Liste de thèmes et de documents étudiés par les TS année 2014/2015 A.SILVERT Lycée

Fénelon.

The notion of progress.

Possible key questions: Is scientific progress always for the best? (GMOs)

Controversies and debates: Has our society really evolved and have prejudices

disappeared altogether? (Ferguson events/social progress/social comments)

The Ferguson events and the press coverage. Miley Cyrus’s controversial video or

so some people said on the Internet.

Documents used and activities completed in class.

1. Gmos: introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8qvskYvnH8

2. Inglorious vegetables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQQMygivn0g or how

we could reduce food waste.

3. Food incorporated avec un questionnaire en ligne sur edpuzzle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKqdL7A_aUI

4. Gm Rap.

5. The GMO debate and what could the future look like.

6. Fat Farm short story by Orson Scott. 15 pages.

7. Final Task: peer evaluation. Make your own GMO.

8. The riots in Ferguson. The evolution of the race problem in the US. A picture

dictation.

9. https://www.thinglink.com/scene/559298087961493505

10. Taylor Swift’s controversial video and people’s responses online.

SPACES AND EXCHANGES.

Possible key questions: How can we stay ourselves when we live another country?

Can a culture be considered superior to another? Can the absence or the control of

communication lead to rebellion?

1. Define Britishness: examples of movies and of TV programmes.

2. Leonard Kibera African short stories one extract.

3. Australia and the films the Sapphires, prejudices and pitfalls.

4. Look up by Gary Turk and becoming aware of the presence of technology taking

over our lives.

5. Chapter 1 1984 by George Orwell.

6. Contemporary societies have their problems http://io9.com/5955264/why-

modern-society-would-appear-completely-dystopian-to-a-visitor-from-the-past

Places and Forms of Power.

Possible key questions: Are citizens to oppose the government’s decisions when it

comes to war for example. The Vietnam War and how the Youth responded in the

1970s. Are voices more powerful than others?

1. Martin Luther King’s speech Silence is Betrayal.

2. Obama’s speech Dumb Wars in 2002.

3. Songs of protest and the Kent Massacre.

4. A senseless war Doctor Spock Letters about the Vietnam War: http://goo.gl/fXDP8s

page 45.

5. Pete Seeger Bring them home and the power of music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4wYiShPEyo

6. Final Task: defend fake causes and be convincing.

7. 3 first chapters of Divergent by Veronica Roth.

The notion of progress.

The idea of progress can be defined as an improvement, a development or a change – a

technical, scientific or social advance which contributes to making the world a better place.

When we define the "idea of progress" we usually say that progress is positive: medical

progress, social progress, technological progress …all have contributed to our modern-day

world being a better place.

But how does this technological progress change our lives, is it really a positive change or are

we becoming too dependent on new technologies?

In class we have studied a number of different documents on the way manufacturers and

industries produce food and the dangers and excesses that the hidden use of GMOs can

have on our health.

We saw a video on inglorious vegetables, an initiative from a chain of French supermarkets

which want to sell distorted fruit for instance instead of throwing them away. (à developer

avec son opinion)

Also in the documentary Food incorporated,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKqdL7A_aUI we saw how the food we eat has

changed over the past 100 years. Our nutrition has drastically changed and when we used to

get our food from the local store, now we all get it from huge supermarkets. It also means

more pesticides and more threats to our environment in the years to come. So maybe we

could think about the way we eat. (à developper aussi avec ses reactions.)

Finally, in the text called Fat farm, http://leyanlo.tripod.com/SrAnthology/OSC-FatFarm.pdf

we saw that in the Future we may have the technological devices to duplicate ourselves and

get rid of our fat bodies to live in new ones. Although it’ s not the case we cannot help but

wonder if we couldn’t transform ourselves through eating nutritious and also healthy why

not organic food.

Of course, questioning and thinking about the idea of progress proves that we are intelligent

and able to recognize the dangers and the improvements brought by new inventions and

new developments in our society.

PLACES AND FORMS OF POWER.

Choices made by politicians and governments and those who hold the power influence or change our

lives. Most of the time, as citizens, our only means of action is to cast a vote. We will study in this

unit how people reacted and opposed the Vietnam War in the 1970s in America with the view to

stopping it and how efficient they had been.

