On Tuesday, four intrepid French debaters (two teams, one U6 and one L6) journeyed to St Paul’s Girls’ School to compete in the Joutes Oratoires against 60 other teams. Lower 6 linguists, Maryam and Amelie tell us how they got on:
“We had worked for weeks preparing debates on three topics: surrogacy, influencer culture and mass tourism.
Our initial three debates went extremely well; our passion and eloquence convinced the judges of our victory, despite the occasional slip into French-accented English (we now know that relevant is not a French word…). We managed to convincingly win all three, even against Eton Boys, much to our jubilation! This clean sweep secured us a place in the ‘argent’ finals to compete for the Silver spot. The conditions greatly contrasted with our initial preparation: a ‘secret motion’ was announced for each final, with our lot being to argue against the motion: Academic institutions should focus on teaching contemporary books and films more than classical literature. The rules were rigorous; we were confined to a room for just fifteen minutes under strict supervision to plan our argument and prohibited from using any technology.
For our final, we were pitted against a pair from City of London School for Girls. An extremely heated debate began, with strong arguments and great eloquence from both sides. After closing speeches, the judge began her deliberations at length, lamenting her inability to give us a tie. After a good ten minutes mulling over the winner, she admitted that the other team had won by an incredibly narrow margin, stating that the only reason we did not bring home the win was our ‘incredible level of passion!’ This is perhaps testament to our love for debate and strong opinions on the merits of classical literature as two English A-Level students!
Despite this narrow loss, we have truly gained so much from this experience and will be returning next year to enact our revenge!”