RIFL/BC(2016): 78-88 DOI: 10.4396/2016BC05 __________________________________________________________________________________ 78 Practicing epideictic today: paradoxical encomium in secondary school Julie Dainville Université libre de Bruxelles julie.dainville@ulb.ac.be Abstract The fact that epideictic aims at building a consensus, a “homonoia” among a community is well established since the first known rhetorical treatises. Making students exercise this rhetorical genre would then probably be of great interest to our society. I was teaching Latin and Greek in Belgian secondary schools during four years and decided to explore this hypothesis by making my students practice epideictic exercises. For they constitute the main model that may inspire us today, I took inspiration from exercises as they were practiced during classical Antiquity. After taking into account theoretical and practical aspects inherent to my teaching area, I decided to work on the so called ‘paradoxical encomium’. My students were then asked to write the encomium of a neutral, or blameworthy object or person. This paper presents the results of this experiment. I will here focus on the concrete practice of such exercises, on the basis of my own teaching experience. I will broach benefits, but also technical and ethical problems that teachers and students may encounter while practicing them in a nowadays classroom and will illustrate my purpose with examples of productions written by some of my students, from 15 to 17 years old, in a Brussels school of the general secondary education in 2015. Keywords: rhetoric, epideictic, paradoxical encomium, education, society Received October 2015; accepted April 2016. 1. Introduction Today, identity and integration are at the heart of preoccupations, and these questions are very important in education theories: teachers’ mission is not limited to instruction of pupils any more: they should also build the future citizens; teach them how to live together; how to respect each other. But teachers are often unarmed to face this new challenge. When I was teaching Latin and Greek in Brussels secondary schools, I was working each week with a hundred and twenty five students, from twelve to seventeen years old. During my studies, I've been taught how to teach declensions, or to talk about Caesar's life. Latin teachers know how to explain grammar and Roman civilisation. But what is really important today is to know how to make this information relevant to teenagers. Thanks to pedagogical studies, teachers have clues to help their students