Side 1: Concluding Debater

For my discussion, I served as the concluding debater for side 1. Here are some of my main points:

- Every child in America needs 21st-century knowledge and skills to succeed as effective citizens, workers, and leaders in the 21st century

a. If our technology is so good and advanced, then why do we STILL have millions of illiterate children in the world?

b. Every child needs literacy, basic communication skills, problem-solving skills, and awareness of the world.

c. We can use technological concepts, such as the $100 one laptop per child, but that is still moving slowly and there have been bumps along the road where it was too expensive or not plausible. We need to constantly improve technology to make these laptops and resources cheaper and available and widespread not just in America, but around the globe.

- There is always something that needs to be improved

- You cannot just say that our educational system is perfect and blame it on the students

- If our educational system was perfect, then no one would be complaining and everyone would have a quality education and be literate.

- Students can adopt a lazy attitude, but what about students in less fortunate circumstances who do not have access to technology or who cannot even afford electricity to power basic luxuries like computers that we take for granted?

a. Technology has been on the rise, and does answer many problems, such as making searches and contacts readily available with ease, but I’m arguing that many people do not have sufficient means to this technology because it is still too expensive.

Hope this helps for Assignment 2!