8th Graders Debate Use of Atomic Bomb

Ned Fischer
This week, 8th grade history students of Ned Fischer held a debate on whether or not the use of the atomic bomb against Japan in World War II was justified. 8th graders worked in teams to prepare and had to be ready to debate either side - pro or con. Ned explains the project: "The idea for the debate came three years ago when I was reading the Szilard Petition- a petition signed by 70 high-level scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project urging President Truman not to use the atomic bomb. Beyond the destruction and loss of life, the Petition argued that the United States would lose its moral high ground and could no longer be a standard bearer of righteousness on the world's stage. The petition never made it in front of the President.
Leo Szilard was a student of Albert Einstein who was the first person to conceive  the possibility of nuclear fission and its potential for a weapon. As a Hungarian Jew, Szilard had gone to study physics in Berlin prior to the rise of Nazism. He escaped Germany the day before Germany closed the borders to all Jewish emigrants and ended up as refugee in the United States.
 
Our debate is in the spirit of the Szilard Petition: an attempt to capture the competing conclusions, conceptions, and agendas in the decision to drop the bomb. To prepare their arguments for the debate, students analyzed dozens of sources from a variety of different perspectives including survivors, decision makers, war propaganda, and historical analysis. Neither team knew which side they would be arguing until two minutes prior to the debate. Once the first round was over, teams switched sides and debated the opposite point of view. This year, our panel of Upper School judges (including Seth R, Peter W, Hayes B, Jack  J, and Nati Y) reflected that students had highlighted some of the strongest use of historical evidence of any debate they had judged with many of our speakers using sources that had never been cited before in the Szilard Debates."
Back
Tandem Friends School is a co-ed Quaker day school for grades 5-12 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
 
Copyright 2016 Tandem Friends School