The Future is Today
One of our association’s most important achievements in the year 2022 was the successful collaboration with the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Vilnius on the project “Ateitis yra šiandien”. The aim of this initiative was to create a new debate format in Lithuanian and to introduce it to teachers and students of various Lithuanian cities, thus contributing to the development of a debate culture in the school context. The end result of this collaboration – a description of the debate format structure, methodological materials and a timer for this new format – can be viewed by clicking on the following link.
After a training event in Birštonas (from the 4th to the 6th of November) for experienced debaters and judges from our association, the new debate format structure was begun to be systematically taught to students of grades 11–12 in six Lithuanian cities. We are pleased that the “Jaunimo debatai” team – Gustė Židžiūnaitė, Dovydas Žilinskas, Emilė Paskočimaitė, Jokūbas Trinkūnas, Eigirdas Sabaliauskas, Greta Tamoliūnaitė and Viltė Sinkevičiūtė – successfully met with more than 150 students this autumn. In addition, we would like to thank the teachers and students of the Radviliškis Lizdeika Gymnasium, the Stakliškis Gymnasium, the Kupiškis Laurynas Stuoka-Gucevičius Gymnasium, the Anykščiai Jonas Biliūnas Gymnasium, Šiauliai Romuva Gymnasium and Trakai Vytautas Magnus Gymnasium for their active willingness to participate in our training, to learn, to try out the debating experience, thus strengthening the debating culture in Lithuania.
The final phase of the project took place on the 16th of December with a final conference in Vilnius. The conference brought together teachers, youth organisations and other participants interested in systematic debating in Lithuanian. It presented the new debating format, organised mock debates and invited education experts for a discussion. We would like to thank the team of these mock debates – Guste Židžiūnaitė, Dominykas Ragelis, Margarita Kalesnykaitė and Gabija Ulinskaitė – who debated the question “Should formal education for people under 18 years of age in Lithuania be organised without exams?”. We would also like to thank the invited guests of the “The future of education is today” discussion: Many thanks to the “Renkuosi mokyti!” programme manager Artur Markevič, the director of “Junior Achievement” Lithuania Andželika Rusteikienė, Gabrielė Rimkutė, who works at the first therapeutic farm in Lithuania, and Matas Linauskas, the co-founder of the innovative children’s game “CREO”.
The youth debate competition, coordinated by the association in November–December of the year 2023 is directly linked to the “Ateitis yra šiandien” project and the debate structure developed during it.
