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The ICC does not infringe upon national sovereignty because it only has jurisdiction if the national justice system is either ineffective or unable to prosecute the criminal. National courts still have the responsibility and ability to prosecute their own criminals, and the ICC is only meant to be used as a last resor... | |
The ICC interferes with national operations (both military and humanitarian) because of how loosely the Rome Statue can be interpreted. A large issue with the ICC is that it subjects member states to definitions that can be interpreted in a number of ways. For example, University of Chicago law professor Jack Goldsmit... | |
The ICC is an independent court with enough checks that only pursues the most heinous criminals. The ICC was designed to pursue the "future Pol Pots, Saddam Husseins, and Milosevics who terrorize civilians on a massive scale." The fear of politically motivated prosecutions has yet to come true; the current warrants ha... | |
There are numerous checks that limit the power of the prosecutor and regulate the ICC's operations. There are numerous checks outlined in the Rome Statute that limit the power of the prosecutor, eliminating any concerns of abuse. For example, Article 7 clearly defines what a crime against humanity is, and other types ... | |
Not only is intelligence often badly flawed, internment simply doesn't work as a strategy to combat terrorism 1. Instead it is counter-productive, because it makes martyrs of the individuals and groups who are being detained. The experience of Northern Ireland was that internment acted as a "recruiting sergeant" for th... | |
The protection of intelligence sources is more important than trying suspects. At a time when our society is under threat, it is more important to protect our intelligence sources than it is to try and punish individual terrorists. Even when strong proof exists, charging and trying terror suspects in open court would ... | |
Governments clearly have powers to protect citizens from harm, but there is a limit to that extension of power. It is a limit that does not include the undermining of the very values the state is built upon, restricted executive power. Captured enemy combatants are not comparable to those captured during World War II, ... | |
Tribunals are adequate replacements that maintain respect for detainees' rights. The denial of normal legal processes does not automatically confer the absence of legal processes altogether. Though a normal public trial is not possible for security reasons, detainees' rights are still respected during the internment p... | |
Tribunals do not respect detainees’ rights, but in fact require the undermining of those rights. Regardless of the procedures with which internment is dressed up by embarrassed authorities, it is open to abuse because trials are secret with the executive essentially scrutinising itself. Often there is not a free choice... | |
Governments must have powers to protect citizens from harm. Governments must have powers to protect their citizens against threats to the life of the nation. This is not merely to directly protect citizens from political violence, but also because political violence ‘handicaps the process of reconstruction’ 1 in natio... | |
The war on terror is not like past, conventional conflicts but that does not prevent its classification as an armed conflict; soldiers are still dying in fire-fights, territory is still being fought over and the threat to homeland security is very real and visceral. According to the Bush administration, the war on terr... | |
Internment without trial does not justify the bad behaviour of other states, for it is justifiable under norms of international law. For example, the measures taken by the UK government to detain foreign nationals identified by intelligence as a serious threat to Britain are justified by conflicting priorities. In norm... | |
Internment without trial exacerbates the antagonism of enemies and subsequent risk to civilians. To intern without trial, for prolonged periods, the believed enemies of a state is to offer them and their supporters added reason to be antagonistic. In Northern Ireland, “violence soared following the introduction of int... | |
Internment without trial undermines democratic values. Rights are needed to protect the few as well as the many, otherwise there would be no need for them in a democracy. Indefinite detention and lack of a normal public trial undermine the key values of habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence. The Fifth Amendme... | |
Internment without trial fails to make society safer. Giving the government the power to detain suspects without due process of law will not in fact make society any safer. The proposition's arguments rely upon the accuracy of secret intelligence, which supposedly identifies individuals planning terrorist acts, but wh... | |
The war on terror is not an armed conflict, and therefore internment without trial is illegal. The war on terror is not like past, conventional conflicts, and the government should not be able to take wartime powers simply on its own declaration. The terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 were horrific, but they did n... | |
