A l’entrée au lycée en classe de 2nde, on se dit qu’on entre dans la cour des grands. On se rêve déjà bachelier, voguant après le lycée sur des terres inconnues. Mais qu’est-ce que ça implique de grandir ? C’est quoi devenir adulte ? La soif d’indépendance est-elle à étancher si vite ? Toutes ces questions ont été posées à mes élèves de 2nde, dans le but qu’ils réfléchissent à leurs perspectives, présentes et à venir, en considérant ce que certains artistes de tous genres confondus avaient pu dire sur l’adolescence et les rêves d’évasion. A partir de ces oeuvres (un tableau de Rockwell, des chansons des Beatles, de Pink Floyd ou de Cat Stevens, une pièce de Harold Pinter, un film de Ricky Gervais et Stephen Merchant), les élèves ont dû se pencher sur les codes des genres littéraires et artistiques pour produire une adaptation de leur propre cru. Aussi les pages de ces “Stories about Growing Up” sont-elles remplies d’histoires qui donnent à voir ce que c’est que grandir. Espérons que leur lecture vous grandisse à leur tour !” FL
Foreword
When will I be seen as a grown up? Am I really looking forward to becoming independent? Those existential questions are on everybody’s minds, especially upon entering high school and soon turning 16, 17, and then 18… It’s of course at once about the excitement of no longer being a child but also the fear of soon having to
make life-changing decisions without being able to depend entirely on one’s parents. That results in what many call “teenage angst”.
My 2nde students this year were asked then, as the school year started, to consider these questions and study documents of various nature that relate to the topic of teenagehood, the generation gap or young people’s wish
for independence. They could therefore see what artists in the past said about what they may experience in the near future. The hope was for them to relate to the artworks but also to take critical distance from them and elaborate their own discourse.
One aspect of that critical distance was to look into the codes of a given genre (be it painting, poetry, drama or cinema) and explore those codes by adapting the original
artworks into a different medium. A scene from a movie could be turned into a literary extract, or a song could beturned into a drawing, or else a painting could be adapted
into a storyboard. Since it is up to each and everyone of us to write our own life story (with the help of others, of course!), it seems only natural that high school students
should be given the opportunity to become storytellers.
The following pages are then full of stories that are at times funny, at others moving, but that all beg the question: what does it mean to be independent? And is it worthwhile?
After weeks of compiling these stories, you are now given the chance to read them, and read about them, and so it is our hope you enjoy the independent spirit that drives them and you find the experience worthwhile indeed. Have as much fun reading their stories as the students had telling them!
François Lapauw,
with the contributions of:
Mira Bonnet, Alexis Brault, Margaret Bulloch,
Ekaterina Buzmakova, Aline Chae, Pha Le Do,
Gary Frappat, Lily-Rose Guihard, Arnold Hermansen,
Steven Hermansen, Song Joo Jeong, Rosalie Mourey,
Tran Nguyen, Chau Nguyen, Tu Linh Nguyen,
Gabriel Nguyen Van Chinh, Léa Pham, Maéva Rouby,
Matys Sabot-Garrelon, Laura Spessa-Nguyen,
Jean-François To Nguyen, Thien Van Tran,
Nam Phuong Trinh, Ophélie Trinh
