Public speaking and debating play a major role in the co-curricular activities at St Joseph of Cluny. All Junior Cycle students are welcome to participate in our weekly club for those interested in taking part in competitions or just for fun. In TY, students are invited participate in public speaking to hone their rhetorical skills.
The objectives of the school in this area are:
- To help students appreciate and cherish the right to free expression which we enjoy and which we too often take for granted.
- To promote rational argument and discourse among our students and to promote the virtue of responding as opposed to reacting.
The public speaking and debating programme throughout the school includes the following:
- In-house debating: This gives the largest number of students the opportunity to participate in public discourse with their peers.
- Inter-school debating and public speaking competitions: Selected teams participate successfully in those competitions, consolidating Cluny’s position as a leader in the second level debating and public speaking arena. Cluny also hosts these competitions periodically thus exposing our students to excellence in this area.
- Debating in modern languages
Competitions in which Cluny has participated and achieved success include:
- Concern Debates
- Leinster School Debates
- Model European Parliament
- Soroptomists Public Speaking
- NUI Women’s Graduates Public Speaking
- Gael Linn