LC PERFECTION - Utopias

The students read a work by a contemporary French author, Laurent Gaudé, entitled Eldorado. Each student produces an audio file based on their reading, in which they present the author and his various humanist commitments, summarise the story of the two main characters (a captain in charge of guarding the coast and a migrant), discuss the way in which Gaudé deals with the issue of migrants and explain the title of the work in relation to the two intersecting stories they have read.

They then read extracts from texts, press articles or looked at paintings about 4 utopian places : the Golden Age, the Garden of Eden, the Land of plenty and Eldorado (Hesiod, Ovid, Voltaire / Cranach the Elder, Brueghel, Plantu).

The class is then divided into groups of 4 ; each group researches one of the 4 myths in greater depth, showing how it illustrates the value of "perfection" and selecting an image that illustrates the myth. After that, each group creates a poster on which they summarise their research and illustrate it with their image. They are asked to compare the 4 types of perfection represented by the Golden Age, the Garden of Eden, the Land of plenty and El Dorado, and then to present their poster to the whole class, outlining the similarities and differences between the 4 utopias? At the end, each student had to justify that one of the four myths corresponded most closely to his or her conception of perfection.

This activity enables the students to develop their general knowledge, but also to understand that the notion of perfection is a subjective value, as it will not be the same for everyone. They also understood that the idea of perfection is linked to the way other people look at things.