Activities

Why and how should the First World War be tackled in the European countries’ secondary schools?
Is it worth asking this question which is not obsolete, even 90 years after the outbreak of the conflict?

The 14-18 war appears nowadays as being a key element, a decisive breach in the history of Europe in the 20th and 21st century.

The study of the First World War, both in its unfolding (a long war concerning numerous countries, a “total war” with an unprecedented savagery, that involves civilians as well as fighters and provokes the mobilization of all the human and material resources, but also in its immediate and long-dated consequences seems essential to meet the very goal of the history lesson which aims at understanding the present-day society though the past.

The First World War was treated with a national or nationalistic view for years. This is why we have chosen to apply to this event the methodology of the “crossing view” to go beyond the narrow-mindedness of those national views and offer a European reading of this part of our common history, and integrate in the teaching of this conflict, the contribution of the recent tendencies of the research which precisely go to the direction of a multiple and compared history.

The goal of this project is not to enter a theoretical reflection on the topic and the methodology but to confront and compare the different experiences, the practices and the conceptions of the different partners to build the pedagogical tools and a session of initial training for the teachers.

This session will be divided into 4 axes

1) The First World War in the curriculum and handbooks.
2) The time devoted to the conflict in the history lesson.
3) Museums and sites devoted to the First World War.
4) The memory and the collective representation of the war.

A survey will be carried towards the students in order to identify their factual knowledge (before studying the topic) but also their own representations of the war and their knowledge of the prints of the conflict (monuments, cemeteries, graveyards, museums, sites, film…).

The first year of the project will be mainly devoted to the elaboration of the training session.
The second year will provide the opportunity to test it on the targeted public in the different partners from the different countries and to improve it before disseminating it on a wider scale.
This session will be available on the project website, and on the DVD, in French, English, German, Italian, Polish and Rumanians.

The construction of an initial or continuing training module for teachers is truly the heart of the Project. It will take place in several stages, according to the following schedule:

Stage 1 (November 2007 - February 2008): research and collection of materials in different partner countries; comparison of curricula and textbooks, teaching practices and lesson plans, inventory and exploitation of l elements of memory (museums, sites), survey of students.

Stage 2 (March 2008 - September 2008): Construction of the module itself, from material collected in Stage 1 and using the methodology of "crossing views".

Stage 3 (October 2008 - February 2009): testing and evaluation of the module towards the target groups in partner countries.

Stage 4 (March 2009 - August 2009): adaptation and finalization of the module, based on the results of the experiment. Finalization of the product on its various media websites and DVDs. The module will be available in French, English, German, Italian, and Polish.

Stage 5 (August 2009 - September 2009): Dissemination of the module on a large scale, and final assessment of the module and the Project as a whole.