Project background
For the project, we were inspired by the Dutch TV show People’s Parliament and prepared the competition with the help of our Dutch colleagues. The debate competition, called On the way to Parliament, was launched in 2004 and has been held every year since then in more than thirty selected schools. In 2011, the competition was renamed to its current name, Student Agora.
Why is it important?
Debating is a skill that none of us can do without. However, few people realise that this skill needs to be learned and then continually developed. The motto of the Student Agora project is to cultivate the debating skills of Czech society through a debate competition for high school youth.
What will happen ?
Within the project, students learn how to structure their arguments and present them in a debate, participate in a seminar led by Agora CE lecturers who introduce debating in a new interactive way, and undergo debate preparation under the guidance of their teacher. In the competition itself, they then have the opportunity to debate with their peers from other schools, comparing their knowledge, skills and opinions. Thanks to this project, the students’ debating skills are improving beyond our borders.
state. Agora CE is spreading the student debate project to other countries such as Georgia, Moldova and former Yugoslavia. The project is also very popular in these countries and helps the young generation to integrate into the majority society, which still does not pay much attention to the opinions of young people. The project helps to develop civil society and motivates young people to take an active part in it.
Who will be involved in the project?
The project is aimed at secondary school youth.
Objectives of the project
The aim of the project is to promote the ability of young people to discuss, to learn to listen to each other, to defend their own opinions, to seek information and to learn from the opinions of others. Through the project we aim to improve the civic skills of young people and thus contribute to the greater democratisation of our society.
The Student Agora project ended in 2022.
