at my school think women should be sandwich dispensers...
one big point that comes to mind is that we can use cultured cells to perform most tests that would otherwise require animal testing and overall just looking at what alternatives to animal testing exists would be a good starting point.
Not only this I found out that 115M animals die yearly and only 8% of those deaths actually help humans progress. Another sad fact is monkeys will mutilate themselves to death due to all the pain and injections.
After spending some time watching and listening to the Donkey in-game, I still have no idea what people are talking about.
It makes donkey sounds, what's the big deal?
It makes donkey sounds, what's the big deal?
That is just... godawful teaching
As a no-longer teacher that makes me shudder. Negative experience for everyone involved and what is there to learn? Some things are simply not up for debate, even in school. Yuckers.
Not as bad as when a male colleague told me that as punishment, he made a boy sit on a chair in the middle of the room and got the class to laugh and point at him and call him a girl.
Yup, that really happened. I was stunned into silence but to this day regret not reporting him. I did tell him that was a truly awful thing to do and defriended him there and then.
It's scary when you've seen behind the scenes and know how crap some (many) teachers are - as human beings let alone in power and influence over kids. Then some are simply amazing and the best, but get beaten down by systems. Then a very few rise above that and change our lives for the better. I like to think I was the latter for at least one person but most of the time I was very tired and trying my best but rarely felt good enough. It is such a hard job, I don't think I'll ever go back to it now I've had a taste of the lazy life of an office/at home worker. Pushing a mouse around a screen can be boring as hell but could never be described as difficult, lol.
Another argument to look at is animal sentience.
Is it ethical to knowingly and deliberately cause pain to sentient beings, for any purpose? If yes, why don't we test on humans? That would be the best biological test surely.
If the counter to that is level of intelligence, then why don't we test on humans with reduced cognitive facility, like people in comas or with dementia? Some people display less intelligent behaviour than most animals.
These are obviously horrifying ideas and the point is not to promote them, but to call out the hypocrisy in the arguments for testing on intelligent sentient beings such as primates, dogs and rats.
- Sentience cannot be the reason testing on non-human animals is ethical, as science now widely accepts the sentience of many life forms.
- Intelligence cannot be the reason, as some people are less intelligent than many animals but of course even the notion is disturbing.
What reasoning allows us to test on others animals and not on humans?
We should baulk at both concepts.
The answer is speciesism. A bias that humans have, uplifting human rights above and beyond the rights of all other life even to existence. Speciesism is a bigotry that enables the mass genocide and subjection of horror to all other species.
Peter Singer is the best philosopher for this, go read some of his stuff and you'll have all the argument you need. He has won debates even against people like Richard Dawkins on animal rights issues. You can watch some of his debates on Youtube.
There is a great case against testing of any kind on animals. You can win this.
Disclaimer: these are not necessarily my personal opinions, just a summary of the case that can be made against medical testing on animals.
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Get ready to face this counterpoint if you haven't already: your classmates will argue that a major likely alternative is human testing, and that would be arguably even more cruel because we're hurting our own kind and the human mind has more value than that of an animal. Be prepared for how you're going to answer to that.Not only this I found out that 115M animals die yearly and only 8% of those deaths actually help humans progress. Another sad fact is monkeys will mutilate themselves to death due to all the pain and injections.
Happy World Donkey Day everybody! Yes, that's real (and at least recognized in the USA)!
That sounds awful! How old was that kid? If a teacher has to discipline a kid in any way, the whole class shouldn't be involved. I get that students need to face the consequences of poor behavior, but that's just too far. Just write the kid up, give a detention, or call the office or their parents (if you're given their number).That is just... godawful teaching
As a no-longer teacher that makes me shudder. Negative experience for everyone involved and what is there to learn? Some things are simply not up for debate, even in school. Yuckers.
Not as bad as when a male colleague told me that as punishment, he made a boy sit on a chair in the middle of the room and got the class to laugh and point at him and call him a girl.
If I may reluctantly play devil's advocate, the best reasoning that I can give for that kind of punishment is to motivate the kid to not behave that way again. I was learning about different legal theories a while back in my only semester of law school before leaving, and I remember reading about Deterrent Punishment Theory: making the criminal and the public aware of the punishment in order to deter them from committing a crime.
However, what the teacher in your scenario did wasn't aligned with Retributive Punishment Theory: the punishment must be deserved and proportional to the crime committed and any caused harm.
It's a very fascinating subject. Here are some others:
- Rehabilitative Punishment Theory - Punishment/incarceration can serve as a means to address the underlying issues and motivations to rehabilitate offenders into law-abiding citizens.
- Preventive Punishment Theory - Removing offenders from society can prevent further harm if they decide to repeat offenses.
- Expiatory Punishment Theory - It's the offender's moral responsibility to take ownership of their actions, so the punishment can serve as a means of atonement.
- Utilitarian Punishment Theory - Reducing crime and encouraging social order increases the overall well-being of society.
As a former full-time teacher of early gen alpha middle schoolers (now currently a sub), I feel ya. I had a hard time controlling the kids. Grading papers took up way too much of my personal time (I made it a personal policy of mine to have the students use their iPads as little as possible.). The stress and the lack of exercise resulted in weight gain. I'm still grateful for the experience though.
I think they were 10-11 year olds.
These theories relate to adult criminality. I personally don't believe in any kind of punishment of kids or teens unless serious harm has been caused, especially not public humiliation. I also objected to the idea that being called a 'girl' is a bad thing, or that gender is anything to mock, so it was double whammy bad what that guy did. Traumatising for the kid and for all the girls in the class
We were English teachers in Vietnam when it happened and it was crazy because Vietnamese kids are so much sweeter and better behaved than American or British ones and shouldn't need any form of punitive / disciplinary action from the teacher (but clearly he was a bad teacher so they were probably rebelling).
Most of the time I taught teens and young adults Academic English at a university, so my experiences were much easier than those of public or high school teachers cause my kids were pretty switched on and engaged, but it was still knackering! The constant admin, homework and lesson prep means you never really get a break. I got to the point where I felt like all my social and creative energy was going into my job and leaving me with too little left over for myself.
I loved my students though, I miss making those connections and those moments where you feel something has clicked. So rewarding. I don't get that kind of fulfillment anymore and I really do miss it. I have time to build zoos though