ERASMUS DEBATE TO PARADISE | Erasmus + Debating as a New Approach to Learning

When the American playwright Arthur Miller first saw Lake Bled in Slovenia, he exclaimed: “What a beautiful place! This is Paradise!”

The Erasmus+ “Debating as a New Approach to Learning” project caravan has for its third Learning Students Mobility chosen the north-eastern part of Slovenia, Maribor and its suburb Limbuš. Limbuš is a small village in the beautiful green area between the Pohorje mountains and the Drava river. Legend has it that …

EVEN THE DEVIL FAILED TO SUBDUE THE PEOPLE OF MARIBOR

In ancient times, Pohorje also brought plenty of wealth to the people of the valley. Rafts and heavy-laden vessels floated down the Drava. The people of the valley, especially the people of Maribor, grew rich, but they grew more and more greedy. They forgot God and lived more and more licentiously. God became more and more disappointed with the people of Maribor, but one day he had had enough, and at the devil’s pleading, he handed over the control of the city for one day to the Hell-Master who lusted after sinful souls. “I’ll break off this top of the mountain, throw it into the Drava river there near Maribor and dam it up. Hehe-he-he-he! All the people of Maribor will drown, not one of them will escape!” But the town was guarded by the Pohorje saints, who softened the blow. The ruler of Hell made a noise that rang from Hell to Heaven, grabbed a giant rock with his hands and threw it with all his might across the plain. But the rock reached neither Maribor nor the Drava. On the plain at the foot of Pohorje, it lodged itself in the ground and has remained there ever since. This is today the Pekrska Gorca, a small hillock close to Limbuš.

And that’s where we gathered in March 2023 …

Jelka Napast, Slovenia

What impressions and what knowledge about debating will the students, who participated in this mobility, take back with them to enrich their young lives?

Participating in this exchange was an incredible experience for all of us! Not only did we learn a lot about debating, which was the main reason why we participated, but we also had the opportunity to plunge ourselves in a new culture and make lifelong friends.

Interacting with people from different backgrounds helped us broaden our perspective and see the world from different angles.

We developed new skills and improved some of our old ones, such as active listening, body language coordination, research skills and communication skills … and of course: we also debated …

Italian students

The objectives of our project include also: experiencing mobility in an international environment, improving the foreign language skills in multicultural social contexts, encouraging team work on cross-cultural/country level … Students today are good observers, quick to make contacts and surprisingly mature in their criticism. Surprisingly, for anyone who does not work with young people of today …

In my opinion Slovenia is a beautiful country. I very much loved all the old buildings and statues. It was fun getting to know about the history and culture. The weather was also lovely, which was very nice.

The school was surprisingly a bit different compared to a Finnish school. Most surprising thing for me was how the students all carried a water bottle, and didn’t have glasses to drink from in the cafeteria. I personally thought this was quite cool, and loved how we also got to keep our bottles as a memory.

I loved Slovenia and would definitely go back again.

Seela, Finland

Authoritative educational research has been reporting the need to change the way education is carried out in order to direct teaching to the pursuit of basic and transversal skills such as critical and analytical thinking, creative problem solving, communication and teamworking. Debate methodology is a powerful, most efficient tool for developing these skills. The teachers involved in the project are aware of this, and clearly are looking for the new teaching methods to accept the challenges of modern schooling.

The three of us think that this project is really innovative and challenging in developing new ways to use debating techniques in the class. We particularly liked creating exercises before leaving and testing them in our classroom, then teaching them in an international environment. Of course, sharing new ideas and methods with our European colleagues under the supervision of the experts coming from Fundación Educativa Activa-t and Za in proti are unique experiences.

Elena Tornaghi, Andrea Radice, Stefania Savoia, Italian teachers

For us teachers, the Erasmus mobility program served as an opportunity to discuss and share the progress of the project. The purpose of the project is to create the necessary material for a teacher to incorporate debate dynamics into their teaching practice, without necessarily having prior knowledge on the subject. Additionally, it was an opportunity to meet in person the designer responsible for creating the website that will contain all the material, and to come to agreements on how it will be presented to the public.

Daniel Cayuela, Javier Solano, Marina Conesa, Juan Carlos López, Spanish teachers

The expected outputs of the project are two Teachers’ Guides – to introduce debate in the curriculum, one for primary/middle school and one for secondary school – a Students’ Toolkit for civic learning through debate and the Toolkit translation into the languages of the partnership (Finnish, Italian, Lithuanian, Slovenian, Spanish).

How far gone the materials are read here.

The bridge that we can see in the photo is a bridge that we visited. It is so beautiful. We went to the bridge in the afternoon and the sky was astonishing. It was one of my favourite parts of the trip. Javier, Spain

See more of what the students’ camera has captured in the gallery.