 This section was originally conceived to primarily provide an avenue for high school aged children to participate in our project. Our team came up with different topics to debate on and provided an online area to facilitate the debate. Children from high schools in the USA and India were contacted to participate. We noticed that children were eager to participate and voice their opinions. They were very articulate and often the debates were sometimes intense and heated.. The debates were open for a period of five weeks to three months, depending on the interest level of the topic. Our hottest debate, on "Circus Life", was open for nearly three months and had 162 debate messages! Nearly 200 high school children from 7 high schools, from four countries, participated in this debate.
Upon discussion with our coaches, we decided not to include the high school debate discussions here. We considered including the debates with a word of caution that the content is NOT suitable for the younger audience, but then it defeated our primary purpose of educating the younger children. Although we were successful in engaging older children, the discussions were too intense and were at a much higher level than anything else we have included on the site. Not only were they a bit out of place surrounded by information designed specifically for children aged 9 -12, it also did not seem appropriate for the target group. We eventually decided to leave their debates out of the website.
We do want to thank all of the children who participated in these debates. The schools have been recognized in the Credits section.
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