Internment without trial does not undermine either democracy or its values. Tough measures are aimed only at very few suspects; only 11 are currently detained in Britain, only a few hundred at Guantanamo Bay. Exceptional circumstances call for special measures, but these are so limited in scope that they do not threate... | |
Internment without trial encourages the bad behaviour of other states. Compromising our usual high standards of human rights encourages bad behaviour by other countries. Governments with less concern for rights are reassured by the apparent failure of liberal democracy to address a terrorist threat, and feel justified... | |
It is essential to reach an appropriate balance of rights and freedoms. Everyone recognises the importance of protecting rights and liberties, but this cannot be done at any cost. There is a wider duty on politicians to protect society from harm, and their voters will rightly hold them to account if they fail in this r... | |
The period of internment, however long, does not serve to exacerbate antagonisms inherent in adversaries. If anything, the period of reflection acts as a punitive measure designed to force the suspect to weigh up his choices and potentially disavow his beliefs. If innocent, they may develop antagonisms towards their ca... | |
When homework does take up time in class it is helpful for learning. And when it does not then it does not harm the classwork. Homework aids classwork by providing a space for those who have not finished the work to catch up and by helping us to remember what we did in class. | |
Homework takes up class time Homework does not only take up time doing the homework at home but also takes up time in class. First there is the time that the teacher takes when explaining the task. Then more time is taken going through the homework when it is done and marked. This time could be better spent engaging w... | |
Teachers will need to mark and go through work whether it is classwork or homework. It is better that the teacher should spend their time in class teaching so leaving practising the methods taught to homework. | |
When out of school we should have time to ourselves Time is valuable. We all need some time to ourselves. School already takes up a lot of time and it is necessary to have time which does not involve concentrating on learning. Education is not the only important activity in everyone’s day; physical activity, play, and... | |
We should expect to get a certain amount of homework per day and build other activities around the homework. Homework can be a useful part of time with family as it provides a chance for parents and other relatives to take part in schooling. | |
Whether homework puts us off learning will always depend on what the homework we are given is. Tasks that involve no interaction, or are not engaging will discourage learning. But homework could also mean reading an interesting book, having to find something out, create something, or doing a task with family. Homework ... | |
Homework wastes teachers time We are not the only ones who take a lot of time on homework, our teachers do as well. The teacher needs to design the homework, explain it, mark each piece individually, and tell everyone what they got right and wrong. If all this is not done then the homework loses its value as we need t... | |
Homework puts students off learning Especially if we get too much homework it can take the enjoyment out of learning. No matter how engaging the teacher is in class homework will almost certainly be stressful, boring and tiring. It is simply much harder to make homework engaging and interesting as it is often done on ... | |
Teachers should not set classwork expecting that the class will have to finish that classwork as homework. Students who are falling behind should receive more attention from the teacher during class to make sure that all the members of the class can move at the same speed. | |
Most homework is simply fulfilling a task that has already been explained so not truly teaching you to work on your own. Working on your own means setting your own targets, and working out how to overcome obstacles. | |
Doing our homework means we are taking responsibility for ourselves We are the ones who gain from learning so we should take responsibility for some of our own learning. We can take responsibility by doing homework. When we don’t do our homework we are the ones who suffer; we don’t get good marks and don’t learn as mu... | |
Homework makes sure we remember what we have learnt One way we learn is by repetition, another is by doing things, when doing homework we learn in both of these ways. When we are taught a method at school, such as how to do a type of sum, then we need to practice using that method to make sure we know how to so that w... | |
Homework is needed to finish classwork. We should think of homework as being a continuation of our classwork. Not everyone in the class works at the same rate so it is necessary for teachers to give anyone who is falling behind the chance to catch up. If this was done in class those who are faster would have nothing t... | |
Homework teaches us to learn on our own The main aim of education is to prepare us for the rest of lives. Homework is teaching us a key skill that we will need in the future. When we do homework we are learning to work on our own, the discipline to get the work done without the teacher’s prompting, and when we come up... | |
