The great cloning experiment

I was pleased to see my students enthusiastically engage in an activity involving a formal debate last week. On the heels of a unit from the class textbook dealing with human cloning research (a topic whose ability to effortlessly spur heated discourse is anything but a secret), I decided to allow my students to utilize their knowledge of the English language and its tenets to assert and defend their opinions concerning the subject of human cloning.

I feared that this particular topic – with its highly-specialized jargon and confusing terminology – might prove to be too complicated an issue around which to base the in-class debate. My students proved such apprehension to be unfounded as they eagerly delved into the lesson and collaborated with one another in formulating and perfecting the arguments they would eventually put forth in the debate.

Following one class period devoted to group-work and preparation, we then conducted the debate itself. As expected, only a few students did the majority of the talking for their groups, but I was still able to hear from a great many students (even if they didn’t have much more to contribute to the proceedings than what had already been said). Overall, I was pleased with the debate’s execution.

What pleased me most about the entire endeavor, though, was seeing that some students were dissatisfied with the group with which they had been assigned. That is, some students who had been placed in the “In Favor Of” group resisted being in that group because they were not genuinely in favor of human cloning research. I was happy to see that this assignment was causing students to assess and analyze their own personal beliefs and apply them to the completion of this activity.