Deadline:
May 31, 2024
Location(s)
Online United Kingdom
Overview
The John Locke Institute encourages young people to cultivate the characteristics that turn good students into great writers: independent thought, depth of knowledge, clear reasoning, critical analysis and persuasive style. Our Essay Competition invites students to explore a wide range of challenging and interesting questions beyond the confines of the school curriculum.
Entering an essay in our competition can build knowledge, and refine skills of argumentation. It also gives students the chance to have their work assessed by experts. All of our essay prizes are judged by a panel of senior academics drawn from leading universities including Oxford and Princeton. The judges will choose their favourite essay from each of seven subject categories, and a junior category for under 15s, and then select an overall 'best essay' across the seven subjects: Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology and Law.
Details
Philosophy
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Q1. Do we have any good reasons to trust our moral intuition?
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Q2. Do girls have a right to compete in sporting contests that exclude boys?
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Q3. Should I be held responsible for what I believe?
Politics
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Q1. Is there such a thing as too much democracy?
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Q2. Is peace in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip possible?
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Q3. When is compliance complicity?
Economics
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Q1. What is the optimal global population?
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Q2. Accurate news reporting is a public good. Does it follow that news agencies should be funded from taxation?
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Q3. Do successful business people benefit others when making their money, when spending it, both, or neither?
History
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Q1. Why was sustained economic growth so rare before the later 18th century and why did this change?
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Q2. Has music ever significantly changed the course of history?
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Q3. Why do civilisations collapse? Is our civilisation in danger?
Psychology
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Q1. According to a study by four British universities, for each 16-point increase in IQ, the likelihood of getting married increases by 35% for a man but decreases by 40% for a woman. Why?
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Q2. There is an unprecedented epidemic of depression and anxiety among young people. Can we fix this? How?
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Q3. What is the difference between a psychiatric illness and a character flaw?
Theology
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Q1. “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.” What could the speaker mean by “spiritual”?
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Q2. Is it reasonable to thank God for protection from some natural harm if He is responsible for causing the harm?
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Q3. Does God reward those who believe in him? If so, why?
Law
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Q1. When, if ever, should a company be permitted to refuse to do business with a person because of that person’s public statements?
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Q2. In the last five years British police have arrested several thousand people for things they posted on social media. Is the UK becoming a police state?
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Q3. Your parents say that 11pm is your bedtime. But they don’t punish you if you don’t go to bed by 11pm. Is 11pm really your bedtime?
JUNIOR prize
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Q1. Does winning a free and fair election automatically confer a mandate for governing?
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Q2. Has the anti-racism movement reduced racism?
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Q3. Is there life after death?
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Q4. How did it happen that governments came to own and run most high schools, while leaving food production to private enterprise?
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Q5. When will advancing technology make most of us unemployable? What should we do about this?
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Q6. Should we trust fourteen-year-olds to make decisions about their own bodies?
Key Dates
- Registration opens: 1 April, 2024.
- Registration deadline: 31 May, 2024. (Registration is required by this date for subsequent submission.)
- Submission deadline: 30 June, 2024.
- Late entry deadline: 10 July, 2024. (Late entries are subject to a 20.00 USD charge, payable by 1 July.)
- Notification of short-listed essayists: 31 July, 2024.
- Academic conference: 20 - 22 September, 2024.
- Awards dinner: 21 September, 2024.
About us
John Locke Institute is an independent educational organisation that works to embolden the best and brightest students to become more academically ambitious and more intellectually adventurous. Through our various programmes - residential courses, revision seminars, essay competitions, and special events - we inspire students to aim high and we equip them with the skills they need in order to achieve their goals.
Who was John Locke?
The Institute is named in honour of the eminent seventeenth century Oxford philosopher, John Locke. As influential in the United States as in his native England, John Locke was the grandfather of Classical Liberalism. The very ideal of the Renaissance Man, Locke was a philosopher, political scientist, economist and medical doctor; he was a man of ideas and a man of action.
We honour his philosophy of education: a teacher “should remember that his business is not so much to teach all that is knowable, as to raise in [the student] a love and esteem of knowledge; and to put him in the right way of knowing and improving himself”.
Opportunity is About
Eligibility
Candidates should be from:
Description of Ideal Candidate
Entry Requirements
Entry is open to students from any country. Candidates must be eighteen years old, or younger, on the date of the submission deadline, 30 June 2022. (Candidates for the Junior Prize must be fourteen years old, or younger, on the date of the submission deadline.)
Each essay should address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category, and must not exceed 2000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, footnotes, bibliography or authorship declaration). Please submit your essay, saved in pdf format, through our website, here. The title of the pdf attachment should read SURNAME, First Name, Category, Question Number (e.g. POPHAM, Alexander, Psychology, Q2).
Submission Instructions
Each essay should address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category, and must not exceed 2000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, footnotes, bibliography or authorship declaration).
Please submit your essay as an email attachment, saved in pdf format. Both the subject line of the email and the title of the pdf attachment should read SURNAME First Name Subject Category Question Number (e.g. POPHAM Alexander Politics Q2).
Criteria
Essays will be judged on the level of knowledge and understanding of the relevant material, the competent use of evidence, the quality of argumentation, the structure, writing style and persuasive force. Candidates are advised to answer the question as precisely and directly as possible.
May I submit more than one essay?
Yes, you may submit as many essays as you please.
Dates
Deadline: May 31, 2024
Cost/funding for participants
Prizes
There is a prize for the best essay in each category. The prize for each winner of a subject category, and the winner of the Junior category, is a scholarship worth US$2000 towards the cost of attending any John Locke Institute programme, and the essays will be published on the Institute's website. Prize-giving ceremonies will take place in Oxford, at which winners and runners-up will be able to meet some of the judges and other faculty members of the John Locke Institute. Family, friends, and teachers are also welcome, subject to capacity constraints.
The candidate who submits the best essay overall will be awarded an honorary John Locke Institute Junior Fellowship, which comes with a US$10,000 scholarship to attend one or more of our summer schools and/or gap year courses.
The judges' decisions are final, and no correspondence will be entered into.
Un-save Opportunity
Internships, scholarships, student conferences and competitions.
