Drawing on ancient myths and concepts, the Philia project helps high school students think from a different perspective about the links between human societies and their environment, in order to better tackle the ecological crisis.

“In the beginning was Chaos, then the Earth with its broad sides, a secure foundation forever offered to all living things.” Reciting in chorus these verses from the ancient Greek poet Hesiod , a group of high school students walk along the Saint-Nicolas pond in Angers (Maine-et-Loire) on a beautiful spring morning, provoking the amused surprise of the few walkers who pass them.

This poetic performance closes an outdoor workshop session offered by students and teacher-researchers from the University of Angers as part of a participatory action research project .

From the Greek term for both friendship and attachment to nature, the Philia project was born from a desire to connect two rarely associated observations. On the one hand, there is the gradual erosion of classical culture, inherited from Greco-Roman antiquity, which has long been fundamental to the formation of modern European societies.

Let us note that, paradoxically, this erosion does not prevent the maintenance, in renewed forms, of a certain appetite among young people for the myths and traditions transmitted by Antiquity. This is illustrated, each in their own way, by the commercial and popular successes of films such as 300 , video games such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (whose potential for cultural transmission is not to be neglected, as illustrated for example by the reconstitution of the character of Socrates , with whom players can interact at leisure), the books of Madeleine Miller or the manga of Mari Yamazaki .

The other observation put into dialogue with the previous one is the loss of the experience of nature, in the general context of the ecological crisis, which can be the source of various eco-emotions , at the heart of several recent scientific debates .

The aim of the Philia program is therefore to bring students into contact with certain works from the classical Greco-Roman tradition in order to work on what the Australian anthropologist Glenn Albrecht calls the “emotions of the earth .” This approach is part of the research carried out in recent years in the fields of environmental humanities, ecopsychology and participatory science.

Weaving links between sensory experience and literature

The workshops organized for high school students as part of Philia aim to enable them to forge links between sensory experience and literature through a corpus of ancient texts dealing with the question of nature. As much as possible, these sessions take place outdoors, in a so-called “outdoor classroom” approach , a new situation for most of the participating students.

Indeed, while out-of-school education has seen a major revival in France since the first lockdown, this dynamic mainly concerns primary school students, and less so those in secondary and higher education, with the notable exception of agricultural education students. However, adolescents, like children, are faced with the extinction of the experience of nature . This lack of contact with the so-called “natural” environment is the cause of a growing insensitivity to the loss of large swathes of biodiversity or to climate change.

This approach is partly inspired by paideia , ancient education, which gave equal importance to the training of the body as well as to that of the mind, and which took place largely outdoors, in places which, admittedly, have given their names to modern institutions devoted to teaching, but by losing the link with the outside world. Consider the term “Lyceum”, which today evokes a closed building and neon-lit classrooms, whereas in Antiquity it was a tree-lined garden in which Aristotle and his disciples indulged in philosophical walks.

It is certainly not a question of seeking in a fantasized Greek past a hypothetical model of education, or even of society, but on the contrary of putting into dialogue, in a critical manner, different modes of being in the world, to take a step back from unthought-of categories such as “Nature” or “Antiquity”, in the tradition of the work of historical anthropology of the ancient Greek world carried out, in France, by Jean-Pierre Vernant and the “school of Paris”.

In the light, therefore, of an ancient paideia largely revisited according to modern standards, the workshops offered to high school students within the framework of Philia work to solicit the students’ sensory perception capacities and their interest in myths, for example through games of visual and tactile identification of tree essences, thanks to bark, such as oak, beech or pine, the auditory recognition of birds (swan, swallow, seagull, etc.) or even an olfactory exploration of the Mediterranean pharmacopoeia, coupled with a tasting of herbal teas concocted by the students are offered to them.

An ancient look at the environment

The playful dimension is very important in the spirit of these workshops, which seek to reconnect with the Greek etymology of school: the “scholè”, the happy free time of joyful leisure, a time of astonishment and enthusiasm conducive to philosophical reflection that shapes the citizen.

This is why these fun activities are all accompanied by the reading and recitation of mythical stories, chosen for their connection to the theme. They allow for discussion around their ecological significance: what does it mean that a tree like the laurel can be considered a metamorphosis of a nymph pursued by Apollo? That an oak tree at Dodona can be considered an oracle of Zeus? That the swallow and the nightingale are young girls transformed into birds? That humans are born from a swan, a tree, or a stone?

The aim is to introduce students to several ancient entries that allow them to think differently about the current ecological crisis and the different relationships between human societies and their environment. Fragments from pre-Socratic authors help fuel the collective discussion with concepts such as hybris (excess), metron (measure), phusis (nature), kosmos (world organized around the principle of universal harmony), etc.

Some fragments, discovered in the context of a role-playing game that takes up elements of the myth of the hero Cadmus and his wife Harmony , can be learned by heart by groups of students and recited as they walk along in order to facilitate the exercise. Often unfamiliar with memorization techniques, students are then encouraged to rely on their surroundings to “deposit” fragments of texts in different places, and to then recall them by mentally retracing the path, in the manner of ancient orators .

Walking is thus used to appropriate both the text and the lived space, based on the principles of ”  head body heart  ” pedagogy and the walking class , and contributes to strengthening the students’ “attachments” to the living beings around them.

A “biodiversity of knowledge” perspective

By taking them on a journey alongside Hesiod and the Pre-Socratics, Philia invites students to use a new regime of attention, based on connections to the living. Through this shared literary and synesthetic experience, the program aims to foster dialogue between the humanities and the “hard” sciences, with a view to “biodiversity of knowledge.”

Useful to high school students, this approach is also useful for students participating in the program in that it constitutes a prefiguration of the ecological transition and sustainable development modules (TEDS) , compulsory for all first university cycles from the start of the school year in September 2025. More broadly, for outdoor sessions, it is a question of contributing to “increasing the sensitive surface area of ​​the students”, in the words of district inspector Éric Fleurat , a great promoter of the outdoor class, who passed away too soon.

Experienced collectively, the outdoor experience allows knowledge to circulate differently, changing the quality of message reception among students who often suffer from a feeling of information overload or repetition of speeches related to the ecological transition. Outside the classroom and using materials rarely used on these issues, the workshops conducted as part of the Philia program therefore offer a method and insight derived from ancient tradition to address “socially sensitive issues”, such as the extinction of life and the Anthropocene, and contribute to a pedagogy of robustness .

Author Bios: William Pillot is Lecturer in history and archaeology of the ancient Greek world, Member of the TEMOS Laboratory (UMR CNRS 9016) at the University of Angers and Laure Pillot is a Contract teacher at the University of Angers, trainer in Inspé and member of the Pôle EnJeux (Loire university center for studies on childhood and youth)