We don’t spend all of class time learning new methods so there should be time in class to practice any new method that is taught. Once some repetition has been done in class how much more do we really need at home? If we have not successfully learnt the method in the class then we will be simply repeating the mistake. | |
The same kind of responsibility is given to us no matter the kind of work. When given classwork we are responsible for completing it rather than playing around. The only difference at home is that it is our parents telling us to work not our teachers. | |
We recognise that not everyone should do every subject, but for practical reasons we have to ask them to give it a try up to a certain level. Apart from anything else, this is the most reliable way to tell whether or not the subject is right for them – how can you know that if you haven’t ever tried it? There are many ... | |
Some people find maths hard It is a fundamental principle of education that different people think in different ways. One notable application of this is the theory of different learning styles, and it also makes people have a preference for certain subjects. [1] Many people find maths hard, 37% of teens think it is th... | |
It is undeniable that education is a trade-off between different subjects. However, we contend that maths is one which we want to protect. It is a fundamental subject which is of use in many others, as well as teaching children how to think about problems. (Debating lessons are a great idea, but should replace somethin... | |
Maths is not engaging for students Maths is one of the least engaging subjects taught at school. Subjects like chemistry are full of flashes, fires and experiments which help people see what they’re being taught in front of them. History starts with telling stories, and even though that’s not what the subject is reall... | |
There are several problems with using “engagement” as a way to measure whether or not a subject should be taught. Firstly, there is no way to tell whether students are bored because the subject is boring, whether they’re bored because they are lazy, or whether it is simply how it is taught. If we always taught children... | |
If we don’t teach maths we can teach other things instead Schools are constantly pressed for time, money and staff. It is simply not possible to teach everything to everyone. This means that all of education is a balancing act. We try and isolate the most important parts of a subject and teach children what they need ... | |
Children should not be given power over their education, but it doesn’t follow that their opinions are of no consequence. We should very much care what they do and don’t enjoy. Firstly, if they don’t enjoy their schooling they won’t put any effort into it and will not actually learn anything. Secondly, if they feel we ... | |
Many children find science interesting, 12% consider it their favourite subject, and will choose it when given an option. [1] These children will be happy to take maths lessons even if they’re not compulsory. The only ones who won’t take them will be the ones who have no interest in science in any case, for whom there ... | |
Maths teaches a kind of logic which is useful for other things Most subjects are taught not just for the knowledge itself, but for the skills the subject requires. Schools don’t teach English Literature because they want children to know a few poems. They teach it to encourage children to think about how people’s perc... | |
Children should not be the arbiters of the education system To avoid teaching maths to children just because they don’t like the subject would be to shape the education system around adolescent whims. But children are not best placed to put a value on their education. They don’t know what knowledge is required for lif... | |
Maths is an important subject Every single science subject relies on maths. The whole of physics consists of using maths to model the world. At a basic level, this means drawing diagrams of forces, and at an advanced level it means writing down the gauge group which describes electroweak interaction, but it’s all math... | |
At the very least, for this argument to be true you would have to rewrite the syllabus to focus on problem-solving rather than knowledge. But even then, there is no compelling reason for having this particular way of teaching skills, and little reason why other subjects should not be teaching the same kinds of question... | |
Parents have a right to act on behalf of their children. It is the right of parents to make decisions on behalf of their children. It is not the role of the state to intervene in the raising of a child except in exceptional circumstances and the opposition do not accept that raising a child religiously constitutes exce... | |
State has a responsibility to protect and educate its citizens. The state should not allow the education of a child to be polluted by what is tantamount to brainwashing. Amartya Sen argues “Under this system, young children are placed in the domain of singular affiliations well before they have the ability to reason a... | |
Faith schools create a sense of community. This entire argument is based upon the fact that faith schools create a close sense of community within the school themselves. The opposition does not accept that this is harm and firmly believes that anything that creates a close sense of community is a force for good as it c... | |
