The fourth Liberal Arts Essay Competition for Lower Sixth pupils attracted a strong field of thoughtful and rigorously researched responses. The essay titles aimed to facilitate the linking and development of overarching arguments between discrete areas of academic specialisms in the Sixth Form.
The overall quality was high this year and the final decision took some careful thought. Approaches to the question about the treatment of outsiders, non-conformists and iconoclasts were predictably diverse and eclectic.
The first-place winner was Rebecca (Sr), who connected Ovid’s Tristia, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, and Morrison’s Beloved, arguing that the treatment of the outsider is hypocritical and self-serving, encompassing moral double standards, and contradictory behaviour by the outsiders themselves that warps how they are treated over time.
Alina (D) and George (S) were joint second-place winners. Alina wrote about how Montesquieu’s writings angered and were censored by the Catholic Church, but were later influential among monarchs and political leaders.
George (S) evaluated how Aeschylus used the narrative and dialogue of his tragedy The Persians to portray Persia as a strange “other” simply because it lay to the East. He also wrote about Said’s theory of Orientalism and how the divisions laid out between East and West in The Persians still impact society today.
A Special Mention was awarded to Andrey (L) who explored how the samurai, the elite class of Japanese warriors, saw their social roles transformed in the 19th century, becoming outcasts in a system they had helped build and uphold for almost a millennium.