Bonjour,
J'aimerai avoir votre avis sur mon dossier, et s'il correspond bien à ce qui est attendu en anglais approfondi. Je vous mets les liens des documents :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWa9jmv3u90
https://yourdream.liveyourdream.org/2018/06/womens-empowerment-education/
https://www.ted.com/talks/shameem_akhtar_to_learn_is_to_be_free/transcript#t-426025
I am going to introduce the notion places and forms of power. First, I will define the terms. Actually, the term power suggests an influence or a superiority that could be political, economical or intellectual. The term “places” suggests the different bounded places in which the concerned authority is exercised. Finally, the term “forms” insists on the different ways in which the influence can be exercised.
I’m going to focus on education around the world. According to Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” Therefore, we can wonder to what extent education is a form of power, especially as far as women emancipation is concerned.
To illustrate this notion, I am going to talk about two documents that I have studied in class: a video from “plan international” and an article from “Live your dream” website, then, I am going to present my personal document : a speech from the website TED, untitled “To learn is to be free”
So, first, the video. This video is from a charity, a non profit organization called “plan international”. The video is untitled “Because I am a girl.” This expression is used at every beginning of each sentence to support what she is saying. A voice over is telling us the story of a young girl, but we quickly understand that this is a generalization to all girls that live in Sub Saharan Africa. There, girls do not attend schools. Indeed, they have to take care of their children, because they are mostly pregnant at a very young age. Moreover, their inexperience pregnancy is a leading cause of death for teenagers’ mothers. Parents prefer boys, so 100 million girls are missing each year, they suffered from malnutrition because their progenitors choose to feed boys rather than girls. Besides, 70 000 girls everyday are forced to be married. They are more likely to have HIV infections or AIDs, because they have relation too young, and without any protections. And all these things are a cycle that starts over and over. The aim of this video is to awake people about the fact that there are still girls that can not attend schools in the world, which is not normal at all.
Next, the article. This is an article from a charity too, called “Live your dream”. It supports individual children and young people with a talent, drive and ambition who haven’t been able to realize their dreams because of a lack of funding. The article is untitled “Women’s empowerment through education”. The author of the article started her carrier in science communication. Her goal is to spark women and girls’ interest in STEM. In this article, we learn that, across the world, a lot of girls remained out of school although it is true that more girls and young women attend school than ever before. The numerous barriers they face are enormous especially for girls and women in developing country such as poverty, early forced marriage, pregnancy, gender discrimination are major factors on the lack of women education. Yet, the countries, that take steps toward closing the gender discrimination gap, experience a great economic drop and a ripple effect within the families and the communities. With the knowledge of women education, we must strive towards providing education to female on a global scale. We must transform deeply rooted mentalities regarding girl’s education and foster positive viewpoints to increase girls self-confident and break down a barrier that they face.
As a personal document, I choose a video from the website “Ted”. This is a speech, untitled “To learn is to be free”, and Shameem Akhtar is talking. She is telling us a story, and we progressively understand that this is her story. With this speech, we better realize that in some countries, girls are facing a real fight to go to school, even nowadays. What she lived is really impressive. She was born in Pakistan, in a tribe, where women have to stay at home, raise children, only care about home and cannot go out alone. She gives a quite simple example, which is disturbing. When newspapers arrive at home, women cannot read it, before all men inside house read it before. So, when women can finally hold the newspaper, that’s old news. Women have to face everyday life injustice. Boys can go to school and rise to the top, not girls. But, how Shameem succeeded to go to school with a conservative family? Indeed, she has luck because her surname can be for a boy or a girl. So, when she was 3, she became a boy. She was eager to fight for her education. She reached high school, and then made a hunger strike to go to college because her father disagreed to let her go to university because she had to go alone at school. But her hunger strike achieved. Actually, she was not afraid to go to school, but she was afraid of her father. However, she reached to change her father mind. At first, he disagreed her daughter plan, but then, he accompanied her. Moreover, she not only changer her father’s mind, but her village too: more and more girls attend school thanks to her. Education is not just a step of life. Education can change life, as we see for Shameem. A peaceful world can not exist without girls’ education, a world without forced marriage, without early death because of pregnancy.
As for me, these documents really illustrate the notion Places and Forms of Power. As we saw in the different documents, education can be a form of power, especially for women emancipation. They can live by themselves when they are educated, because they can have a work and earn money. They can change mentalities, that are deeply imbued (imprégné).
To my mind, girls have the right to be educated, and more than that: they have to be educated. Boys and girls have to be on an equal level. There are some studies that proved that with girls, wars would stop, world would be peaceful, poverty goes down. Country where girls attend schools are more developed. Girls are not the only one that have to take care of children, of the house: men also have to take responsibilities. Forced marriage and boys’ superiority can no longer exists. Education was and will always be weapons, in every country of the world.
I think that we can link this notion with the Idea of Progress, because women’ rights have evolved time by time. First, vote, then the fact that they don’t belong to their father or their husband, and now we wait for equal rate.
Merci ! :)