Creates animosity towards religious groups Faith schools continuously perform better than normal schools. This creates a feeling amongst parents and children of wanting to be included in these faith schools. They are, however, excluded on the basis of their religion. This will create feelings of unfair exclusion, whic... | |
Undermines separation of religion and the state. Since education is something that the state is obligated to provide, any organisation that provides education is a representative of the state, even in private education. If religious groups are allowed to run schools then this means they are acting on behalf of the sta... | |
Running a school is not equivalent to running the country. The opposition does not accept that faith schools undermine the separation of religion and state. The religious groups running the school do not, as a result of running the school, have an opportunity to decide on the national curriculum or, for that matter, an... | |
To be encouraged not banned. The idea of closing down schools because they are performing better than other schools seems ridiculous. Rather than banning faith schools so all schools are on an even, but lower, playing field, a logical course of action would be to try and determine exactly what it was about faith school... | |
Insulting to religion. This legislation is not simply a message to organised religion telling them that they are not a higher authority than the state; it is a message saying that the state does not believe they are capable of running schools. This serves only to worsen the state’s already fractured relationship with o... | |
Faith schools are inherently divisive. At the age at which children are sent to faith schools, they are too young to have decided their religion for themselves, and so, their parents must have decided it for them. The proposition accepts that parents have a right to decide a child’s religion on its behalf but this mea... | |
Shows that religion is not a higher authority than the state. When the government allows religion to act on its behalf, it confuses the role of the state and the role of religious groups. As it stands, religious groups do not appear to be truly answerable to the state and, therefore, it is unclear whether they or the ... | |
Shows submission to religion. As explained above, the proposition believes that allowing organised religion to act on behalf of the state indicates that organised religions have as much authority as the state. It is important that religious people recognise that they are answerable to the state before they are answerab... | |
This is not the government’s responsibility. The government does not have a responsibility to educate a child within the exact parameters that their parents dictate. If this were true, then each individual set of parents would be allowed to pick and choose what parts of the national curriculum they wished their child t... | |
Relationship with organised religion. Passing this legislation with be sending a signal to the religious groups that are running faith schools that we do not think they are capable of running schools. The state’s relationship with organised religion is already a fractured one. This legislation would cause a lot of ten... | |
Faith schools can be necessary for a religious upbringing. Sometimes faith schools are necessary for children to get a full picture of the religion that they have been born into, particularly religions, like Islam, that are based mainly in societies unlike our own and far away from our countries. In these cases, banni... | |
Faith schools perform better than ordinary schools. Faith schools consistently perform better than ordinary schools. According to Ofsted, the UK schools inspectors, 73% of Catholic secondary Faith schools are good or outstanding, compared with 60% of English schools nationally. At primary level, 74% of Catholic school... | |
Relationship with religious people. This legislation would send a message of no confidence in religion and would be tantamount to the government condemning religion. It is wrong for government to suggest that faith schools are divisive as “the average grade awarded by Ofsted to secondary-level faith schools for promot... | |
This is not the government’s responsibility. The government has a responsibility to educate and to allow its people to practise whatever religion they wish to. The government does not have a responsibility to facilitate the practise of a religion where it would cause harms to its people in other ways. Since it is outli... | |
Parents have a right to ensure their child is brought up with the values they consider important. Parents send their children to school so that they can be properly educated. For many parents, this education includes proper moral codes and values. Sending their child to a faith school that they know will adhere to the... | |
Creates animosity towards religious groups. The fact that faith schools perform better than ordinary schools is an advantage only for the children who are lucky enough to attend. This causes feelings of resentment on the part of parents and children who were not of the correct faith and were, therefore, forced to go to... | |
