Difficult topics

The school is not a place isolated from social life. Students and teachers arrive with beliefs concerning politics, choices motivated by their outlook on life or religious reasons, acquired either at home or in a peer group. If they are radical opinions which evoke strong feelings, they can spark conflicts and became an axis of divisions within the school. Film education can assist us in reflecting on this subject. It can also serve as a tool for stimulating empathy, cautiously introducing taboo topics through the media intermediary, and enabling the creative analysis of a microhistory. During the workshop we will raise the following issues:

• Is there room at school for difficult topics? Is it better to prevent or raise them when crisis occurs?
• How to talk to young people about controversial questions that fire up the adult world?
• How to work with films to better communicate and open difficult discussions?