2023.06.23
Creating Twenty-first Century Citizens
There are a lot of problems facing the modern world – war, injustice, global warming… the list is long. Here at Shizuoka Eiwa, we want our students to think about serious issues and develop their ability to share and present those ideas with others. It is only through working together that these situations will improve. For me, that is one of the key points of our annual high school speech and recitation contest, an event which was held on June 14 in the school chapel.
This year the students had four speeches to choose from, including two given by young women who have shown great courage in their lives. The first was given by Malala Yousafzai in 2013 who talked about the importance of education. The second was by Greta Thunberg who spoke to the United Nations in 2019 about the need to focus on the environment.
The longer speeches this year were originally given by two senior women who spent their lives leading others through their constant example of helping others – Mother Teresa and Queen Elizabeth. Mother Teresa talked in 1985 about finding the way to peace through showing love to one another and seeing God in each other. Queen Elizabeth’s speech in 2020 encouraged British people to work together to fight the Coronavirus and not to give up hope.
As always, all of the students in the first and second year of high school participated in in-class contests first in late May or early June. They chose one of these four speeches to memorize, or, alternatively, they wrote their own speech of between 200-250 words about a topic that was important to them. In the end, we selected twenty students to take part in the final contest – seven who gave short speeches, ten who chose longer recitations, and three original speeches. From that small group, some of the students won prizes, and a few will go on to represent Eiwa at the Central Shizuoka Prefectural Speech Contest in September. The true winners however are all the girls who worked hard to understand the message of these speeches or create their own, memorize them, and present these ideas to others. These are all great skills that the world needs and that will be very handy in our students’ futures. Well done, girls!
