1
BEOGRAD /4-7 tetor 2007
“Let’s not allow teachers to do what the pupils can do on their own and let pupils the task of researching and the pleasure of finding”
Aleksander Xhuvani
“The past is not dead. It is not even yet !”
William Faulkner
Tell me, ------Iforget,
Show me ,----- I remember,
Involve me,-----I learn.
( Hindu proverb)
Teaching Methods
Traditional method
a)
Group work
b)
Method of discussion
c)
Workshop objectives
- Include the persnal experience inexplaining and treating the oral history during history class instructions.
- Exschanging the positive experience in improving the methodologies in oral history.
- Indicating the ways of regional partenerships to use oral history in themes of common interest
Teaching theme: The perception of the communist regime through the alternative methods of history.
Teaching objectives:
- The use of oral history as an alternative that makes history more believable
- Oral history in conjunction with other methods of history recognition
- The reconstruction of history through oral history in order to influence in the education of students’ personality and character
- Involving students in using oral history, making them able to know how to conduct research, communicate, deduct, reflect, feel empathy for the event or historical character.
1976 albanian constitucion:
“citizens enjoy the right of speech,press, collective organization, meetings, and public manifestations.The states guarantess the execution of these freedom, creates conditions for them and makes available to them different material means”
Verbal note of the system’s opponent Kasem Trebeshina to Enver Hoxha in 1963:
“… the great destruction will occur in the Albanian spiritual world.. I mean that oppression of though which will bring at the end the birth of a new monarchy..”
Let’s discuss about it:
Klasa ndahet në 9 grupe:
Grupi 1 - grupi përgatitjes/prezantimit/ të intevistave
Grupi 2 - grupi që do të shkojë në muzeum/jeta e Arbnorit
Grupi 3/4 - ndërtojnë posterat dhe tekstet për to
Grupi 5 - analizojnë pullat
Grupi 6 - do të zhvillojë lojën e rolit
Grupi 7 - do punoje esse dhe presupozohet se lexon me te miren/ose dicka tjetwr qe mendon grupi i huaj
Grupi 8-9- vëzhgues të punës së grupeve si gazetarw lindor/perwndimor
The activities of the groups:
Grupi 1:
Interview with Mr. A. A.
Place of interview: Interviewee’s home
Interviewed by: Ina Shehu, Bora Bocaj
Interview time: 50 min
Equipments: tape-recorder, camera etc.
The content of interview in the tape (it could be heard or read in class after being written down)
I am a student in the fourth year of the P.N. Luarasi high school in Tirana and this year we are studying the subject of Albanian History. Being a subject with general information i would like to have a more specific information on the communist period as we are currently studying this period and the info we get from the text-book looks a bit formal. As you have been an opponent of the system and eye-witness of the events we would appreciate to hear them based on your experience.
Question.
Mr. A. we have read something about your life but we would like to hear what the communist period represents for you?
Answer
The dictatorship in my life marked what it itself wanted. To me, communism is a broken, wet, torn apart slogan hanged on the column of history.
Question
Why did you never accept dictatorship and why do you think it failed?
Answer
The dictatorship produced misfortune for everyone and happiness for no one except the dictator himself. Communism failed because it didn’t succeed in cloning the individual with the system’s requirements in the laboratory of the socialist state.
Question
How would you define press, property and the free vote during the communist system?
Answer
The press was a high quality drug which was used by the system as a mask to cover its face. The press was considered the most faithful assistant of the Party, which was not allowed to deviate.
The vote was a totally formal and useless action. This was shown by the unanimity of the votes. Socialism declared that the disappearance of private property is the main foundation of the economic development.
Question
The socialist wonder was that people were happy at the time? Was the communist regime a fake image of happiness or did it really achieved it in people’s lives?
Answer
… socialism prepared people fed with the fake image of happiness but not with real happiness…
Question
We have heard so often about the “vouchers” and “tollon” system which seem abstract concepts. How did the society function in this system?
