KIS Students Make a Mark at the World Scholar's Cup 2022

The World Scholar’s Cup is a renowned worldwide academic competition that celebrates learning. This is the second time that KIS students have participated in this unique three-round challenge.

Instead of focusing on memorizing facts, WSC is all about applying them and relating them to the world around us. It is a challenging three-round tournament that tests individual knowledge as well as collaboration in teams of three. The organization’s values are to be inclusive, encouraging, interdisciplinary, discussion-based, forward-looking, team-oriented, and whimsical while their goals are to motivate students of all backgrounds to discover new strengths and practice new skills, and to inspire a global community of future scholars and leaders. These values and goals match our school’s mission and values to a high degree.

The weekend of April 2-3, 2022 saw 28 KIS students from Grades 8 to 11 competing in the regional round at APL Global School in Chennai in seven senior and two junior teams. Harschith Adimoolam, a Grade 11 student, participated in a mixed team with two teammates from other schools. 

The teams had to give an account of their studies on this year’s theme “A World Renewed” in six subjects: History, Social Studies, Science, Art and Music, Literature, and a Special Area of Mistakes and Recoveries. First, they completed a multiple-choice test on all six subjects individually. In the second event, each team member had to choose a topic for their persuasive writing, during which they could consult their peers for feedback; hence the name of the event ‘collaborative writing’. The third event was a team debate where teams had to debate against teams from other schools in three rounds. This year the senior debate topics related to the subjects were the following:

1. It is easier to adapt real-life events into a movie than into a novel  
2. The people who buy a company’s products should help to choose who runs that company 
3. In big cities the government should pay people to live in smaller houses. 

For the juniors: 

1. Everyone in the world should learn the same language 
2. The new leader of a country should live in the same building that the old one did 
3. The people who make the fewest mistakes should be given the most important jobs

After each debate students needed to give constructive feedback to their opponents on how to become better debaters so that these debates can become a learning experience, rather than just a competition. Lastly, on the second day, students participated in the Scholar’s Bowl, a quiz that tested not just their knowledge of the six subjects but their creative and critical thinking skills as well as their collaboration skills.

After lunch, the best debaters were invited to participate in a debate showcase. From our school two students from Grade 10 received this honor. Lakshyaraj debated as a member of the negative team, and Adhiraj was part of the panel of judges; both did an excellent job in their roles.

At the awards ceremony, students are acknowledged for their individual and team efforts with silver and gold medals based on their ranking as well as for being the top scholar in their respective schools. This year we had seven senior students finishing in the top 20 percent with Harschith Adimoolam from Grade 11 achieving 4^th place and Samuael Kantharaj from Grade 10 taking 2^nd place overall. With this Samuael also received the top senior scholar of Kodaikanal International School (KIS) award. The top junior scholar this year is Soenam Norbu from Grade 8. 

Our best events were the Team Debate and the Collaborative Writing with 16 of our students being awarded a silver or gold medal, some with a trophy. 

As a result of their excellent performance, all of our teams got invited to the next, global round of the competition. The Global rounds are held in different places around the world from June to September. For the best performers in the globals, the final round of the WSC (The Tournament of Champions) is held every year at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut (USA) in November. We look forward to the participation of our students in the next round.