Shows submission to organised religion. The proposition believes that by maintaining faith schools the government is allowing organised religion to act on its behalf. This not only undermines the separation of religion and the state but also indicates that organised religion has as much authority as the state. The prop... | |
Students are going to forget information whether they are out of school for three weeks or ten. Therefore, teachers will be performing four beginning of the year reviews instead of just one. In addition, students often switch off mentally at the end of term in anticipation of the vacations, which will mean more teachin... | |
Reduce “summer learning loss”. During long summer holidays, students completely put aside learning and forget all about their studies for up to three months. In this time, they inevitably forget quite a lot of what they have learned. Teachers then have to spend the first weeks of the new academic year bringing them ba... | |
Importance of education to national economic performance. A nation’s most important resource is its human capital, and in the modern world it is vital to have a skilled, educated workforce in order to remain competitive. Many nations have already adopted year-round schooling. By following their example, we will be giv... | |
Year-round schooling will probably mean increased administrative costs, as well as ensuring that overheads such as catering, heating and security have to be paid year-round rather than for just part of the year, as at present. [1] Education funding in many countries has been under pressure for many years, and most sch... | |
Year-round schooling does nothing to help the issue of boredom. Many “problem children” are more bored in school than outside it; others are often absent from school altogether. There is no hard evidence that social problems such as crime and drug use go up significantly during breaks in the school year. | |
Reducing inequality. Evidence suggests that children from lower-income families tend to “fall behind” further during long summer vacations. These children are less likely to read books, pursue additional studies or take part in useful extracurricular activities compared to their peers from wealthier families. [1] This... | |
Improves student achievement. Studies show that students in year-round schooling tend to get perform better on many assessment metrics than those who do not [1] . Schools operating a year-round calendar do not have to cram so much course content into a 9 month schedule, but can space out learning better. This allows t... | |
More efficient use of school resources and premises. Year-round schooling often goes hand in hand with multi-tracking, where different groups of students at the same school are on different schedules. This has the advantage of allowing school rooms, facilities and other resources to be used more efficiently, thus prov... | |
In actual fact, the evidence on year-round schooling is inconclusive, with other studies suggesting that there is no educational benefit from holding classes year-round [1] . Indeed, you could argue that some students prefer to concentrate the bulk of their learning into a shorter time frame and leave time for a long ... | |
It is certainly true that children from disadvantaged families do not do as well as their luckier peers, but it is not clear why changing the pattern of school attendance will change this. The overall proportion of the year spent away from school will not change, so there is no reason to believe that year-round schooli... | |
This argument is based on the assumption that year-round schooling delivers academic benefits to students. However, as we will see in Opposition argument 6, there is very little evidence for this. Without concrete evidence that this massive change will deliver real improvements in national educational performance, it w... | |
Again, there is nothing intrinsic to year-round schooling that makes it easier for families with several children. A single mother who struggles with young children will not be any better off having to take care of their children every six weeks instead of six months. Year-round schooling is unlikely to be applied in ... | |
Reduce social problems from disaffected, bored youth. The structure of the school year is often one of the few fixed points in young people’s lives. For many children, particularly those from poorer families, long summer holidays don’t mean summer camps and foreign holidays, but day after day sitting in front of the T... | |
Year-round learning can help reduce the burden on parents. For many parents, particularly those with more than one child, summer vacations can be a stressful and difficult time. Without the structure provided by school attendance, children become bored easily and parents struggle to cope. This is especially true for ... | |
Year-round schooling would necessitate a change in the way extra-curricular activities are structured, not a reduction in such hobbies. Shorter breaks of two or three weeks are more than sufficient for most extra-curricular activities and by spreading them throughout the year, instead of ring-fencing them into a couple... | |
Year-round schooling doesn’t place extra burdens on students; the whole point is that it reduces the stress and strain of school life by allowing learning to take place at a gentler pace that is dictated more by the needs of students than the timetable. Holidays of two or three weeks are plenty of time to recharge the ... | |
