- An awareness that culture builds the identity of a region that is part of a national, European and even global vision; and that culture and history are deeply linked in the construction of identity. - An improvement in the level of Italian for French pupils and French for Italian pupils. The Italian teachers of French had identified a weakness in the promotion of the French language and French literature in Italy. The French Italian teacher had identified the same tension among her Italian-speaking pupils, and a shared desire to boost the use of French and Italian was born. - Discovering a different culture: discovering a new country, tasting different food, meeting new people and knowing how to communicate easily.
We wanted to work on the notion of culture, and the need for it in building the identity and citizenship of each and every one of us. So we were looking for an opportunity to work together on a common cultural theme. The Italian lycée was looking to collaborate with a French lycée, for fourth-year language lycée pupils, in order to delve deeper into French history and literature (in this case Flaubert and his work ‘Mme Bovary’, studied in the final year of lycée, and Pierre Corneille and the culture of Normandy). The French lycée wanted to work on the confrontation between ancient Rome and modern Rome through the teaching of Latin and Italian (hence the relevance of collaborating with a Roman lycée). We wanted to show the participants in this project that culture is built up over time, through exchanges between nations and human beings.