The importance of education and History
2018-1-DK01-KA229-047085
The importance of education and history
This project stands on two legs; education and history.
The project aimed to teach students from two different contries about the importance of getting yourself an education to get the best out of life, but also achieve some unknown information about history in both countries mostly related to WWll and the Spanish civil war and Franco period.
The first part was concentrated on 'education'. By reading the book 'Make lemonade' by Virginia Euwer Wolff the students got a significant understanding of life without the possibility to take care of yourself and your children, if you do not have some education. The book takes place in the United States of America, but the characters are young and the whole scenery is adaptable to everyone. We worked with the book in different ways and at the meeting in Denmark, the two groups of students presented their work to each other via several different performances. Drama, readings, movies, paintings. During the week in Denmark, the students were visiting places in relation to the book- e.g. a visit to a vocational training school- 'Next' in Nørrebro, where the students got information on how to become for instance a hairdresser, a cabinetmaker or a carpenter. We also visited 'Mødrehjælpen' and had a lecture by the manager about their work on helping mums in need.
The second part was then concentrated on the history leg. We read the short story 'Oranges' by the Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen, which describes how some people in Denmark turned against the Jews in advantage to themselves, but by working with the story, the students also got knowledge about other things during WWll in Denmark- for instance how Danish fishermen helped Jews to get to Sweden. We also read the short story 'Butterfly's tongue' by the Spanish author Manuel Rivas, which describes life en small Spanish villages during the Franco period. many of the Danish students did not know anything about this period in Spain, and they were not aware how people in spain were living at that time and how daily life in Spain was influenced on the dictatorship. During the meeting in Spain, Danish students again experienced how speaking Galician influenced peoples chances to get jobs abroad via the small film clips, that the Spanish students had made for the meeting.
Make lemonade by Virginia E. Wolff Video clip
The mass escape of Danish Jews to neutral Sweden
The history of Denmark during the WWII told live by students
The students presented their work about WWII in Denmark, also reading aloud some poems by Tove Ditlevsen, translated by the students from Danish into English.
Posters ready for presentations in Boiro
Posters about the story 'Oranges' written by Tove Ditlevsen, Danish female author.
The education in Spain from 19th century to Spanish Civil War
Exhibition
Public education in Spain
The idea of a public education comes from the liberal revolutions of the ends of 18th century. In France, under the Ancient Regime all the schools were run by the Catholic Church. After the 1789 French Revolution, the National Assembly declared the right of all citizens to a public and freeeducation.
The Public Education Act of 1857, best known as Moyano Act, was the first law to set the educational levels and compulsory primary education. But there were numerous problems to implement it, among them the following ones: the lack of schools which coupled with separate education for boys and girls, and the focus on boys schooling that led to lower schooling rates among girls.
Schools of “Americans”
From the beginning of the twentieth century, until the Second Republic, the Galician emigrants in America sent money to build schools in Galicia.
Most of the Galician emigrants were illiterate. So, they were well aware of the difficulties of emigrating without having an education. Therefore, they financed the construction of schools, as a way to guarantee the training of the new generations and to pull young people out of illiteracy.
These emigrants wanted to bring to Galicia a neweducational model, based on the most advanced educational systems of America: the ones from the United States and Uruguay. The main principles of these educational systems were:
The elimination of corporal punishments in school.
A more experimental teaching, new learning materials.
A reason based teaching,.
New architectural design of schools.
Providing schools with bigger classrooms, ligth, bathrooms and shower rooms.
The School of the Second Republic
The educational reform was meant to be the engine of social change aimed by the Republic. During this period, more schools were built than ever before, teacher training was improved, active teaching methods were encouraged, the freedomto teach was respected, the neutrality in teaching was obliged. Two capital objectives were, the improvement of school access opportunities and the achiement of free access to primary education. The reform was inspired and supported by the Free Learning Institution, founded in 1876 by Francisco Giner de los Ríos and others.
Pedagogical Missions were formed by teachers, professors, students, artists and intellectuals. These pedagogical missions travelled all around the country, to rural areas carrying out cultural activities such as film showings, theatre plays, puppet theatre, musical auditions or lectures.
The school and the military uprising of 1936
Since the beginning of the Civil War in July 1936, Galicia was incorporated into the insurgent camp. The destruction of the civil society began. Terror and education were key tools to achieve it. Many teachers were punished, even shot dead. The indoctrination: the education was carried out within the frame of the national Catholicism. It sought to eliminate critical thinking. It conveyed the idea of an only valid single world view.