Imposes extra costs on education system. Many schools are simply not set up for year-round use. In particular, most schools are not air-conditioned and often use older, poorly-ventilated buildings and classrooms. In many parts of the world, opening schools during summer would either involve expensive retrofitting and ... | |
Damaging to extra-curricular activities. A lot of extra-curricular activities take place during summer holidays. Summer camps, trips abroad - even debating competitions. Summer holidays are a sensible time to hold such activities, partly due to the weather but also because different regions or school boards often have... | |
Places unfair burden on students. Many children don’t enjoy school. Even those who do still look forward to summer holidays as a time when they can relax and stop worrying about work for a while. And for some students, school life is difficult in other ways – social awkwardness or bullying being a common problem. Taki... | |
Year-round schooling will increase costs in some areas but more than offset these with efficiency savings in other areas (see argument 7, above). It makes no sense for buildings to sit idle for a third of the year. As for the argument about air-conditioning, this is only an issue in some countries round the world; in ... | |
Journalist Jeremy Shere describes the problems with most methods of nuclear storage: "There have been a few other interesting ideas –such as burying nuclear waste beneath the ocean floor. Scientists have also thought about putting waste in really deep holes, burying it in polar ice sheets, and stashing it beneath unin... | |
Underground nuclear storage is safer than any available alternative Underground nuclear waste storage means that nuclear waste is stored at least 300m underground. The harm of a leak 300m underground is significantly limited, if the area has been chosen correctly then there should be no water sources nearby to contam... | |
Storing nuclear waste underground is necessary - there are no better option available Even states without nuclear waste programs tend to generate radioactive waste. For example, research and medicine both use nuclear material and nuclear technology. Technologies such as Medical imaging equipment are dependent and the ... | |
Underground nuclear storage is not the only way to store nuclear material. Economically speaking, it is more expensive, but likely much safer to store nuclear waste above ground in facilities that can be easily monitored and dealt with. Unlike in underground storage facilities, should something go wrong above ground, i... | |
Integral Fast Reactors are not a solution for the short term. There are currently no Integral Fast Reactors in commercial operation and the research reactor that was to be constructed by the United States was canceled in 1994. Any attempt to use IFRs to recycle all of the world’s nuclear waste would be very expensive a... | |
The economic costs of underground storage are high. However, given that nuclear power is necessary to avoid what would likely be a very significant amount of economic harm, specifically from global warming. For example, it has been projected that not doing anything to address climate change would result in an overall i... | |
Nuclear waste can be put to beneficial uses France is the largest nuclear energy producer in the world. It generates 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. 1 It is very important to note, therefore, that it does not rely on underground nuclear waste storage. Instead, it relies on above ground, on-site storage. Thi... | |
Nuclear waste can be used in other forms of power generation There are new kinds of nuclear reactor such as ‘Integral Fast Reactors’, which can be powered by the waste from normal nuclear reactors (or from uranium the same as any other nuclear reactor). This means that the waste from other reactors or dismantled nucle... | |
Underground nuclear storage is excessively expensive Underground nuclear storage is expensive. This is because the deep geological repositories needed to deal with such waste are difficult to construct. This is because said repositories need to be 300m underground and also need failsafe systems so that they can be sea... | |
Side proposition supports the reuse of nuclear waste; however, it also believes that the remaining nuclear waste left by the process should be stored underground. This is because, the nuclear waste created from such a recycling process ends up being more concentrated and dangerous radioactively than normal nuclear was... | |
Sexual identity is confusing in any situation. It becomes even more confusing when one is exposed to sex education and the broad spectrum of sexual preference and practice before one is emotionally equipped to understand and appreciate it. Understanding one’s sexual identity is an exploration that must be pursued at on... | |
A safe framework for understanding sexuality and sexual identity are essential to human existence Sex and sexual identity is fundamental part of human life. Sexual desire, for both procreation and recreation, forms one of the core human drives that shapes behaviour. [1] Young people want to explore their own, and one ... |
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