December 11, 2004
Home-schoolers 1 Oxford 0
I have to recommend an article in the Washington Times today that tells of a debate team from Patrick Henry College who won a moot court competition against a team from Balliol College, Oxford.
This article is long, but worth every word. This story is all the more amazing because law is an undergraduate degree in the UK, so these home-school educated liberal arts majors (PHC only offers degrees in Government, Journalism, History, Literature, and Classical Liberal Arts) were debating a ficticious breach of contract case under British law against what were almost certainly final year British law students. They also debated at Balliol, judge by two Balliol alumni. (I almost didn't realise who the judges were until I translated it into Britspeak and realised they were Lord Bingham of Corhill and Lord Hutton.) Talk about the other side having home field advantage.
Not surprisingly, this news appears nowhere in the British press.