We ‘ll ask ourselves if there are methods that are more effective than others and if civilians,

anonymous people but also iconic figures can really resist power and make their pacific ideas prevail.

1. There are many ways to oppose something that we disagree with.

For example in the 1960s, in America, black people and white people came together on Freedom

rides to denounce the racism that Black people suffered from in the Southern states especially.

They organized rallies, marches, peaceful demonstrations to raise people awareness.

Eventually with the culminating effect of MLK’s invigorating speech “I have a dream” a law was

passed in 1964 and in 1965 that guaranteed black people the same rights as whites.

A war was going on at the same time in Vietnam that many young people disagreed with. On

campuses, strikes started and people showed their disapproval by burning their draft cards in public.

Famous public figures such as Cassius Clay even refused to be drafted and was arrested for that. They

were among what we call peace-makers.

There were also civilians who didn’t hesitate in sending out letters expressing their disapproval of the

war such as the one we studied in class to speak against a war that didn’t make sense.

Apart from sending out letters, writing and delivering speeches, demonstrating, a movement was

born in the 1960s which gave birth to many committed songs such as “Ohio” about the Kent

Massacre and also Bring them home by Peter Seeger.

He declared in an interview how powerful music could be by bringing people together.

People could unite and share the same peace ideals by singing the same tunes. (give examples of

other powerful songs)

2. Powerful people have even more impact when delivering speeches that are remembered. For

example, the speech given by MLK called “silence is betrayal” it seems that we have no other choice

than denounce the atrocities conducted at war. He stresses the fact that there is some comfort in

following the majority and some courage to stand out and speak your voice. In the text, MLK

reinforces the idea that the fight is in fact against the dark forces of war. At that time other people

like the Pope decided to speak out against a “senseless war”.

Nowadays in 2002, Barack Obama, at that time, opposed what he called “dumb wars” in much more

practical words. He pointed out the history of past conflicts and the participation of his own family

but nevertheless denied the necessity of getting involved in conflicts that might engender poverty

and crisis. Not yet president, Barack Obama understood very early in his campaign how social

networks could help his career as swiftly and quickly as anti-war anthems of the 1970s used peace-

makers spread their message. Recently, after the Charlie Hebdo events and with the birth of many

protests favouring the freedom of expression in France and around the world, we saw that these

spontaneous movements were not dead and that people could unite in order to denounce unfair

treatments. We might get the feeling that the flower power is not completely out of fashion.

SPACES AND EXCHANGES.

This notion deals with the geographical and symbolic areas that all societies occupy and the

interactions between men and different societies.

Our world is built on the exploration and conquest of new spaces.

We may wonder if by widening our horizons by travelling and communicating we have not narrowed

our expectations and our understanding of others.

Some people like the British have found power and recognition by spreading their dominion over the

world in such countries as Australia for example;

There, in the Commonwealth, British habits became the norm and are to be found in all social

classes. In the award winning film the Sapphires we saw how mixed raced people and those who

belonged to the Stolen generations still suffered from being discriminated.

There were the same kind of prejudices in Africa and in Kenya where the British ruled. The local

population found it hard to wash away the common belief that the Whites were superior and that

the Blacks shouldn’t have a culture of their own. (in the reaction of the school teacher who couldn’t

make her students speak about the newly adopted status of their country)

The different cultural, economic, sociological and language interactions have shaped and

characterised our modern-day world. Nowadays, through powerful networks and social spaces

information and contacts are just a click away.

We may ask ourselves if our relationships have been empowered and if we gain more using modern

communication tools. (see the example of the poem look up) Although we may disagree with the

validity of some of the arguments given in the poem, we also feel that modern technologies have

damaged our personal freedoms.

It was a reminder of what George had written about in 1984 when technology had enslaved men and

pushed them away from their cherished liberty. When considering how we are tracked on a day to

day basis using our credit card, smartphone, GPS device, Google search engine, we realize that we

have caved in and have accepted the Big Brother society that had once been a nightmarish vision

only.

We saw some examples or what societies would look like in the three first chapters of the best seller

Divergent by Veronica Roth. (à venir)