Answer
In Albanians you could see the poverty at the living areas. One family lived in one room and a kitchen or there were 2 different families living at the same apartment and the kitchen and the bathroom were shared by both. The poverty could be seen in the grey clothes, bread and food tollons which were the cells of socialism. If you want to know the history of socialism look at its objects, the style of dressing and the feeding controlled by the system.
Question
Do you remember any slogan of Enver Hoxha’s party?
Answer
How can I forget the things the things heard every second of my life from all the information means of dictatorship? For example, “we will build the world’s revolution”/ we are the lantern of socialism in Europe/ our enemies target us with their rifles we target them with our canons/ we will rather eat grass than deviate from the ideology of Marxism-Leninism/ we will build socialism on our own forces/ lets live and work as if we are in a siege/ Chinese socialist-imperialism is a cartoon tiger, etc. which not only you but the whole people at the time used to repeat as a sleepwalker without knowing and wanting to know the meaning.
Question
If you compare the communist system and the democracy that we are currently building, what would be your opinion?
Answer
Dictatorships are negative lectures for democracy. At that time we experienced extreme poverty, now we want immediate reaches, at that time we experienced the properties’ collectivization and today individualism established on the human notions. Dictatorships are modern forms of human slavery…
Question
It is hard for me but I have to ask: what happened to you?
… the communist system had too many citizens. I always felt excluded, I didn’t know what to do. The state let you know that it could do without you if you didn’t like it…
Everything I have suffered from the system I have summarized in this poetry:
Wait for the future when you had no past
Wait to live when life has ended
Wait for revenge with love in your heart…
The Interviewer
Mr. A. A. we see that you are very touched and continuing further is hard for us too, so if you allow, we will end this conversation and hope to meet again in the future
The Interviewee
Thank you for trusting in my memories and you are welcome. I wish you success!
Grupi 2( I muzeumit)Have resourced the information from the museum of the communist dictatorship in the NationalMuseum and present the data.
The life of Pjetwr Arbnori, The Albanian Mandela (Imprisoned 29 years for his political views, during dictatorship period)
- document from national museum of Albania-
“…the treatment during interrogatories, in camps and prisons was non-human. The cells were cold in winter and hot in summer, usually with a cement floor, and we had 1 or 2 blankets only for winter nights. 500 gram of corn bread or boiled potatoes instead of bread and later was added one disgusting spoon of soup.
Without taking a bath in years, tortures, iron, current, alive in a coffin, helmets on our heads day and night. There was 38-65cm room to sleep, 6 gr. Oil. 49 gram spaghetti or rice with flies. One our a day airing, which was also the time for washing the face, for shaving and washing clothes. Meeting with the family members, 5 minutes in a month at a reception room… it was forbidden to lie down, to cover and to sleep during day-time. It was mandatory to read every day 4-5 hours the works of Enver…”
Grup 3:
Will work on the posters that the students themselves will collect from the official and media resources and teacher resources as well on this content:
- freedom of speech
- freedom of faith
- freedom of ownership
- school physiognomy
- degree of pluralism
- woman’s position in the society
- facts and figures from the political dissidents
Class work for group 3
- define the kind of the resource you collected
- create a poster based on the resources
- what do the resources provoke?
- make up questions about these resources
- write a historic informational text with this content
- Name/title the text.
Group 4
Will create a poster based on the media resources, collected from the students and also based on the teachers’s resources
- freedom of speech
- freedom of faith
- freedom of ownership
- school physiognomy
- degree of pluralism
- woman’s position in the society
- facts and figures from the political dissidents
Class work for group 4
- define the kind of the resource you collected
- create a poster based on the resources
- what do the resources provoke?
- make up questions about these resources
- write a historic informational text with this content
- Name/title the text.
Grupi 5
The teacher has distributed some stamps to this group to:
- Well do the poster
- Analyze the content of the stamps used in the communist regime and draw conclusions”
P.s: Puna përgatitore e grupeve mund të zgjasi 10-15 min
Grupet e prezantojnë punën e tyre nëpërmjet një përfaqësuesi të zgjedhur nga vetë ata.
Grupi 6
RolPlay; improvising a mini communist trials against a dissident.
