The idea of progress (Anaïs TES2)

    I am going to talk about the idea of progress. First of all, I would like to give a definition of this notion : the idea of progress can be defined as an imporvement, a development or a change, a technical, a scientist or social advance which contributes to making the world a better place. Today, the idea of progress can be negative or positive. For me, the documents that seem to best illustrate the notion are « Free at last » an extract of novel, « Trapped on the track » a cartoon and « How I harnessed the win » an extract from a film. I have chosen these documents because they each represent an idea of progress as a scientific, technological or a social progress.

    The first document I have chosen is from an extract of novel, written by Alain Sillitoe which the title « The Lonelinessof the Long Distance runner » was published in 1959. It deals with the problem of freedom, it's social progress. The narrtor is a delinquent, who is in a correctionnal institute. He's a young man who likes running. He could want to be a professional athlete. For me, everyone can achieve a goaln to accomplish his dreams. The things that you may not be proud of doing, it was allright to believe in their dreams and want to achieve them, as we say the narrator in this text. Some people have done terrible things, but mostly they regret, mistakes of the past they want to forget to start a new life. This text represent the idea of progress because people who live in this prison can be free when they are running in the forest. It's a new way of life for them. It's a progress because it's a modern concept.

    The idea of progress can be negative. We can see this in the second document « Trapped in the track », a cartoon. It's the idea of progress because we can be most fast with illegal drug as the athletes today. Illegal drug use, doping and inequality between runners who use drugs and runners who don't are critized in the cartoon.

The cartoon's goal is to show most athletes are not real athletes. He wants to show that too many athletes are cheating.

It's the idea of progress with a negative aspect beacause today many athletes use illegal drug, I think their health is at shake.

    But the idea of progress has positive aspects as the extract from a film which is title is « How I harnessed the win », by William Kamkwamba. It's a technological progress because he was built a windmill in Malawi, a poor country where there are no electricity and no water. We say that he didn't speak English and he never used a computer. I think he's courageaous man because he learned physics on his own and he was make genereating electricity and pump water for the lights, to recharge cellphones and help his neigbors.