ARTS ET DÉBATS D’IDÉES

Annales

• Annale : Le sujet porte sur la thématique « Arts et débats d’idées »

   

  1^re partie - Synthèse

  Prenez connaissance de la thématique ci-dessus et du dossier composé des documents A, B et C et traitez en anglais le sujet suivant (500 mots environ) :

  Write a commentary about the three documents (about 500 words): taking into account their specificities, analyse how the documents deal with the role of books in education.

   

  2^e partie - Traduction

  Traduisez le passage suivant du document A en français :

  Keating rose from his seat as Neil read and went to the blackboard. Neil stopped, and Keating waited a moment to let the lesson sink in. Then Keating grabbed onto his own throat and screamed horribly. “AHHHHGGGGG!!” he shouted. “Refuse! Garbage! Rip it out of your books. Go on, rip out the entire page! I want this rubbish in the trash where it belongs!”

  He grabbed the trash can and dramatically marched down the aisles, pausing for each boy to deposit the ripped page from his book.” (L.15-21)

   

  Document A

  The following morning John Keating sat in a chair beside his desk. His mood seemed serious and quiet.

  “Boys,” he said as the class bell rang, “open your Pritchard text to page 21 of the introduction. Mr. Perry” – he gestured toward Neil – “kindly read aloud the first paragraph of the preface entitled ‘Understanding poetry’”.

  The boys found the pages in their text, sat upright, and followed as Neil read: “Understanding poetry, by Dr. J. Evan Pritchard, PhD1. To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech, then ask two questions: 1) How artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered and 2) How important is that objective? Question 1 rates the poem’s perfection; question 2 rates its importance. Once these questions have been answered, determining the poem’s greatness becomes a relatively simple matter. If the poem’s score for perfection is plotted on the horizontal of a graph and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness.” [...]

  Keating rose from his seat as Neil read and went to the blackboard. Neil stopped, and Keating waited a moment to let the lesson sink in. Then Keating grabbed onto his own throat and screamed horribly. “AHHHHGGGGG!!” he shouted. “Refuse! Garbage! Rip it out of your books. Go on, rip out the entire page! I want this rubbish in the trash where it belongs!”

  He grabbed the trash can and dramatically marched down the aisles, pausing for each boy to deposit the ripped page from his book.”

  “Make a clean tear,” Keating cautioned. “I want nothing left of it! Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, you are disgraceful!” [...]

  Keating strutted back to the front of the room, put the trash can on the floor ad jumped onto it. The boys laughed louder. Fire danced in Keating’s eyes. He stomped the trash a few times, then stepped out and kicked the can away.

  “This is battle, boys,” he cried. “War! You are souls at critical juncture. [...] Have no fear, you will learn what this school wants you to learn in my class; however, if I do my job properly, you will also learn a great deal more. For example, you will learn to savor language and words because no matter what anyone tells you, words and ideas have the power to change the world.”

   

  1 PhD: doctorate (highest university diploma).

  N.H. KLEINBAUM, Dead Poets Society, 1988

   

  DOCUMENT B

  

  Caption: We keep ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ out of schools because of the bottle of wine in her basket. Why not assault weapons?

  Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America²

   2 “Moms Demand Action” is a movement of Americans fighting for public safety measures that can protect people from gun violence.

  www.politifact.com, August 2013

   

  DOCUMENT C - Teenage Vandals Were Sentenced to Read Books

  A Virginia judge handed down an unusual sentence last yeat after five teenagers defaced a historic black school with swastikas and words “white power” and “black power”. Instead of spending time in community service, Judge Avelina Jacob decided, the youths should read a book.

  But not just any book. They had to choose from a list of ones covering some of history’s most divisive historic periods. The horrors of the Holocaust awaited them in “Night” by Elie Wiesel. The racism of the Jim Crow South was there in Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”. The brutal hysteria of persecution could be explored in “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller.

  A year has passed since the youths spray-painted their hateful messages on the side of the Ashburn Colored School, a one-room, 19th-century classroom that had been used by black children during segregation in Northern Virginia. The swastikas and words were long ago covered with paint. The teenagers have read their book and written their reports. [...]

  One of the teenagers wrote that he feels “especially awful” that he made anyone feel bad. “Everybody should be treated with equality, no matter the race, religion, sex or orientation. I will do my best to see to it that I never am this ignorant again.” [...]

  Marilyn Nelson, the author of a poetry book about a black youth who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955, said she was concerned it might have the opposite effect to what was intended. “I can’t say I’m pleased to know that my work is being inflicted as a punishment,” she said. “Will kids punished by being made to read poetry ever read poetry again?”

  Other authors expressed hope that the underlying message in their works was not

  lost. “Engaging with characters that differ from us in race, religion or culture, helps us feel our immutable connections as a species,” Mr. Hosseini³ said. “Books allow us to see ourselves in another. They transform us.” [...]

   

  3 Khaled Hosseini: the author of The Kite Runner, a 2003 novel about family, love and friendship in war-devastated Afghanistan.

  Christine HAUSER, The New York Times, April 5, 2018

   

  Afficher la correction

  ---