Busan Office of Education Enhances Students' Logical and Critical Thinking Skills... Hosts Reading Debate Festival

82 High School Students Participated, 20 Outstanding Participants Selected in Non-Competitive Roundtable Discussion

The Busan Metropolitan Office of Education (Superintendent Ha Yun-su) announced on the 31st that it will hold the "2024 Academic Year Reading and Debate Festival" at Kyungsung University at 9:30 a.m. on the 2nd of next month, targeting 82 students from reading and debate clubs of 41 high schools in the Busan area.

This festival aims to cultivate talents with democratic citizenship awareness who empathize with and respect others' thoughts by enhancing students' logical and critical thinking skills through reading and debate.

The Busan Office of Education will operate the festival as a non-competitive roundtable debate for 82 students selected through school-level selection from among 246 students who participated in the "High School Students Reading and Debate Camp" last August.

The roundtable debate is a form of discussion based on equality and fairness, where participants speak about their claims within a set time and then rebut or question other debaters' arguments.

Participating students will read the designated book, "Again, the Usefulness of History" (author Choi Tae-sung), and engage in two rounds of debate on the topics: "Values you want to pursue or figures you want to emulate through history and the reasons" and "Contemporary social issues that can be solved through historical cases or lessons."

The students will be organized into 10 groups of 8 to 9 members regardless of their schools and will participate in the first and second debates. The Office of Education plans to select a total of 20 outstanding debaters, one per group and topic. Outstanding debaters will be chosen by a voting method where each participant nominates one other student, and those with the highest votes will be selected as outstanding debaters.

Ha Yun-su, Superintendent of Busan Education, said, "This festival will help cultivate students' humanities literacy through reflection on the world and life," adding, "I also hope it will greatly contribute to improving problem-solving and communication skills and fostering a sense of community."