With prestigious judges, interesting topics and exhilarated students the second competition of Läroverksfejden 2013: Rhetorics proved to be a great night for Kungsholmen. The concoction of headteachers with multicoloured jackets and straight-faced students arguing in favour of child trafficking was rather mindblowing. Kungsholmers were eager to get their revenge after last year’s Rhetorics round, and the team did us proud.
After a quick and informal introduction by the presenter of the evening, and a very charming speech, as always, made by our own headmaster Ove, the great battle of eloquence could begin. First up was the speeches. Norra spoke about communism and Östra about norm criticism. “Sweden, the world’s most gender-equal country on the planet, or is it? Should we be satisfied with being the best of the worst, la crème de la crap?”, Södra’s Melvin/Malin held a creative speech about feminism, highly supported by the fellow students. Last but certainly not least, the “svärmorsdröm” of Kungsholmen; Leo Podov finishes the round of speeches with an incredibly charismatic speech about snus, and “Daddy EU”. Though all speeches were very impressive with heavy topics, one cannot help but distinguish Leo from the others thanks to his ability to engage the audience, all shouting “freedom” at the top of our lungs.
The first debate was kicked off by Södra and Östra: should we be allocated careers at birth? Next up was Kungsholmen’s first debate, against Norra. It was about how the CO2 crisis should be solved; should every household have restricted CO2 emissions? Kungsholmen against, used the metaphor of “the carrot or the whip” regarding if one should encourage by reward or punish in order to tackle our growing environmental issue. The debate moved on, now with Kungsholmen against Östra, where Kungsholmen defended polygamy. An intense and really entertaining debate with memorable quotes.
Östra: "We can't redefine marriage, have you read the book of law?" KG: "It seems as though you've only read the Bible…" #lvfkg #lvf13
— KZINE (@KzineSweden) April 17, 2013
Our team’s ideal debate (click here) did unfortunately not occur, but the gender-neutralisation of Swedish was debated by Norra and Östra. Kungsholmen’s last debate was arguing for Sweden leaving the EU, against Södra. The final debate was between Södra and Norra: should parents be able to sell their children? The prevailing theme of the evening seemed to be gender defiance. The audience was treated to one gender-neutral stunt after the other, and at times it felt like a contest to see which school could ‘break the most barriers’ (cross-dressing and an onslaught of hens featured). Norra emphasised more than once that they were convinced feminists, but when debating parenthood and being able to sell children they only addressed the mothers. The following Tweet sums up the general atmosphere, which is lovely, isn’t it?
Loving the fact that "människan är av två kön" (Norra) is met with gasps of shock. What enlightened youths we are! #lvf13 #lvfkg
— KZINE (@KzineSweden) April 17, 2013
Tonight the representatives from Kungsholmen really managed to change history, as they all had us convinced to engage polygamously and that the EU is not the place for Sweden. Congratulations to Filip, Ida and Love and of course Leo for their amazing job representing the school and being excellent examples of debaters! This year, with a proper jury and simply the best team, we would be more than surprised if the results don’t make us jump tomorrow. Kungsholmen, let’s stay on this roll and show the others up! Because once you go black, you never go back.
Judges of Läroverksfejden Rhetorics 2013
Lena Melin, Aftonbladet
Markus Forsman, Ministry of Finance
Per Gudmundson, SvD