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842 motions

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  • This house believes that schools should teach history as a product of social and institutional factors, rather than the product of grand figures

    Infoslide

    The Price Cap Coalition of the G7, the European Union and Australia have set caps on the price of seaborne Russian crude oil at 60$ per barrel. Other countries will only be able to access services such as insurance, shipping, and brokerage from coalition countries if they trade Russian oil at or below the cap.

    Paris World Schools Championship 2023 · 2 · 2023-02-17

  • For the sake of this debate, assume that damnatio memoriae can be done perfectly in that future generations will have no knowledge of this person. For example, erasing all knowledge of Adolf Hitler but retaining the history of the Holocaust. This house supports the use of "damnatio memoriae"

    Infoslide

    Translated as "condemnation to the report", damnatio memoriae consists of erasing all traces and heritage of a person considered to be abhorrent or undesirable by the community. It is effectively erasing all knowledge of someone.

    Seattle Online Mini 2023 · Novice Finals · 2023-02-14

  • That, when teaching about social equality, schools should deprioritise education about the history of oppression minorities have faced and instead focus on the principles of equality, social outcomes today, and methods to improve these in the future

    Infoslide

    In many countries, education around social inequality focuses on the history of oppression vulnerable groups have faced, for example, how women were granted the vote, how colonialism destroyed indigenous cultures, and how racial minorities were discriminated against by governments. For the purposes of this motion, the government would instead, for example, focus on teaching current census data to determine which groups are being oppressed, and teaching theory around how equality might be achieved in the future.

    ASO 2023 · 4 · 2023-01-14

  • The EC regrets the publication of "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil".

    Infoslide

    Hannah Arendt (Hannover 1906 - New York, 1975), was a German-Jewish political theorist. As part of the Nazi persecution of Jews, she was imprisoned in 1933, exiled to Paris, and was in a concentration camp between 1940 and 1941. Adolf Eichmann was a Nazi war criminal, attributed as one of the main responsible for the Holocaust. After World War II, he fled to Argentina, where he was abducted by Israel to be tried in 1961 for the damages committed towards the Jewish people. Arendt attended the trial as a reporter and in 1963 published her report in a book called "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil". In the book, Arendt rejects the term genocide to instead use "administrative massacres", and therefore denies that Eichmann was a self-confessed genocidaire, understanding him more as a bureaucrat (with a specific role within the German machinery). Therefore, Arendt believes Eichmann was not entirely guilty for his actions. Although Arendt was in agreement with the death penalty verdict, she rejected the conduct of a trial with no guarantees. As a result of this, Arendt received numerous criticisms and was the target of a media defamation campaign from the Jewish community and the academic community. She was accused of anti-Semitism and of sympathizing with Nazism, facts that affected the rest of her career and life.

    Campeonato Interuniversitario Metropolitano Presencial 2023 · Grand Final · 2023-01-01

  • This house would publicly display the ingots as they are, rather than repurpose them into a new statue

    Infoslide

    In 2023, an organisation called ‘Swords into Plowshares’ removed a statue of confederate general and slave-owner Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, and melted it down into a number of bronze ingots. Their current plan is to form a jury which will take submissions for ideas on how to use this bronze for a new work of public art.

    Ljubljana IV 2023 · Round 3 · 2023-01-01

  • This house would remove Heritage Conservation Districts

    Infoslide

    Heritage Conservation Districts are districts which restrict the development of housing and other infrastructure in set areas due to evaluated historic value and architecture.

