The John Locke Institute Essay Competition is one of the most demanding writing competitions open to secondary school students worldwide. Based in Oxford and judged by senior academics from the University of Oxford, it invites students to write on questions drawn from philosophy, politics, economics, history, psychology, and theology — the disciplines that, taken together, constitute the intellectual inheritance of the Western liberal tradition. The questions are not prompts that reward summary or recall. They are live problems, the kind that philosophers and scholars continue to argue about, and they require the competitor to take a position, construct an argument, and defend it against objections with the reasoning and prose style of someone who has actually thought the matter through.
Being shortlisted is itself a distinction. The competition attracts thousands of entries from students across the world, and the shortlist represents the essays that the Oxford judges considered worthy of recognition — those that demonstrated, in the Institute’s own words, independent thought, depth of knowledge, clear reasoning, critical analysis, and persuasive style. Shortlisted candidates are invited to Oxford for the prize ceremony, where they meet the judges and other members of the John Locke Institute faculty. This year, three Emerson students were among them.
Seohyeon Lee was shortlisted in Philosophy. Timothy Park in Psychology. Joshua Kim received the Junior Prize — a separate distinction for the most outstanding essay submitted by a younger competitor. Joshua was in the eighth grade. The record is set down below with the pride it deserves.
Homeschool, Seoul
South Korea
Yongsan International School of Seoul
South Korea
Yongsan International School of Seoul
South Korea
Three students shortlisted by Oxford academics in a single year, across three separate disciplines, is not a result that happens without serious intellectual formation behind it. The John Locke Competition does not ask what students know. It asks whether they can think — whether they can hold a difficult question in mind long enough to say something true and well-argued about it. That is what a rigorous education in the humanities trains, and that is what the Oxford judges found in these essays. We are proud of Seohyeon, Timothy, and Joshua, and we are glad the work showed.