Students put their argumentation skills to the test before the Minister of Education at the National Debate Championship

The championship began this Monday and will conclude on Friday

Santo Domingo.- The Minister of Education, Luis Miguel De Camps, witnessed this Monday a demonstration of the level of preparation of the participants of the V National Debate Championship, where two students defended opposing positions on a motion related to justice and order, highlighting their skills in analysis, argumentation, and critical thinking.

As part of the opening day, the minister proposed the following motion: “This house believes that for there to be legitimate justice, order is required first,” giving way to a debate exercise in which each participant had 45 seconds to defend their position.

The student in charge of the affirmative position argued that order constitutes the foundation for institutions to act effectively and guarantee justice for the citizenry.

He argued that without organized structures, the bodies responsible for administering justice lack the tools to respond to crimes, investigate cases, and offer timely solutions, which ultimately weakens public trust in the system.

“When there is no order, institutions do not know how to act, problems accumulate, and people end up feeling that they must seek justice through other means because the system does not respond,” he/she expressed during his/her speech.

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For his part, the opposition student argued that, in many cases, it is precisely the absence of justice that causes social disorder and citizen protests.

He pointed out that protests and other forms of expression arise when people feel that institutional mechanisms have failed to protect their rights and address their grievances.

“If justice worked efficiently, people would not have the need to create disorder to be heard. When justice is not legitimate, the citizenry seeks mechanisms to demand that it be,” he argued.

The dynamic was observed by Minister De Camps as a sign of the level reached by the young participants, who demonstrated mastery of argumentation techniques, the ability to construct ideas under pressure, and respect for the rules of debate.

The V National Debate Championship brings together students from the country’s 18 educational regions and is part of the Ministry of Education’s (MINERD) Student Leadership Program, an initiative that seeks to strengthen critical thinking, communication, civic participation, and democratic culture among Dominican youth.