(the subject of rol play would be written by talented students in literature who take the subject from the biographies of these dissidents or from a real hearing)
Theme of Rol play:
“...The trail of the freedom of speech”
Judge:
.....you have opposed agaisnt the constitutional draft ,why?
Defendant :
Because it seems to me that it exspresses ideological content not national essence .i am pro free democracy and a would like the statute to be inspired by this principle.
Judge:
Yes, but you are pro “ free” bourgeois democracy, so that you benefit for yourself, so that you are the elite of the nation and then you and others like you decide for nations destiny.
Defendant ;
No I am pro democracy for oll that is depended on democratic laws.
Judge :
Did you say that this regime is absolute?
Defendant::
Yes because this regime defends the point of wiev of only one party.
Judge:
So you like the west democracy?
Defendant:
This is an opinion and I think that west democracy is the one that is true.
Judge:
Defendant,following the article 64 you are accused for “betray” and following the article 73 for “political agitation and propaganda” in group. You have maid propaganda against the party and the government, you have denied the achievements of this government by making propaganda of bourgeois point of view. For this reason, in name of the people you are convicted to 10 years imprisoned.
Defendant:
I feel quite for my convict, because I think that my attitude should be a positive example in the difficult way of democracy.
Grupi 7
class/home work about:
-Make a report, essay, composition, poetry, caricature on the following topics:
“Albanians between prison and freedom”
To live in communism
Broken dreams
Albania between east and west
Essay: Living in communism.
A ofen think that if a lived in communism a would fall into depression or suffer a mental illness.This because a can’t accept the fact that a can close inside me my critic thoughts about a procee or certain phenomen, being afraid that my friend or the invisible aroundme would use it to limit my freedom.
Living communism means that a would not decide myself to believe or not and to accept onluone alternative of the creation of Universe.
A can’t understand which was that major force that decided on the divorce of couple , besides love consumption, in case when one of the couple was considered “ the enemy of the Party”.
It was the most absurd thing the fact that it was “the Party” that decided which branch of the university you were to stady and not yourself that have dreamt oll your life in that field.
But olso often think that it not that frightening living in communism, you need only to be conform the system, obey its rules and be correct with it. Many minor girls, now women, thank communism which separated them from their husbandas-fathers(of age) with whom the family engaged them according to the low of the northen “kanun” coming from primitive Middle Ages.
But a even like living in communism, to go out in every hour of the date or night without being afraid of my personal security( safety), to walk around the streets of my city without being afraid of the smoke and dust or even the noisest noise of the uncountrolled cars that have occupied even the space of my side walk. If only a was safe during the three resting hours (3-5) , to live full tranquility “guaranteed by law”
A don’t know where to hide myself to find some tranquility comes from the law and not from the dictatorship?!
People! Far from the “ well-being of communism, take control of the country’s fate and make possible the the functioning of the legal state in order to prevent from happening that the lack of the legal state makes it comparable to the darkest period the Albanian society has lived through.
Grupi 8 Takes the stand of some Eastern European journalists, while taking notes during all presentations and at the end they give some quick conclusions of the regime
Ready Material
.. life insurance/safety
worker’s compesation
there were no cases of huliganism/robbery
safety on the streets at night
Public housing was guaranteed by the government
clean environment
no prostitution
many jobs
schooling guaranteed
campus in college was free of charge
Volunteer work strengthened the social relationaships among people
health service and hospitalization was free of charge
the government helped/responded in case of natural disasters
the tradition and folklore were valued
the youth in school were protected from huliganism and prostitution
no drugs, alchohol or Aids
Grupi 9Takes the stand of some western European journalists, while taking notes during all presentations and at the end they give some quick conclusions of the regime
Ready material
denounce the privite property, freedom of speech and faith
lack of pluralism
isolation from the rest of the world
killings at the borders
concentration camps
lack of alternative medias
censured press
brainwash
lack of initiative
agitation and propaganda dispositions
class
tension on the borders with the neighbors
tallonat/vouchers
no trade/market/empty market etc.
P.s: gruops 8-9 will discuss at the end of the lesson by giving the conclusions