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Reports of Workgroup 4: TOPICS – Taking our Past into contemporary Society

Orsolya Ferenc

In this Comenius project originally six partner schools decided to participate when we had the partnership conference in Vienna last year. These schools all applied to their national bureau but the Slovenian and the Italian schools' idea was rejected.

The remaining partners are the following:

  1. the co-ordinator school became the Bajza József Gimnázium from Hatvan, Hungary
  2. Krakow from Poland
  3. Kezmarok from Slovakia
  4. and a joined partner which is from the Hungarians' twin town, Maassluis, Holland.

These schools agreed that the topic of the Comenius programme will be the TAKING OUR PAST INTO CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY.

Under this title we have an opportunity to discover our past, and rise our students' interests in their grandparents generation's society. We decided to cover different fields in order to get to know what ideas are worth saving for the coming generations.

In November in 2002 the partner schools organised a meeting in Krakow to make a schedule for the 3-year project which includes the exact themes and dates.

Due to this schedule in the first project year:

  • There was a meeting in Kezmarok, Slovakia where the Hungarian and Slovakian students compared the events of 1956 and 1968. They had asked their family to tell their personal memories and discovered what had happened at that time in their home towns.
  • There was a meeting for each partner in Krakow, Poland where the Polish, Slovakian, Dutch and Hungarian students (aprox. 10 from each place) talked about the events of the second world war and the holocaust from the human side. They interviewed people who have personal memories and compared them so the participants could get an overall picture of the time. Then together they wrote a peace message for Europe.
  • There was a meeting in Hatvan, Hungary where the Polish and Hungarian students discussed the two nations' common history from the 10th century till today. During the project visit the groups went on study trips to find people and places which are connected to their topic.
  • There was a study trip for the Hungarian students to prepare the topic of bio-food and traditional crafts. A group of students went to Gömörszolos, which is a village where people still use the traditional methods of everyday work and food preservation and they are ready to teach us. In this project there is also a topic about the E-numbers. The results from the partner schools' will be compared.

For the coming two project years these are the plans for the meetings where each partner school will send a group:

  • There was a plan for a meeting in Hatvan and Gömörszolos, Hungary when the topic was to be the bio processes and traditional handcrafts.
  • A meeting in Kezmarok, Slovakia to show and compare the traditions of Christmas from songs to cakes. Because of the participants it will be a real European Chrsitmas.
  • A meeting in Maassluis, Holland where there will be a media week when the groups will make a film in a theme they choose that is connected to the original title.
  • In case the Italian school's project is accepted there will be a meeting in Catania, Italy where the groups will discuss environmental questions: how people used to protect their surroundings and what bad effects has attacked our environment. What can we learn from the previous generations in this field.

In the first project year the co-ordinator school has created a web site which contains all the detailed information of the above projects and meetings. At the conference I would like to present this web site and its content.

Carla Biella

History and Memory

The main objective in our project, in general, is to try to bridge the generation gap between the younger generation and the older one, encouraging our students to speak, and listen to the older people in their families and in their neighbourhoods. At the same time, we wanted to collect and preserve, in a personal "non-official" form, the memories of the older generation, regarding specific topics: important events which occurred during their lifetime, or traditions and customs of the past. We do not want theses things to be lost, because we believe that the younger generations can learn from them.

Specifically, as an important part of the theme "History and Memory", we chose the Second World War, more precisely the landing of the allied English, American and Canadian troops in Sicily in July 1943 and the occupation of the island. As we studied this theme two very important elements emerged: the transformation of the "enemies" in "allies" following the surrender of the Italians, and the large number of soldiers of Sicilian origins among the allied forces. The story of the allied landing therefore contains not only a series of bloody battles, but also a number of warm welcomes.

To study this theme we invited students to look for personal memories of the period, "Summer of '43" looking through history books and newspapers of the period, bit also talking to their grandparents who "were there". Together we chose the most interesting of these reminiscences. At the same time, we looked for photographs of the period, consulting the same sources and especially the private ones, adding also some modern photos of the cities and countryside as it is now, with its traces of the warfare. After selecting the texts and illustrations, we then tried to match them in a logical way, and to arrange them in chronological order, starting from the coast and "advancing" together with the allied troops unto we reached the capital cities of Palermo, Catania and Messina. Naturally we chose a greater number of photos and reminiscences connected with our city, not only because they were more readily available but also because they were more interesting for us.

At school we presented the material in an oral form, involving all the students who worked on the project – about thirty from two classes – and making them speak against a background of slides. This is how we will present it, in a slightly abridged form, at Stadtschlaining, even if only two students will present the oral part and we have provided the texts also in written form together with the slides.