Mapping Controversies: Students Tackle the Arctic Question

An interdisciplinary project at the heart of civic education

What do you do when there is no easy answer? When an issue is too complex to be settled by a simple debate, with winners on one side and losers on the other? This is the challenge at the heart of cartographie des controverses (the mapping of controversies), a pedagogical approach that our students have been exploring this year through a compelling real-world topic: the exploitation of the Arctic.

An Approach Born from Philosophy

The mapping of controversies is an initiative originally developed by philosopher Bruno Latour and implemented in partnership with Sciences Po Paris. What began as a think-tank exercise in higher education has since made its way into secondary schools, offering students a powerful tool for grappling with the complexity of the real world.

The idea is deceptively simple: rather than staging a debate with a winner and a loser, students explore a controversy — a question that remains genuinely open, a "living issue" with no clear-cut resolution. The goal is not to reach a verdict, but to map the landscape of arguments presented by the various actors involved. Who is speaking? What are their interests? What do they claim, and why?

The Arctic: A Burning Question

This year's controversy could not be more timely. As the Arctic ice melts due to climate change, two major opportunities are emerging: new maritime shipping routes and access to vast natural resources, oil, gas, rare minerals, previously locked beneath the ice. What should the world do with them?

This question was explored across two disciplines: Life and Earth Sciences (SVT) with Guillaume LORGET, and History and Geography with Fanny SALMON. The interdisciplinary approach allowed students to examine the issue from multiple angles — the scientific realities of climate change and Arctic ecosystems, alongside the geopolitical and human stakes of territorial claims and resource extraction.

Stepping into Someone Else's Shoes

The heart of the exercise is a round table simulation, an arena, modeled on the format of Model UN. Students are asked to embody an actor in the debate: a CEO of an energy company, a political leader, an environmental activist, a representative of indigenous Arctic populations...

No decision has to be reached. That, in itself, is the point. The goal is simply to listen — to hear the full range of arguments, to understand why each actor holds the position they do, and to begin to grasp just how layered and contested this issue truly is.

A Young Audience, a Real Challenge

The classes taking part in this project are the Lycée's Gr8 students along with their peers from the Silicon Valley International School, whose curriculum ends at quatrième (Gr8). Their relative youth adds a layer of difficulty, but also a particular richness. These students are still forming their worldviews, and exercises like this one plant the seeds of critical and nuanced thinking early.

Why It Matters

As one of the teachers put it: "As adults, they will be called upon to form opinions." The mapping of controversies does not tell students what to think. It teaches them how to think — how to sit with complexity, resist the pull of easy answers, and take seriously perspectives very different from their own.

In a world that too often rewards certainty over curiosity, that may be the most important lesson of all.