Preliminary rounds
This House Would classify all major organised crime groups as terrorist organisations
Round 3Science and Technology
This House Believes That it is in the interest of AI companies to abandon sycophancy as a design strategy
Info slide
AI sycophancy is the tendency of Large Language Models (LLMs) to agree with, flatter, or validate user opinions, even at the expense of occasionally being misleading.
Round 4Environment and Animals
This House Believes That animal rights organizations should encourage activists to break the law to defend animals (e.g. breaking into slaughterhouses to record and publish footage of animal abuse, freeing injured animals)
Round 5Sports
This House Would allow fans to veto player personnel decisions of sports clubs (e.g. acquiring, releasing, or drafting players, negotiating player contracts)
Round 6Ethics and Philosophy
This House Regrets the predominant belief that suffering builds character
Round 7Politics and Government
This House Prefers governments in high income countries supplying housing vouchers rather than building social housing
Info slide
Housing vouchers give low income households a fixed periodic sum that contributes to renting housing on private markets. Social housing, by contrast, is a system where the state directly builds, owns, and allocates housing units to low income households.
Round 8Ethics and Philosophy
This House Believes That Western progressives adopting cultural relativism on feminist issues* has done more harm than good *feminist issues include, but are not limited to, women's relationship with religious symbols such as the hijab, women's land rights, family laws and indigenous customs
Info slide
Cultural relativism is the view that the values and practices of a culture must be understood in their own cultural context and not judged according to the standards of a different culture.
Break rounds
Double-octofinalsSociety and Culture
This House Supports the decline of traditional retail in favour of e-commerce
OctofinalsEthics and Philosophy
This House, as a religious individual, Would actively question religious teachings, as opposed to passively accepting them
QuarterfinalsEthics and Philosophy
This House Prefers A World where children were raised communally
Info slide
For the purposes of this debate, “children being raised communally” refers to a system in which childcare and upbringing are collectively managed by the wider community rather than individual parents. In this model, there are no designated primary caregivers or nuclear family units.
SemifinalsEthics and Philosophy
This House Believes That Nicolás Maduro's removal is in the interest of Venezuelan people
Grand FinalEthics and Philosophy
This House Believes That humans led more fulfilled lives before the neolithic revolution
Info slide
The Neolithic Revolution, starting around 10,000 BCE, was the shift from small and mobile groups who survived by hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants to larger and more settled communities that grew crops and kept domesticated animals.
About WSDC
The World Schools Debating Championship is the biggest international high school debate tournament, with national teams from more than 60 countries. Each team has up to five members, three of whom speak in each debate, in the World Schools format, with some motions released in advance and others with one hour of prep.
Motions from the tournament's tab site. Prep notes are written by the Debatery Editing Team to help you start thinking; they are not the only way to run either side.