On January 27th 2012, Holocaust Memorial Day, Christ Church Oxford hosted a student organised public speaking competition for sixth form students there to talk about topics surrounding persecution and freedom. The competition, which was created and organised by a number of sixth form students, was put on in the memory of Paul Jacobsthal, a German Jew who came to seek refuge in Oxford during World War Two. Pupils from seven local schools took part, with the competition judged by Oxford academics, who kindly gave up their time to judge the competition. The student organisers of Chenderit School, a comprehensive in south Northamptonshire, received a wave of positive feedback after the event and plans are already in place for the competition to be held again next year with extra sessions being added, so that the competition can start to become more inclusive now that it has had its test run.The event itself consisted of several schools coming together to talk about topics to do with free speech and persecution at Christ Church College. Topics of this nature were chosen, because of the Paul Jacobsthal project and holding the event on Holocaust Memorial Day. The format of speeches was done in the traditional ESU public speaking style with a chair, speaker and questioner. There were seven judges with different backgrounds including Oxford academics and a QC, all of whom freely gave their time to judge the competition. Accompanying the public speaking was work done by year nine students from Chenderit who had just started studying the Holocaust. A selection of year nine students were able to produce a timeline for Paul Jacobsthal’s life after the student organisers of the event felt, and still feel, that this event should reach out to more than just sixth formers, especially when the Holocaust gets studied in younger years.
The whole concept of the event began in November last year, when students from Chenderit School were approached by Dr Megan Price from the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford University about their latest project on a man named Paul Jacobsthal. Paul Jacobsthal was a German professor of archaeology at the university in Marburg, Germany who mainly studied Celtic art. During the 1930’s Adolf Hitler re-wrote history by claiming that claiming that Germany had influenced all Greek and Roman art and architecture, as they were the `master race’. Along with a few other archaeologists Jacobsthal went against Hitler’s thesis and because of his Jewish roots, was forced into exile from Germany because of the Race Laws and ended up in Oxford in 1935 where he took refuge at the university. For a time he was interned to the Isle of Man in 1940 of suspicion of being an `enemy alien‘. He remained in Oxford after the war and rebuilt his contacts with fellow archaeologists back in Germany, many of who helped him out during the war at their own risk. The Institute of Archaeology at Oxford currently have a collection of Jacobsthal’s work, including diaries, photographs and drawings that were used to create an exhibition that ran from January to March of this year.
The sixth form students of Chenderit were then approached and asked to help appeal their project to young people. Seeing as the whole project was based on persecution and inequality, a public speaking competition was ran on Holocaust Memorial Day whose theme was “Speak Up Speak Out”. It was therefore decided the topics would be based on the idea of freedom of expression and discussion and to help commemorate the life of Paul Jacobsthal. A trip to Oxford in November helped the students to learn and understand the Jacobsthal project. What started out as five or six students getting involved in the organising and running, ended up with at least twelve come the evening of the event, including students from Gosford Hill and Cheney School who also helped with the organising of the event, prior to the evening. Another handful of students then got involved and did an amazing job at handling the event on the night.
With all the positive feedback we got from the evening the same set of students are now in the process of putting the event on again next January. It seems to be a mutual decision that the event will be all-inclusive and try and find competitors that maybe haven‘t really considered public speaking before. Already around twenty schools have been in contact and want to be involved in the event after having heard about January‘s competition. One of the best pieces of feedback received was from a teacher who said that the competition had reminded him why he wanted to be a teacher.
Student organizers from Chenderit have recently been to Worcester and Trinity College in Oxford who have since said they would love to get involved in the project and help accommodate students and provide judges for the competition.
With a now all-inclusive policy, it seemed important to hold workshops before hand so that everyone is on a level playing field come to the event in January. For four weeks from 27th September a workshop will be held every week at a participating school. The first two will be on political discourse and the last two on public speaking and rhetoric. Christ Church has been in contact with a number of politicians and ex-Cabinet ministers to see if they want to be speakers at these events. It was felt that the politics was important for sixth formers as for the majority there is never an opportunity to understand UK politics before we get the right to vote, so this is just one way of getting that information.
The day of the event will also be extended to the whole day so that there is the opportunity for a keynotes speaker to come and for tours of the Oxford colleges, kindly taken by people from the colleges. This has been done so that the students can see that university and Oxford in particular is a real option for them should they wish to take it.
The future of the Free Speech Oxford in the coming years is yet to be decided, but it is very important for everyone involved that the competition continues and gets bigger and better each year. For this year competition the new, year twelve’s at Chenderit will be getting involved in the event management and organization side and will hopefully take the reigns and spearhead the event next year.
A competition of this sort is not just a chance for sixth formers to exercise their public speaking skills, but also a chance to recognize why free speech is so important for everyone.
