{"id":2457,"date":"2013-02-26T18:52:19","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T16:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/?p=2457"},"modified":"2013-02-26T18:52:19","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T16:52:19","slug":"my-volunteer-work-at-supaero-alex-toole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/2013\/02\/26\/my-volunteer-work-at-supaero-alex-toole\/","title":{"rendered":"My Volunteer Work at SUPAERO – Alex Toole"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A strong point of my time in Toulouse until now is my volunteer experience.\u00a0 On Tuesdays, I go to SupA\u00e9ro, a university of aeronautic engineering and space in Toulouse.\u00a0 The university has a debate team, which is taught by an Irish professor.\u00a0 I debated in high school, and thus during each session of my volunteering work I help the professor teach the skill of debating to the SupA\u00e9ro students.\u00a0 The volunteering intrigues me because all the competitions are in English.\u00a0 Thus, it is necessary for the students to learn English before they do debating.\u00a0 Each session, the team divides in two and we practice arguing the two sides of the motion.\u00a0 I am always impressed by the capacity of the students to debate in English with fluidity and eloquence.\u00a0 To me, the rules of the French Debating Association (FDA), specifically the rule that stipulates that all the competitions must be in English, seem to be culturally divergent.\u00a0 I had the impression that the French have an unbreakable pride of the French language, but debating, an intellectual exercise with ancient origins, is in English.\u00a0 Although at the time I didn\u2019t understand the linguistic inconsistency, I now know that the usage of English indicates the will of the French to open the minds of the students, and to teach them a language like English, which is used around the world for business and diplomacy.\u00a0 I reflected on debating at SupA\u00e9ro and deduced that the engagement of the French universities regarding debate illustrates the strength of the longstanding tradition in France of intellectual discourse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A strong point of my time in Toulouse until now is my volunteer experience.\u00a0 On Tuesdays, I go to SupA\u00e9ro, a university of aeronautic engineering and space in Toulouse.\u00a0 The university has a debate team, which is taught by an Irish professor.\u00a0 I debated in high school, and thus during each session of my volunteering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4846,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[30101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-la-une-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4846"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/toulouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}