History seen and unseen.

"In the 1960’s an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn’t take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services. Yet today few people know about the GI movement against the war in Vietnam."

Sir! No sir!

Click here to see the whole movie.

And for those of us who think that this is history click here.

Another view of the past

To read school history books you'd get the impression that Greece and the whole of the Balkans has been little more than a war zone for the last 1000 years. Army versus army, ethnic group versus ethic group, religion versus religion. Battle, blood superiority and sacrifice.

It's hard to imagine that so many such groups managed to live cheek by jowl, in relative peace for centuries in cities such as Thessaloniki (Saloniki). Just to remind us of this fact I thought I'd post a small extract from the National Geographic article of September 1916 that I found.

The caption is a little hard to read so I'll write it out again here;

"The arch is Roman, the driver, mayhaps is a Spanish Jew and it's passengers Greeks and Turks, Jew and Gentile, bond and free: for it is a congress of nations that gathers in Saloniki and the gamut of human conditions that its people run."

H. G. Dwight Saloniki - National Geographic September 1916

"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato

These pictures were taken today in the military cemetery on Lagadas St. Here lay buried thousands of Italian, British, French and Serbian soldiers who died in the First World War.

In Our Time - The siege of Constantinople

"THE SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE

When Sultan Mehmet the Second rode into the city of Constantinople on a white horse in 1453, it marked the end of a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire. After holding out for 53 days, the city had fallen. And as one contemporary witness described it: “The blood flowed in the city like rainwater in the gutters after a sudden storm”. It was the end of the classical world and the crowning of an Ottoman Empire that would last until 1922."

For more click here. The programme will be available as a podcast after the 28th December.

Here's my take on the subject.

Making history real

Here's an ideas for a lesson. Why not get students to choose an event in history and make a video based on it using images found on the internet? My video is about the fall of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), the capital of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans in 1453 AD. I've been fascinated by the event ever since reading Steven Runciman's excellent book on the subject.

Check out the BBC series, In Our Time which has a radio programme about the siege of Constantinople. Or listen direct by clicking here.

History as now - Teaching history as news

The BBC has a series called On This Day that treats recent historic events as if they were breaking news. This gives some excellent raw material for several possible teaching ideas.For example this exercise focuses on tenses and in particular the changes needed when talking about recent events compared with those which are over and done with i.e. the differences between the use of present perfect and past tenses, I know, it sound very dry but the idea is to make those concepts more concrete to the students by using real examples.

You'll need to have;

1 Two photocopies (no more than one page each, one of which is from the BBC's On This Day and the other a more conventional historical account (Wiki would be my first port of call). The event should ideally, be something that the students are already aware of. In this lesson plan I'm going to use the fall of the junta in Greece in 1973.

2 A photocopy with details from a historical event that student know about.

Lesson Plan

1 Ask students what they know about the 17th November 1973 (which is a holiday for students in Greece). Students work in pairs and write down what they know. Tell them that if they don't something in English, you'll translate.

2 Elicit answers from the class.

3 Ask them what they know about the 25th November 1973. Odds on, they'll not know much. Explain to them that you will give them a handout which gives some information about the event.

4 Divide the class into two groups, give one group this page from the BBC and the other this extract from the Wiki page on the Greek junta (from The Ioannidis Regime to the end).

5 Tell the students that they should read it and it is their responsibility to figure out the vocabulary as a group.

6 Then they form pairs with one person from each group.

7 They compare the different versions on two levels;

a the information given
b the tenses used



8 Now choose an event from history that your students are familiar with e.g. The Fall of Constantinople ( see here for the Wiki entry - The Siege and Final Assault of the City). Explain to the students that they have to imagine that they are journalists reporting from the city on the events mentioned in the photocopy. Make sure that they are clear on the use on tenses in this case.

9 This can either be done in the form of a BBC On This Day style report or you could record it as CNN live report on a digital camera/mobile phone and post it via itunes as a podcast or YouTube video on the class blog.

28th October

Today is a national holiday in Greece ("oxi" or "no day"). On this day in 1941 the Italian dictator, Mussolini demanded that the Greek government allow Italian troops to enter its territory. This marked the country's entry into WWII on the side of the allies (see here for more details).

Every town has a parade in which students participate by marching through the streets.