Clarification: Free for students with citizenship.

Date: Sunday, June 7th 2015

Participants (from 13 countries):

Team A: (Yes) Faiza, Roya, Tom, Sunita, Alina, Tarik, Amine

Team B: (No) Huong, Amir, Lala, Rick

Team C: (On the fence) Marwa, Kelly, Himalay

Host: Rick

Moderator: Johny

Team A summary:

Education is a human right, it shouldn't be treated as a business.
Passing knowledge to others should always be an uninterested act.
People with limited economic resources have the same rights to be educated as any wealthy people.
Many governments have resources enough to provide free education.
It;s hard enough already for deprived families to manage their lives and post education expenditures are always expensive, their children deserve same level education.
If post education could be free it would help people to get better jobs and improve their standard of living, which would help society to have a higher life standard.
Poor families should have an equal chance and opportunities to get education.
Many students who are not able to pay have lots' of potential to become an important person for the society either as leaders or an important figure for the humanity.
Education should be equal for everyone
Private education represents injustice.
Teachers and professors of public institutions often do not teach with the same enthusiasm or passion due to the low salaries they are getting which make students have a crappy education and they may end up having a less bright future and they do not have the fault of not being wealthy.
Public Schools are often tagged as inferior and this generate students and social discrimination.
Everyone should get equal opportunities.
There is no link between money and attitude among students.
Team A considers the idea of a new education system proposed by team B is not possible and is a waste of time for different reasons.
Life has more than one way to teach people responsibility.

Team B summary:

If post-school education is free, taxes would go up.
Government needs to get revenue to finance everything that colleges or universities need to provide education.
Many young adults are capable and healthy enough to afford their own education.
If education is free, students would not take education seriously.
University is another phase in life where is a good opportunity to teach you responsibility.
Not being free helps students to mature by undertaking the responsibility to afford their education by themselves.
Work for your degree, learn about responsibility.
Most people do not appreciate things if they are given for free all the time, they only appreciate it when they work and earn it.
Students should not always rely on the government.
They have to learn how to be independent.
For low-resources students, governments already offer scholarships.
Payment can be defined as to be a volunteer to do something not necessarily to pay with money. Volunteer work could be the payment. Service for education.

Team B proposed a new education system in which people has to wait for about two years before moving from high school to college (or university) to figure out what they want from life as well as to learn how to be responsible by working obligatorily as part of the program.

Team C summary:

Marwa: chose team A
Kelly: chose team B

For this tie, the moderator was requested to break it.

Johny chose team A

Team A won the debate for the first time, Congratulations team A!

Below is the link to listen the debate:

Post-secondary school education should be free for students- Voice chat recording file

There was a bonus chat after the debate and the topic was:

Describe Monday and Friday with 5 adjectives each.

Below is the link to listen the bonus chat:

5 adjectives to describe Fridays & Mondays

For people who did not join the live discussion, feel free to contribute the ideas in the comment blanks below.