    Canadian Parliamentary Nationals 2023 · Round 6 · 2023-01-01

  • This House Believes That schools should emphasize the moral failures and wrongdoings of people considered to be national and social heroes (e.g Churchill, Gandhi, Mother Teresa)

    Royalties Debate Open Championships Northern Regionals 2023 · Round 3 · 2023-01-01

  • This house, as Oscar Wilde, Regrets publishing The Picture of Dorian Gray

    Infoslide

    The Picture of Dorian Gray was a novel published by Oscar Wilde in 1890, who was one of the most popular Irish playwrights in the 1890s, as well as a closeted homosexual. The novel includes themes of homosexuality and the implicit legitimisation of male prostitution, which caused wide scale controversy upon its publication. In 1895. Wilde was prosecuted on charges of sodomy, and passages from the novel were recited in court as proof of his immorality. Dorian Gray was Wilde's only novel, and his

    UT MARA National Novice 2023 · Round 3 · 2023-01-01

  • C: That we believe people are more moral today than in the past

    Campbelltown Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships 2022 · ESL Grand Final · 2022-11-23

  • This house regrets the decline of the Catholic Church's art patronage

    Infoslide

    During the Renaissance, the Catholic Church was at the height of its political power in Europe. Funding, collecting and commissioning works of art served to bolster its influence in the political realm. Over many centuries, the Church’s art patronage has steadily declined as a result of a number of factors including the Church’s ability to raise funding, critique of this art following secularization and the rise of Protestantism, and the increasing dominance of the capitalist market.

    Hart House 2022 · 3 · 2022-10-14

  • This House believes that national histories should only be written by 'Home Scholars'

    Infoslide

    In the field of historiography, academics have proposed two schools of thought on who is best placed to write national histories. One school of thought argues that 'home scholars', academics who specialise in the study of where they’re from are best placed to write national histories. Another school of thought believes that where one is born or grew up in has no bearing on their ability to write compelling national histories.

    Taiwan Schools Debate Challenge 2022 · Round 4 · 2022-10-05

  • This House as Sir Gawain would kill the dragon

    Infoslide

    It is the age after King Arthur’s reign. There is a magical dragon up in the mountains whose breath has created a mist over Arthur’s kingdom under which people have an extremely thin grip on their long-term memories. When separated for long periods, parents forget their children, lover forgets lover. Village councils adjudicate on a problem and then have no recollection it ever happened. A generation ago, Arthur and his knights waged a successful war to protect Britons against the Saxons and carved out a great kingdom. In order to stop future generations of Saxons from continuing the cycle of violence, the Knights slaughtered some entire villages and lineages, not sparing children and babies. Arthur, recognizing that this would not end the cycle of violence but worsen it, asked Merlin to enchant the dragon and so memories of this genocide were lost and the land knows peace. The Britons are safe in Arthur’s kingdom and live in harmony alongside a minority of Saxons in Briton and Saxon villages alike. Neighboring Saxon kingdoms look at the Saxon minorities as the best way to wage war against Arthur’s kingdom and expand. Sir Gawain, knight and nephew of Arthur, the last surviving member of the old King's faithful, walks the crypts over the skulls of Saxon babies and questions if they were in the right. Gawain is now an elderly yet formidable as ever warrior who could dispose of the dragon swiftly. Yet, so far, he has chosen not to, fearing the violence that would descend upon the land if the Saxons remember

    Habib Worlds Schools Debating Championship 2022 · Grand Final · 2022-09-09

  • This House Supports the 10 pilots flying to their death

    Infoslide

    It is the 6th of April, 1941. The bombing of Belgrade by Nazi Germany began at dawn. The air force of Belgrade consists of 10 airplanes and 10 pilots to operate the airplanes. Knowing that they are going into certain deaThis house, and that they are unlikely to change the outcome of the bombing, the 10 pilots decide to take to the skies to take down as many Nazi airplanes as they can before dying.

    WUDC Belgrade 2022 · ESL Finals · 2022-07-20

  • This House Opposes the emphasis on the struggle against the Ottoman Empire in the history curriculum of Balkan countries

    Infoslide

    In many Balkan countries that were under Ottoman rule from the 14th to the 19th century (e.g. Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, etc.), the history curriculum focuses heavily on the national struggle against the Ottoman Empire as well as the crimes of the Ottomans against the local population (e.g. forcibly taking children to join the Janissary military corps, forcible conversions from Orthodox Christianity to Islam, murder and torture of local population etc.). In these countries, the Ottoman Empire is viewed as a colonizer, and those who led national uprisings fighting for independence are revered as national heroes.

    WUDC Belgrade 2022 · 5 · 2022-07-20